New website for a new church in Saint Paul, MN, Trinity City Church. Worked with the client to reflect their mission, values, and community in their web identity. Excellent graphic design work by Tiana Mae Design. Clear and concise content, along with clean and eye-catching visual design combine to make a website for Trinity City Church that gets the point across quickly to visitors while weaving in the unique and nuanced identity of the church.

The Associated Press has finally changed their stance, making "Web site" obsolete, and "website" the new standard.

We come across this ubiquitous word everywhere in our wired world, whether writing a resume, typing an email, or writing copy for a website (there it is already!). Yet we have had a hard time pinning down just what is the correct spelling - should it be capitalized, should it have a space? Some of the difficulty is a reflection of the vaporous nature of the thing itself. Oh the website; that intangible entity of ones and zeros that feels so real as we touch it through our mouses and keyboards, residing on what sometimes seems to have become our planet's eighth continent, the Internet.

I've been designing websites more in Notepad++ than in Dreamweaver lately and found myself in need of an on-screen straightedge. At first I used the screen itself by pushing the browser window off the edge - works, but not great. A slightly better solution I found is to use the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del). Since it's "always on top" by default, you can move either the browser or the Task Manager without losing your straightedge under a stack of windows.

Craig Selander, Architect, LLC: http://www.selander-architect.com

Objective: Design and build Craig Selander, Architect, LLC's architectural firm website to establish an online resource for their clients and potential clients.

Town of Trade Lake: http://www.tradelakewi.com

Objective: Design, develop, and implement the Town of Trade Lake's online presence.

I've used several methods over the years to convert digital photos to black & white. Here's what I've learned. And don't worry if you don't have Photoshop (PS), I’ll discuss a solid free software option as well.

Starting out, the Desaturate tool in PS was the obvious choice. Using that in conjunction with the Contrast and Levels controls offered some tweakability control beyond the basic desaturation operation. While these methods may suffice for some applications, I learned a better (and more fun) way to pop some fantastic black and white photos by digging a little deeper.

]]> you@yourdomain.com (Administrator) frontpage Wed, 06 May 2009 14:37:42 +0000 http://www.vantageptdesign.com/photography/6-a-better-path-for-black-and-white-photo-conversion http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/vantageptdesign/~3/j7R-726pbfQ/5-vector-portraits Andrew Bush has made a fascinating series of images called "Vector Portraits, 1989-1997, Photographs made while traveling at 50-70mph in Los Angeles and other parts of the Southwestern United States".

An entertaining take on that momentary glimpse of your fellow motorist delivered with a minimalist page layout, equally minimalist narration, and interspersed with wonderfully dry humor. I'm a bit of a car aficionado, so it was fun to see a throwback to the automotive landscape of my formative years.