Soapbox time.

One thing that has always irritated (and alarmed) me is the increasingly large population of people who have resorted to using instant messaging and texting lingo in everyday situations (also known as Netspeak). While I can understand the desire to shorten words like “your/you’re” to “ur” or “for/see/why/you” to “4/c/y/u” when using Twitter or text messaging, I am absolutely astounded at people who use this style of conversation in places where it shouldn’t be used.

Case in point: While I was in school, a friend of mine was writing a letter to her professor asking about office hours. It went something along the lines of “i was wondering when u were going 2 b in ur office so i can stop by and get the notes. plz let me know, thx.” I honestly couldn’t believe it. A professor? You’re sending an email like that to the very person who is trying to educate you? That’s almost as bad as sending an email like that to a boss or client.

Don’t even get me started on the fact that many people cannot use English properly to begin with (I always die a bit inside when I see someone use “you’re/your” incorrectly, let alone “there/their/they’re“), but on top of that, soon people won’t know how to spell most words in the English language. “Thank you” will soon become “thx,” “because” will become “bcuz,” and anything ending with the letters “ks” will soon be replaced with the letter “x.”

Granted, I don’t always use proper capitalization or punctuation when chatting through IM or text, and I make my fair share of spelling mistakes. I do, however, know how to spell the words I learned in grade school and how to properly use them. And when writing emails to people outside my immediate circle of friends and family, I ALWAYS make sure to use proper capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Why look like you never made it past fourth grade?

Again, while I generally do not have a problem with people using this sort of conversation style in character-limited mediums (though I myself can never bring myself to type “ur” – I tried it once and almost cried), I simply cannot believe how widely used it is becoming in mainstream media.

I wonder how much money I could make from a Netspeak rehab program?

For the past couple of months, I have been busy designing and developing a website for my friend Ryan’s band, Ephesus. The site has finally launched – please check it out!

As this is one of the first sites I have designed myself in a long time, I wanted it to be good. When I get in designing mode, I find that what looked great to me the night before looks like crap the following morning. I have no formal training in design other than all the books and websites I’ve read, and what may take a professional designer 6 hours may end up taking me 3 days. I don’t mind, though, as it’s always a great learning process. The one thing I’ve learned from every design project I’ve done, though, is that things can always be better. I’d like to use the Ephesus site as an example. Here is the first mockup I sent Ryan back in early January:

Not very pretty, eh? It looked great to me at the time (after 4 hours of messing in Photoshop, at least). After sitting on it for awhile, I came up with mockup number 2 in early February:

Better. I still felt like it was missing something, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I put the design on hold for the time being while I worked on the content/functionality of the site. Then one day in late April, it hit me. I knew exactly what it was missing, and I came up with this:

Now, that’s more like it. As I was driving home one day, I realized that I needed to incorporate more “hand drawn” elements into the template to go along with Ephesus’ signature hand-drawn guitar logo that I used in the background. I also wanted to incorporate some Polaroid photos to go along with their jacket art on their CD, and doing this allowed me to free up some room at the top and position the sidebar differently. Of course, I’m sure even this layout could be loads better, but I’m pretty happy with it, considering it’s my first major design in about 2 years.

Lesson learned (in case you didn’t get it above): things can always be better!

I recently came across an article at PSDTuts titled “50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory” which was interesting because it got me thinking – can good design be learned? If everyone has the potential to design, what separates the good designers from the bad ones? Can those principles be learned?

I don’t see myself as an incredibly creative person, nor a good designer. If design can be learned, can creativity? Is creativity essential to being a good designer?

I’ve decided to test this idea on myself.

I recently purchased Elliot Jay Stock’s new book, “Sexy Web Design.” The book is fantastic, and covers the steps one should take when designing a web site. I must admit – in most of my design attempts, I’ve skipped a lot of important steps (researching, wireframing, and sitemapping to name a few) and gone straight to the Photoshop design. I’m now wondering… if I take these pre-design steps, will my designs improve? By learning a few tricks and techniques, will someone look at my web site and think, “Wow, that’s hot!”?

My friend Steve has graciously (or stupidly) allowed me to redesign his portfolio web site. My experiment will take me through all the steps outlined in Elliot’s book, which I will be documenting here (not the actual content of the book – go buy it yourself if you want to know!).

Stay turned for Step 1: Research.

Here are some videos that made me LOL (for real). Hope everyone had a nice weekend!

I especially love the “bookmark page” face gesture.

In the past month, I’ve been asked several times if my degree in Computer Science has helped me in my web development career. I always find this question hard to answer.

Part of me wants to say that yes, it helped me. I learned Object Oriented programming. I learned about design patterns, use cases, and documentation. I learned how to work on team projects, how to program on a Linux OS (ha!), and how to take tests. Mostly, I learned that I do not care for software development.

Even so, a large part of me wants to say no, it did not help me. Almost everything I know in regards to web development (HTML, CSS, SQL, PHP, Photoshop, the list goes on…) I know because I took it upon myself to learn it in my own time. Outside of class, I did web projects for myself and others. I found two internships that allowed me to practice my web development skills because I did not have that opportunity in my classes. If I had done nothing in my own time and relied entirely upon my schooling in CS to find me a web development job, there is absolutely no way that would have been possible.

I’m positive I’m a better web programmer because of my CS degree and it certainly helped when looking for a job. Every job application I’ve seen for web development wants a CS degree or equivalent work experience. It’s nice to know I have both.

However, I also feel like what I learned in those 4 years of school (and $30k later) I could have learned in my own time. In this day and age – where a 12 year old kid can teach him or herself C++ from the comfort of his or her bedroom – I’m not entirely sure college has as much value as it once did. With information becoming so widely available on the internet, should the same importance be placed on a college education as it once was? Who’s to say that a high school graduate, who has been doing web development since he/she was 10 years old, is not as qualified (if not more qualified) than a college graduate who only has 4 years of CS under his/her belt?

But I’m not here to undermine the importance of college. College is very important for some fields. I’m glad I had my college experience, and I would probably do it again if I had a chance (although maybe a different degree). But as far as I’m concerned, my own motivation, initiative, and passion for web development is what got me where I am today – not a $30k piece of paper.

What do you guys think? Was college useful for you, or not? If you didn’t go, are you happy with your decision?