Passion about the web is the reason I created this site. Like so many others, I have been fascinated with this medium from the moment I discovered it because it makes expression and communication so vibrant and immediate. The site also comes from my fascination with visual design in general and Web design in particular as well as with the tools and technologies behind Web design and development. The site is an experimental ground where I'll try different things in a freer context than my professional Web design work.
This site is then both a vehicle of personal expression and a means of sharing my experience and knowledge of Web building tools and techniques with anyone looking for practical information. The pixellog section is a free form blog and the pixelforge section contains articles and tutorials dedicated to various topics related to the craft of Web design. The pixel gallery section hosts a gallery of my best pictures as I get into my latest passion which is digital photography.
In my Web design work I make heavy use of the sofware applications found in Macromedia Studio, especially Dreamweaver, Fireworks and FreeHand. If you have any requests for tutorials related to those or any Web design related topics, please send me a message through the form found on the contact page.
For the few people who might be interested... ;-)
I'm a 43 years old guy and computer geek who's been dabbling in Web design and development for over 12 years now. It was a hobby at first but is now my full time job. But my first love and passion for a long time has been music and especially guitar which I've been playing since the age of 11. I have played in various original bands for over 20 years, achieving a certain amount of success that included some radio airplay with an EP that was recorded in the early 90's.
That ended in 1999 when the band I was playing with split in the middle of recording a full lenght album that was never finished. I have no regrets though and Web design has now become my primary creative outlet. I still play guitar and write music in my spare time using computer technology I wish had been available to us 10 years ago...
I live in a beautiful small town about 30 miles West of Montreal with Isabelle, my life partner and companion for the last 15 years.
This site's design and graphics were created and are maintained using Macromedia Fireworks CS3 and CS4 and was coded to standards using Dreamweaver CS3 and CS4 as well as TopStyle Pro 3.5. The backend technology is ColdFusion 8 and the pixellog section is run by Ray Camden's amazing BlogCFC 5.9 software. For the pixel gallery, for now I'm using the excellent SlideShowPro 1.8 Flash component but I'm exploring other alternatives which will give me more flexibility for the layout.
On the design front, I'm using images I photographed myself using my Canon S1IS camera for the various page headers. As for typography, fonts used for the logo, main navigation buttons and titling/headings include a mix of bitmap fonts from Minifonts (Bios One, Bios Two, Aldebra Light and Tenacity). You normally would not use so many different fonts in the same design but it became a matter of which one was more readable at the size I wanted to have it. All those pixel fonts look pretty similar in the end anyway. Body copy (HTML text) is set using Lucida Sans Unicode. The color scheme was developed with the help of TigerColor's awesome ColorImpact 3.1.
If you have any questions regarding the design or development techniques used to build this site don't hesitate to communicate with me using the form found on the contact page. |
