Old dog, learning new tricks

Over the years, I have taken great pride in the various technical milestones I have been able to achieve as a designer. Hell, when I finished with art school, I did not even know how to turn a computer on. I originally started out as a portrait painter | traditional illustrator, so when I first moved into the digital art arena, I felt overwhelmed that all my counterparts had a BIG technical edge on me. Being able to draw by hand made me fairly quick with composition, color and conceptualizing – yet it still took me longer to do what others seem to make simple work out of. As a result, for years I have been obsessed with learning tricks, short cuts, command keys – basically anything else to make myself faster and more technically savvy.

In 1996, I began designing for the web. – despite being really dyslexic, I learned HTML, some REALLY simple java scripts and used class styles to maintain the various contextual styles of the sites I created. You may be thinking, greeeeeat… nice walk down memory lane… whats the point right?

I spent my career having to build the designs that I created – However at CNET – Design and Tech Production are separate groups, and design seldom code the projects that are worked on. I have always firmly believed that to successfully design for the web, creative folks must truly understand the parameters of “how” things are built – which is the basis for “what is possible”. As I have built out my creative team, I have insisted that all the designers that I hired also came from environments where they had either built there own designs… or were on board with how important learning this would be. All this is to say – the newer techniques of using XHTML and CSS to not simply control class styles, but to entirely define the complete presentation layer was passing “me” by. Not because I had not been familiar with or exposed to it. Quite the contrary – all the sites that we work on are marked up with semantic XHTML. But the lack of actually doing the production of these sites was leaving me less then quick with the latest methods.

WOW!!! what a setup… This new site is in the process of replacing the old – not so much for any particular visual style – but as my sandbox to learn new tricks. Will it validate?? Is the markup perfectly semantic… The answer is no… and not just to a purest… but even at a lower standard. But that is not my point here… There is not one <TD> and almost no <br/> tags in what I have been able to put together so far. Last night, I had a grin from ear to ear cause I had successfully styled my left column <ul>’s with a background: url(images/div_decor_600.gif) no-repeat;

Why do all this, I love my job… have enjoyed a lot of great success where I am at and learning often takes a lot of time after hours. However I have found that the difference between those who like what they do, and love what they do is in the passion for the process… wheather it be to simply get faster or to know other ways of doing the same thing to fatten up your bag of tricks – the process is always better then the final destination!