Recently I’ve watched a TED video (above), which talks about 404 page design, and realized that I can benefit from having a well-designed 404 page. Sometimes users find themselves on a 404 page without fault to the owner of the site but out of personal experience, I find it that sites that have an interesting, well-designed, fun, and/or funny 404 page, I tend to enjoy myself on that particular site. That ability to communicate with users who has landed on a 404 page and redirect them back to the homepage can be engaging to the visitor which can kept visitors on the site.

Currently, I don’t have a personalized 404 page but after watching the video above and doing a little research for inspiration, I find myself strongly considering creating one. If you haven’t considered or are considering creating a 404 page also, then check out the video above and the samples below.

Photo above was taken by @lorielue.

A week ago I attended a presentation by @ryanparsley about responsive web design. Ryan went through the do’s and do not’s and the steps to take to create a responsive website. What is responsive web design? Responsive web design is having a web site that will adapt to the user’s browser resolution. So one site can have multiple layouts depending if the user is viewing the site on the computer, tablet, or on a mobile device. On the computer a user could see a multi-column layout while on the phone the user may see a one or two column layout that fits device without having to zoom in and out to see content. Creating a responsive website is different than creating a traditional website in terms of new issues a designer may have to consider. Such as, creating multiple stylesheets, testing the site on multiple browsers on the desktop, tablet and smartphones. The more a designer test a site and the more platforms a designer test the site on, the better the chance of the site being a well-designed and uniformed across platforms.

Why would anyone want to develop a responsive website if they’re new challenges that may be frustrating or even delay the completion of the site? With the development of smartphones and tablets growing at such a fast pace, more users are using these mobile devices more to view their favorite sites. If the user finds a site to be troublesome and/or slow, then that site will risk losing incoming traffic.

But then again, it is a lot of work. I still haven’t made my site responsive yet (I’m working on it). But to make a site responsive then start a responsive site like any other site through a preliminary design. A designer can not allow anything to hinder their creativity. A lot of designers recommend to design the mobile layout first then expand to bigger formats. Once the concepts are created then omit and add things that can benefit the site. For instance, the amount of content and the size of the images will vary based on the layout. Therefore, on the desktop version of a site, there might be tons of content but on a mobile site the content may be limited to prevent the user from scrolling.

Once the concepts are finalized, its time to code. The site will be created normally do except having to add media queries which basically means there will be a CSS file for each layout. Personally, I don’t use many templates and frameworks so I don’t know a lot of them but here are some frameworks I have found in this article here.

To add the media queries to your code, here is a sample of the HTML code to put in between the head tags:

Media queries can also be added to the CSS:

On the media queries examples above, they are checking the min-width and max-width values of the device. Below are more attributes that can be used to define the media queries:

• width – checks width of display.
• height – checks height of display.
• device-width – checks width of rendered surface. Can add min- and max- prefixes.
• device-height – checks height of rendered surface. Can add min- and max- prefixes.
• orientation – checks if device is in portrait or landscape
• aspect-ratio – checks the ratio of the width and height. Can add min- and max- prefixes.
• device-aspect-ratio – checks the ratio of the device-width and device-height. Can add min- and max- prefixes.
• resolution – checks the pixel density of device
• and more…

Through responsive design it is possible to learn a new type of creativity, the technical issues that comes along, how a site works on mobile devices and the possibilities responsive design offers to a designer for having new layout for mobile devices.

Over the weekend, I was going through my hard drives and stumbled upon a piece I did during an art marathon when I was in college.

For the marathon, I wanted to expand my creativity and try new areas of media and ideas. For Type Girl, I wanted to draw a figure using only sentences, make it look interesting and as realistic as possible, and maintain the look of a girl.

Each piece I submitted had its challenges but in the end I am happy with what I’ve created.

On the weekend of February 17-19, I declared it “WordPress Weekend”. I was fortunate to attend to the 2012 WordCamp Miami and BarCamp Miami. These events showed me how big the WordPress community is and how much it continues to grow. In the last couple of months, I have been to a handful of WordPress events, met quite of few new people, and learned a lot about WordPress.

During “WordPress Weekend”, I have listened to some good speeches on interesting topics done by awesome presenters and learned some new techniques. Presenters like David Scott Tufts (@davidscotttufts), Andrea Graham (@BigSea), Kevin Zurawell (@kzurawel), and Alex Guiterrez (Pop Creative) really stood out with their messages. Thanks to presenters like them, not only I learned a lot but I am already applying those things learned at my current job managing a couple of WordPress sites.

TidyThemes, the authors of the WordPress themes BlankSlate and SuperSimple, has chosen my blog to be showcased on their site. TidyThemes are choosing beautiful sites that have been designed using their BlankSlate theme. Have a look at all the sites chosen by TidyThemes.

So, today I went to take a shower and left the door cracked just in case Gigi might want to keep me company, which she usually does. While in the shower, Gigi decides to make herself comfortable in the bathroom sink and take a little catnap. I don’t know what is her fascination with porcelain but Gigi always wants to jump in the sink or tub.

On Sunday, January 15, 2012, I went to the Miami International Art Show held at Bayfront Park in Downtown Miami. This year’s show took place on a yacht, which is definitely first for me. While the gallery was inside the yacht, many sculptures were nicely placed along the shore. Along with sculptures, there were tons of interesting art inside; paintings, sculptures, and a few optical illusion pieces. It was well worth checking out.

Happy New Year to everyone! Personally, 2011 has been a good year with a promise for an greater future starting in 2012. Hope your new year is a great one! 2012 is the year when dreams comes true.

Gigi staring up at the light.