No, not like that, it’s CSS Naked Day, the day to dive under the hood of your website, rip out the stylesheet and see if your content is still accessible. If you have a W3C valid site, then chances are really good you’ve designed the site well enough that it could live without the branding and styles, at least for a day. The new styling of Robleto.com will be back tomorrow, but until then have a happy naked day (more…)

The January issue of Fast Company lists the 10 Hot Jobs for 2007, and on the list is Web Designer. I also have experience with viral marketing, art direction, blogging and experience designing, so I am all over the hot map.

10 Hot Jobs for 2007

Above is a screenshot from CSS Beauty. I visit this site often for news and inspiration. It has great industry related information and ideas wrapped in a clean sharp design but built into a surprisingly unorthodox layout. Here’s the same screenshot, with the relevant content highlighted.

That is only about 10% of the visible page; the other 90% is navigation, advertisements and branding. The small allotment of space for the page content would still work and have not made me think, if it was placed using expected conventions: at the upper left or centered within the white content field.

This design appears thought through, so I expect there was a rational behind this layout choice, I just have yet to discern it. I am just glad to finally recognize it, for the longest time, I would click a link on CSS Beauty and have to wonder whether it bothered to load the page, because I didn’t know to look below the ads to find the new fresh content.

This is Robleto.com 5.0, the fifth major overhaul of my website all about me. Each previous redesign updated the look and feel of the site, and improved the code underneath. This latest addresses goes even deeper, addressing the purpose of the site and how to handle outdated content.

Previously, Robleto.com delved into numerous personal topics including who I am, my interests in theatre and travel and what books I recommend. These areas of the site, while providing a strong reflection of my identity, all too frequently fell into decline from lack of updating and made the entire site feel abandoned

In trying to rectify this situation, I asked myself which areas on the site (or the web) that I do actively keep up-to-date. I found three:

• My Blog - What you are reading right now, driven by Blogger (for now).The focus has changed from personal to referential to profession, but it has been kept updated on average once a week for the past four years.
• My Links - In order to be able to reference links at home or at work, I have abandoned browser Favorites/Bookmarks and cite any site that is of interest to me by tagging it to del.icio.us.
• My Photos - Having recently gone Pro, I am actively growing my Flickr account as my primary source of displaying and organizing all of my photos and images.

So, when I committed to a redesign, I decided to focus solely on these areas. I have removed the static pieces of Robleto.com that were never updated and seldom viewed, and radically simplified the site. It is now only three pages: my blog, my photos and my links.

This choice is a complete shift in the approach to this site. It veers away from the previous brochure style which literally stated who I am and what I like spun whatever way I chose, in favor of this new approach. This site, as you see it today, doesn’t really state anything extensive about me directly, but by aggregating content that I actively keep up-to-date, it should paint a pretty good picture of who I am and what’s important to me.

Enjoy!

Edward Tufte is the pre-eminent leader in the field of analytical I attended last fall with high expectations that were met and surpassed. In Tufte I found a voice that could eloquently describe the vital need to focus on the analytic aspects of design and presentation, areas all too often considered too intangible or unimportant; areas that can not be properly addressed using PowerPoint.

One of the most surprising elements of Tufte’s seminar for me was his strong aversion to PowerPoint. I could concur that the product is considerable misused, but never really grasped the full impact of improper implementation of PowerPoint.

Since Edward Tufte is en route to DC, making his annual trip to provide his one-day seminar in mid-November, I figured I’d take the opportunity to reference two very contrasting examples of PowerPoint misuse, one very humorous and one hauntingly tragic:

• The Gettysburg Address
  Years ago, the Google uber-designer Peter Norvig created an alternate history where Abraham Lincoln had the convenience of Powerpoint at his disposal when giving the Gettysburg Address.
• The Columbia Tragedy
  With the help of Tufte, the NASA’s Accident Investigation Board was able to focus in on exactly where in the process things went offline that resulted in the Columbia tragedy in 2003. The derailing resulted from a under-informative Powerpoint presentation. The full details available in this Washington Post article.