From the desk of Mr. Monk

A flurry of development

I can already feel myself levitating towards twitter for everything. I should be keeping this diary a lot better than I am. The problem is that I use twitter for everything, and I cant do the same for this. Almost a decision in the realms of one or the other.

Well this week has been busy. Client list is hug at the mo. Smile has had to appoint project managers to each client so that things run smoother, no more treading on eggshells an all that!

I’ve been taking care of the Type web-presence. Im learning so much its ridiculous. Learnt the differences between absolute and relative divs. Before I couldnt get enough of AP divs, and I stand by that they are great. you can get sites running in no time and you can make unique looking sites because of the extremely visual interface you get with them. However their downfall is that they are absolute and thus centering cannot be achieved. Bummer. Thats where relative divs were confusing. I knew they were the answer, but learning all the css rules to do it was putting me off. Well I had no option this time. It was time to get stuck in. To be honest it wasnt too bad, I was able to get to grips with it (in fair confidence) in about 8 hours. I love learning new stuff, and I feel like I have furthered myself. As a test bed for my new skills I used Inter-Acts website (one of our first clients) to put them into play.

The result is fantastic. Got exactly what I wanted, and now I am proud to show it off. A great piece for our portfolio. The previous example just was not Smile. The new improved version has the wow factor and latches onto the unique branding. We feel like we really missed a trick there! We knew that the business cards had everyone interested yet we werent using the photos in the rest of the brand to our advantage. It was like we were scared to use them. Now however, we have pushed them into every distribution channel of the brand. 

So yeah, a few wrapper divs and bam. Job done. Now of course it wasn’t that simple. Alexandre gave me a run though of phpwcms (nice product name!) and it cleared most of it up, but still had me baffled, it really is a hindrance not having a test server! But with the stuff he’d taught me I put into play a few custom tags and Im really happy with what I have at this point. I feel like the main basis is all there. Now I have to run this by them in around 10 hours and I have the feeing that this meeting will be both the most exciting and the most eventful. if they like what they see I will be bouncing off the walls, but its a real combination of elements that will play to its success. 

As a team we’ve been playing around with the branding task. Ive been developing an idea and we think there’s something there, but something isn’t right… yet. We feel like we need to dig deeper into Type, but we know were getting close. Personally I love the blue colour we’ve been given and the other 2 Im still working with to get the right balance.

Im dead tired now and Im sure there’s other stuff I need to reflect on; but right now Im good. I do need to write a post on twitter though…