Hello, I'm Chris Murphy — I specialize in creating engaging, user-centric interactive experiences.
Archive for "Design"
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Apr 2009 6
Out with the Old and in with Something Dramatically Different.
As some of you may have noticed by now, I’ve updated farfromfearless. I suppose “update” is a bit of an understatement. If you’re reading this post, it’ll be in the context of a dramatically new theme and structure.
Change is good.
What’s New…
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Feb 2009 25
WordPress Theme Design Part 4: Visual Texture
Visual texture plays a large role in design: the lack of and the addition of texture are all part of visual communication. It is one of the ways a designer can appeal to the users’ senses through a medium that is not tactile by nature.
Strategic…
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Jan 2009 19
WordPress Theme Design Contests — What Are You Really Getting Involved In?
To be clear: this post is not announcing a new contest.
While I’m an ardent supporter of promoting the WordPress platform any way I can, the contest documentation sent up red flags after the first and second read through:
- The rules for…
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Jan 2009 17
Sites That Inspire – 2.
One of the trends that seems to be re-emerging lately in design (regardless of industry) is a more illustrative approach to some of the graphical aspects of a design. In the past, most illustrative elements tended to be small details such as…
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Nov 2008 10
FrogCMS – Content Management Simplified.
Content Management Systems come in so many flavours, and while I don’t advocate any one system over another, I have no hesitation in saying that this product is one to keep an eye out for. Created by Quebec-based developer, Philippe A…
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Nov 2008 9
Best Practices for Determining Content Density for Websites.
Well written content is an integral part of web-design as much as the actual design and code around and behind it. Good copy writing can better help a user determine the context of the page, find information quickly, and ultimately influenc…
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Nov 2008 6
Sites That Inspire.
Like many folks in the advertising/creative industry, I’m experiencing what amounts to the Christmas rush — that fourth quarter (for my agency anyway) race to wrap up projects and get as much done before the end of the year as p…
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Jul 2008 23
How to BETTER Communicate Design Decisions to Clients
In a recent recent article on Smashing Magazine, “How to communicate design decisions to clients“, writer Brian D. Armstrong laid out a five-point guideline on how to rationalize and present design for web-projects.
Mr. Ar…
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Jul 2008 11
Twilight Saga WordPress Theme
There are so many themes out there that just don’t seem to have much of a concept behind them, in fact most seem to be little more than decoration. I don’t think WordPress themes need to always have a concept behind them, but the on…
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Jun 2008 24
Separating the creative from the technical in web-design.
Web-design in all it myriad forms, can be characterized as the marriage of creative vision and technical implementation. But it is the limitations and resulting solutions for what can be achieved technically that — to me — is…
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Mar 2008 18
Working at an Advertising Agency or a Boutique Shop – which option is better?
With all the stiff competition for limited placements in agencies, it’s not difficult to understand the concern over wanting to work for the best and at the best creative agency. To confuse students further, they now have much more t…
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Jan 2008 24
WordPress Theme Design Part 3: Color and Contrast
Color selection can be troublesome especially when it comes to designing for yourself. WordPress themes are no exception, and the exercise itself is possibly one of the more challenging aspects of creating a new theme. When it comes to des…
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Jan 2008 18
WordPress Theme Design Part 2: Web Typography
In the previous installment of this series, I covered how we can harmonize and control the layout of our design by making consistent use of a strong column measure. In turn, the column measure gave us the foundation for our visual grid. With t…
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Jan 2008 14
WordPress Theme Design Part 1: Best practices when designing a new theme
An issue facing developers currently is compatibility. Older WordPress themes are becoming less and less popular, which is not necessarily due to design so much as the lack of support for newer features such as "Widgets", emer…
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Jan 2008 11
“Lemon Twist” v2.0 – Updated WordPress Theme
There are some significant updates to this WordPress theme, and most of the updates are intended to make the theme a little friendlier for new users to tweak and modify as they need. Some of the updates you may not notice come in the form of sign…
About Me
Hello, I'm Chris Murphy, I specialize in creating engaging, user-centric interactive experiences. Explore some of the highlights of my work, learn more about me, or find out how I can help you.