Also, an update about this site is probably in order. While currently it acts mainly as a resume / portfolio site, I’ve been thinking of re-making it (again). While I will obviously continue to maintain an About and Portfolio page, I figured it would be more effective to make the site a central area through which I present all my various accounts on the Internet. Cause, let’s be honest, if you wanted to find out more about me you would probably just Google my name. So I was thinking that I would just draw access all those sites’ APIs and just push them all to you through this site.

Oh, and I intend to change the site URL from simon.vansintjan.org to simon.vansintjan.info, because let’s be honest here, I am not an organization.

My main task while at Opto focused on the redesign of the website for their 10 year anniversary. I worked with Ron and Sue to make the design as close to what they had in mind as possible. Building the site required a lot of work with jQuery as well as using images and PHP in inventive ways.

It was a really good experience. Since the site is not live yet I am helping the people at Opto to continue to fine tune it, and I will post a link here when it is finished.

For now the temporary site can be visited here.

I am really thankful for the time I got to spend at Opto. It was very educational, and am grateful to the people there for giving me a glimpse into a career path I have been extremely interested in lately.

The T-shirts

I’ve never really made a design for a t-shirt, and doing this has turned me onto a lot of great opportunities – mainly the threadless.com submissions situation. I don’t know whether I will be submitting anything anytime soon since I feel like I’m over worked with things that I’m doing as favors to other people, but I definitely have some ideas in the making (watch this space).

On that note, I’m fairly happy with the design for the freshair.org.uk t-shirt. It’s something new in the college t-shirt situation – as opposed to the generic ‘funny pun’ – ‘our name’. Basically, what I did was make a shirt that I wouldn’t mind wearing even if it wasn’t a fresh air shirt. I think I’ve succeeded.

The Printed Material

I’ve been working on several posters and flyers for the station that should be used during Edinburgh Fresher’s Week as well as throughout the year.

The Star Wars inspired poster is definitely my favorite, but also the one I feel saddest about. I loved the concept, but what was really hard to find for this poster was source material that was actually large enough for a 300dpi A2 poster. As a result I had to limit myself to a 300dpi A3 poster, and even here I had to do cut some edges.

Twist & Shout is a monthly night that freshair.org.uk puts on to the tune of 50s and 60s music, and usually features some funk or soul band. The poster allowed me to explore Photoshop paths more, and gave me a chance to work with figures and fonts that I had been thinking of using for a while.

But really this is a portfolio site, and I don’t intend to update it with posts that change the industry or give advice and tips (although I do plan on making ‘this is how I did it’ posts, if I ever do get to that stage) on how to get things done. The real point of this site is to show you what I can, and have, done.

This is primarily the reason that I have redesigned it as well. The old version was really just my first love child with Wordpress. By now I’ve learned a lot – about Wordpress and the internet in general – and this website is meant to be a representative of that fact.

So what did I actually do to this site?

The biggest style change is the fact that I decided to get rid of the height:100% setting I had for my columns. This just proved too buggy, and required way too many style fixes (by giving tons of different things background colors that really shouldn’t have any). As a result the CSS is a lot simpler – and in the end – more attractive. This is definitely helped by the drop shadow I gallantly attached to my hanging boxes.

A lot of server side code was changed to make it cleaner / easier to read. It used to be littered with remnants that I didn’t really need, and are now neatly swept away.

Visually – and here are some changes that I’m really happy with – I’ve finally personalized the ‘read more’, ‘next’ and ‘previous’ buttons that I thought were the bane of this site. The portfolio section of the site has also received a complete make over, one that should give me a lot more creativity and flexibility in how I present my portfolio pieces. That entire space to the right is now going to be used for something useful!

In conclusion

Of course, the site isn’t finished yet. I’ll probably never think that it is, but I am glad that I’ve finally turned over a new leaf. I’ve tried to capitalize on some current web trends – and tried to buck some other ones. I’ve given myself more space to work with, and hopefully have done so in a manner that is different enough to stand out.

Oh, and I used @font-face for the first time. Hurray for CSS 3 and it’s supporting browsers!