Design & Code

If you’ve looked through my portfolio, you may surmise that I love color. One of the advantages of making creative sites for creative people is that I’m not restricted to a conservative business palette.

So where do I get my color inspiration? “Everywhere” is the not-helpful answer, though it happens to be the real one. By that I mean that I’m always looking at color, and my camera is full of shots taken purely as color references. I’m always on the lookout for great color combinations in catalogs and online. But just as I would urge you to “read off-topic” to feed your writing muse, I urge you to “browse wacky” when you’re looking for color inspiration. Don’t only peruse the usual color, design and art suspects, good as these are. Be prepared to find great color in unexpected places.

My new color crush is Blonde Chicken Boutiques, on the Etsy craft network. The Blonde Chicken, aka Tara, sells hand-spun and hand-dyed yarn from local sheep and she has an amazing eye for color. Check out her Flickr set if you don’t believe me. Oh, and if you knit, this is definitely a wonderful source of yarn.

An update to one of my most-visited pages, my portfolio. All currently active sites from the past half dozen years. Now dressed fresh to match my recent site redesign and sporting the marvelous Lightshow Magic from Project Seven.

The sites I design and produce here at Hit Those Keys are all unique, but that doesn’t mean they are produced in a vacuum or without reference to useful software and clever coding innovated by others.

I am extremely partial to the work of Al Sparber and Gerry Jacobsen at Project Seven. Nearly all of the javascript solutions I offer my clients originate here. Privileged glimpses behind the scenes at products-in-progress have me convinced that very few companies test their codelings as thoroughly, care as much about about web standards and usability, or support their products in real-world conditions with such patience.