Martin Dimartino-Marriott

Beginnings of new site

Martin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:29:33 +0000

Well over the weekend I was able to code up the first page of my new concept…

You can see it here, on its beta page.

Now I ‘just’ have to do the category and archive pages and hook it into WordPress. Not done this from scratch before, so is a bit of a challenge. I also need to get the Twitter and Flickr APIs plugged into the front page too so it gets updated dynamically.

Gift Voucher Design & New Site Plans

Martin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:55:31 +0000

So it’s been a bit of a quiet weekend so I thought I’d re-create and add my own twist to a direct mail graphic used by Serif recently. I’ve not done much with perspectives before, so this was great. I like to stay away from the ubiquitous lens flare, but I do love the ‘bokeh’ effect on these kinds of bright designs:

Also, I’ve long since wanted to do something with this site; maybe tweak its positioning and overall feel. It still needs to run on WordPress to some extent, so I have been busy coming up with this new layout for myself which I hope will show what I’m about more clearly. Getting the Flickr feed to work will be a challenge.

I may need to pull back the text on the front page though.
Additional page layous to follow

Club Poster Design

Martin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:48:58 +0000

OK so it’s not the actual one used for the event, but it’s my version of it…

I started off by just making the background as a stand-alone project. Made in Photoshop using custom brushes and stock mountain photography:

Then I developed the idea as I though tit made a fresh gig poster design and I’ve wanted to try some poster designs. I like the washed-out, ‘cold’ feel of it. Thanks to @rsteadfast for inspiration.

HTC Desire Ad

Martin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:27:42 +0000

Using a new bokeh technique I have been experimenting with…
…I used it to make my favourite smartphone look even more desirable. I’m so getting one of these!
Made in Photoshop with custom brushes…

Second Wednesday Meeting

Martin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:21:34 +0000

Had a nice, educational time tonight at the monthly web industry meet

Tonight I went to ‘Second Wednesday‘, the monthly web industry social gathering in Nottingham, held at Broadway Media Centre. We had a talk from lecturer Derek O’Brien about CSS3 and HTML5 and how/when to start using them and inevitable compatibility pitfalls! It was a very good breif overview of the full, verbose extent of these new standards, and was cirtainly interesting fuel for debate.

My feeling is that CSS3 really does have some exciting features we need to get using as soon as possible, and as soon as the bottom end of the userbase (those running old browsers) drops-out. Gradients, shadows and animatiton without script will become so lightweight! The distributers of browsers really need to get heavy handed with those running older browsers, making it very difficult to stay with a deprecated browser.

HTML5, however, I think is more of a hard-sell. I’m not convinced of its value just yet, cirtainly as far as the new XML-style attributes go such as

and

which are essentially common div IDs with standardised names! The SVG part of the spec is very exciting though as it cuts out the need for bitmap images to load, and with Google now favouring lightweight websites, it’s a welcome new toy.

I think for now, the main benefit will be for SEO and telling the crawler what some content is. Full ubiquity isnt expected until around 2020 apparently anyway (if users of the next decade are anything like those of the last!), but it’ll inevitably become commonplace much sooner by those experimenting with the new features.

A very informative evening, and it was great to be engaged by others who love to talk about these things!

Exponential mk2 Printed :D

Martin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:28:12 +0000

As mentioned in a previous post, I made a new Exponential logo recently. Anyway, it’s arrived — I was looking forward to seeing it!

I’m well-pleased with it…now I wanna make loads more!

Corporate-style Layout

Martin — Sun, 30 May 2010 18:00:15 +0000

In my quest to perfect a more ‘clean’ layout, I made a couple of sample pages of a corporate-style layout…

I think these would look better with actual content and a bit about a real company, but it’s a nice template. I’ll make a homepage with ‘featured’ projects perhaps.

I actually quite like this one, particularly the footer and the shade of blue — I’d like to code this one up. There’s potential for this to be hooked into WordPress.

Abstract Aircraft in Photoshop

Martin — Fri, 21 May 2010 00:55:46 +0000

I was going for a hi-tech look suggestive of a futuristic user interface on a display.

I made an accompanying iPhone wallpaper too!
iphone-wallpaper" title="aircraft-iphone-wallpaper" width="180" height="297" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1327" />
Download it (140kb) (Right-click>Save Link)

Sonic Soundz Client

Martin — Sun, 16 May 2010 01:12:01 +0000

It’s now done, and complete with a more refined visual theme by using DJ-themed vectors (designed in Photoshop and DrawPlusX3)

I have only been able to use images provided by the client, but my hope is to attend some of their appointments and shoot some more images of party-goers especially for the site!
The images will be instrumental in selling the service given the type of business.

New Exponential Logo

Martin — Wed, 05 May 2010 23:05:03 +0000

Had a bit of fun re-vamping my previous Exponential designs.

I’ve made it a bit cooler, with the feel of a snow sports brand. This logo has more of a powerful identity. I might get this one printed on a t-shirt actually since my last one turned out great!