anoki.net

Over the last few weeks while I have been busy making clients happy (check out the blog I helped launch for Full Contact Enlightenment) I have been hard at work in the late of night updating my site to HTML5. HTML5 is the latest iteration of the major presentational online language that creates the web.  From Wikipedia:

HTML5 is a language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, a core technology of the Internet. It is the latest revision of the HTML standard (originally created in 1990) and currently remains under development. Its core aims have been to improve the language with support for the latest multimedia while keeping it easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices (web browsers, parsers etc.).

Following its immediate predecessors HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1, HTML5 is a response to the observation that the HTML and XHTML in common use on the World Wide Web is a mixture of features introduced by various specifications, along with those introduced by software products such as web browsers, those established by common practice, and the many syntax errors in existing web document.

So basically, HTLM5 is a cleaner, more concise version of the language that is optimized for use on modern browsers, mobile devices, and user-interactions with media and applications. There is less coding to it in many aspects, making it a faster experience when viewing and editing, and stops users from having to initialize various plug-ins. It adds some new tags–removing the over-use of general, presentational mark-up even further–making it more…logical!

It was actually quite a beautiful experience as I was ripping out large chunks of now unnecessary coding and semantically streamlining other areas. It all looks and feels fit and trim! I’ve already started to adopt the standard to newer projects that I have going on and going back to older projects and updating them, as well as speaking to clients about the present benefits to them if they exist as of right now. HTML5 is still young, and not everyone needs it.

Check out these other projects I’ve done, using HTML5

• MainLine Ventures
• BuddhaBadges

Also, here’s some reading material on HTML5:

• A Brief History of Markup
• What is HTML5, and Why Should You Care?
• How HTML5 Will Shake Up the Web
• WTF is HTML5?

These last few months have been full of many end-of-the-year projects and beginning-of-the-year campaigns, but like every Winter, things are just getting ready to bloom this Spring. To start, I’m happy to say that I have been able to help launch 4 distinct web spaces for 4 great clients:

Elaine Lisle – Elaine is known as the “Edward Hopper of Philadelphia” as she paints in oils and acrylics day-in-the-life scenes of urban areas and beautiful vistas. To showcase her work and give her flexibility, I set her up CMS powered by WordPress, and trained her accordingly. Fun feature: JQuery image slider on the homepage!

Monica Shores – For Monica, a DC-based Yoga Instructor/Writer, we wanted to keep things clean and simple yet base her logo on a very gestural painting she just loved of purples and yellows. To embody the feeling of free thinking and movement, the site breaks out of the vertical and slides left and right horizontally depending on interest. Fun feature: Monica can edit the schedule herself using a mini-CMS!

Greg Harriman – MainLine Ventures looks for Angel Investors and Entrepreneurial companies and matches them up for funding, resources, and more. For Greg, he wanted something straightforward yet effective that kept up with his competitors, while the entire time being informative and lead toward promoting prospective calls or emails. Fun feature: The site is written in HTML5, the latest iteration of the web’s rendering language and I also created the logo for MainLine Ventures!

Marianne Mitchell – Marianne is breaking out of the studio and into her own blog. This month we launched a Blogger.com-based blog for her to chronicle her latest exploration “Color Drops” which has received great reviews in it’s Facebook trial runs. Fun feature: Marianne was really great to train! Her skills at email writing made picking up the blog’s interface easy!

And I, of course, have some great things coming up for the Spring and Summer!

Over the last few months I have had the distinct honor and opportunity to engender some really interesting and insightful new relationships with folks across the globe through online social spaces such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn… and I like it! From design inspiration, latest web iteration talks, inspirational and thought provoking conversations, and even work… yes, precious work! But the underlying lesson in all of this is how the act and art of listening is not only helpful but crucial in these—and all—situations in relationships.

One great client I was able to do a relatively quick e-book cover design for was Nadia Ballas-Ruta of Happy Lotus Lifestyles. Working with her was a true pleasure, and her natural way of being instilled in me a great sense of listening and hearing that allowed the ideas in her head to take form in my mind. And on my computer! The e-book, The Buddha Blueprint, is a great primer in the basics of Buddhist practices and how these all create an architecture upon which you develop your own Buddha Nature within yourself and your life. Through various phone calls, emails, and even Tweets we were able to communicate across the country and create a wonderful cover for her e-book:

Another great connection made through these various channels has been with Maia Duerr – who I’d like to come up with a quick two or three-worded phrase to describe her… but I just can’t. Even five words wouldn’t work, although I have been lucky enough to be working with her on her Five Directions Consulting rebranding. Having extensive backgrounds in non-profit work, communications, and cultural anthropology, through Five Directions Maia supports nonprofit organizations with mindful marketing and specialized services such as program evaluation, employee matching, and member/donor relationship building, etc.

In order to capture exactly what iconography would work to entail all she offers—and basically made her smile each time she looked at it—I took the time to really process through the content she provided, hear what she was saying and not saying, as well as acutely listen to her verbal feedback in every step of the process. As with many logo development processes, it took on about three stages, and luckily Maia’s postive and thoughtful feedback gave me a lot to work from. Here’s what we came up with:

In the end, I am very happy with the logo and I have more than one email proving that Maia is as well! Shown above, each of the “leaves” is actually a symbol for an element of nature: fire, water, metal, etc. Maia and I have been having a great time aligning her business practices with each of these in hopes to maximize the graphic use of the logo! Also, she’s a fan of the glowing star that forms in the center, as are others! One interesting phenomena that has occurred recently is that Maia decided to unveil the logo on her Facebook Business Page, and the reviews we’ve been getting are wonderful! And almost instantaneous! See below to get a glimpse of the first few reviews! Go Social Media!

Stay tuned… A website for Five Directions as well as a whole bunch of new things are coming soon!