chendo

Dark Design

I’ve decided to go with a dark design after a random experimentation. Lara gave me a brilliant link to the Do’s and Don’ts of Dark Web Design, and that set my decision in concrete.

Design Statement

My professional interest and communities mainly currently lay in the web development world, more specifically the Ruby on Rails framework. I have been a developer for about two years, mainly self-taught from own experience, attending user groups and talking to other people in the Rails community. My secondary professional interest is graphic and web design, because I believe the combination of both developmental skills and design skills form a very potent combination that grants me more versatility and thus more value to the company I work for and my clients. I am also trying to network with people in the design communities as I believe it is always a beneficial relationship.

My skill set is varied (you could say ‘jack-of-all-trades’, but you’d have to pay the price for that pun), but it mainly centres around technical ability. I have a knack for picking up technical skills quickly, and this is probably attributed to pre-existing experience and familiarity with other systems.

I started programming when I was 9 years old, when I wrote my first program in BASIC after self-teaching myself the basic syntax. This was followed by Microworlds (Logo), then Visual Basic at 10 and 11. I started web development when I was 13. PHP, HTML, CSS, and SQL were my first foray into the development world. I toyed around with XML/XSLT technologies, and attempted to study C++ and Python. I believe the key to becoming proficient was reading the manual and looking for help myself instead of relying on other people to tell me what I need to do. Also, I believe it’s easier for me to learn if whatever I am learning has set rules.

Which, unfortunately, is why I believe I have so much difficulty learning design. Design has a few set rules, which are documented by rules such as rule of thirds, accessibility, interface design, usability and so on. However, the creative aspect does not have any set rules or steps to follow, which makes it much harder for me to understand ‘how’ to design. I was initially hoping that KIB216 taught design, but unfortunately that was not the case and it was more about HTML/CSS and applying design skills in a way that it was ideal for the web. Apart from web design, I want to learn logo design, graphics design and typography.

Apart from developmental skills, I have extensive experience in all major operating systems (Windows, OS X, Linux), as well as film/sound editing and special effects from three years of film experience.

I’m not sure what my design aesthetic is yet, but judging from what I generally like, it would be simple, clean, abstract, but with an element of randomness/grunge. I’m not proficient enough in design to duplicate the more elaborate designs more experienced and specialised designers can do, but I believe I have the technical ability for it. Also, considering I am generally level-headed, my design aesthetic will probably err on the less outrageous side. Naturally, I believe that this will the passage of time due to more experience in the world of design.