I launched my new site yesterday.

If you stop by, you’ll see that it’s entirely different from anything I’ve done before. It’s a whole new design, built on a whole new system, with entirely new features.

By way of showing you around the new digs, here are some highlights:

The Work

My main goal in launching the new site was to begin marketing my services as a designer. The front page now focuses entirely on communicating what I do. The new Work section highlights some of my recent work. I’ve decided to use brief descriptions of what the goals of each project were, followed by a large screenshot of the design. The new work section also comes with its own RSS feed. More details on that to follow.

The Blog

I love to write and I love to share. For a while now, my blog has consisted of both original content, as well as links to what other people are creating. The blog, then, is still a major part of the site. I’ve created a clean, light layout for my writing, while also allowing for big, bold photographic posts as well. I also want to experiment with a more art-directed approach with some of the posts I write, but I first want to let myself settle into my new surroundings.

The Feeds

With the move to ExpressionEngine, I made the decision to introduce a new RSS feed structure. The main feed — the one you’re subscribed to now — will behave as it always has, as a combination of my writing and the things I share.

However, if you prefer to subscribe to just my writing or just the things I share, or would like the two split in your RSS reader, then you can subscribe to the dedicated Blog or Aside feed. There is also a Work feed for my projects, which will remain separate from all other feeds.

When I made the decision to go this route, I was looking at how others were handling the way their RSS feeds behaved. I’ve always liked how John Gruber handles his link posts: the title of the RSS feed item links to the page he is sharing, not to his own site. When Shawn Blanc introduced a similar approach to his feed, I knew I wanted to eventually head down that path myself.

When either Shawn or John posts a link to another site, the title that appears in your RSS reader looks no different than any other feed item. However, when either of these gentlemen write original content, those posts are marked with a unique symbol — John uses a star while Shawn uses a large plus sign.

As I was working on my own feed structure, I started to wonder whether this approach should be reversed; original content should look and behave like original content from other sites’ feeds, while links to other pages should be differentiated in some manner. With this thought in mind I made the decision to include an infinity symbol ∞ with the link posts, to differentiate them from posts that have normal behaviour.

The Switch

As I wrote last week, there has been a major change under the hood of the site. Previous versions have run on WordPress or Tumblr. This new site runs on ExpressionEngine. While I still plan to use the other systems I have learned, I have fallen in love with ExpressionEngine and wish to do more with it.

Every Good Launch Needs a Cause

It is amazing that I have the opportunity to communicate to you over a shared network connection, to share what I have created and what I’m thinking. However, for a billion people in this world, the main question on their mind is not “I wonder what’s happening on Twitter today,” but “where will I get my next drink of water?”

With that in mind, I have launched a Charity:Water campaign called “Every Good Launch Needs a Cause.” The goal is to raise $500 to help bring clean water to those in need.

To raise awareness, I’m giving away 3 photograph prints from my friend Jorge Quinteros. Here’s how to enter the contest:

1. Commit to giving a minimum donation of $20 to the campaign. I don’t have a way of tracking who gives, but I know I can trust you.
2. Send a tweet declaring your commitment with the hashtag #everygoodlaunch and a link pointing to the campaign page at http://mycharitywater.org/patdryburgh

Everyone who commits to giving and tweets their intentions will be added to the draw. The contest will close on December 3, 2010. Winners will be announced on Twitter that day.

The goal is to raise $500, which will provide clean drinking water for 25 people.

Thank You

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. I’m so proud of the new site, and excited for the opportunities that are coming my way. I’m looking forward to sharing them with you all.

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I’ve heard it said that when giving a presentation, one should first tell the audience what you are about to share, then share it, and finally tell them what you’ve just shared. The best presenters are the people who have the ability to direct every member of the audience from point A to point B without leaving anyone behind.

If I look at my blog as a presentation, looking back I can see that I haven’t done the best job at ensuring you were following along with the journey. I’ve jumped from platform to platform to platform, changed the design numerous times in between each jump, and have changed the focus too many times to count. In hindsight, I can see how I have disrespected you, not because of the changes, but because I did not clearly communicating change before it happened.

Looking Forward

There’s no better time to self-correct than on the eve of a big change, and so with that in mind I want to let you know that I am overhauling my website. In its current state, PatDryburgh.com serves as a personal blog where I share what I’m interested in and try to create content that is interesting to you. I don’t ever want that to change.

With my move to freelance last May, I have been fortunate enough to find work from referrals and through work I have done for others. I am still encountering many amazing opportunities, but I know that at any point that well could dry up and I will need to be proactive about marketing myself and my services.

With this in mind, I have designed and built an entirely new website for myself. Those following me on Twitter or Dribbble may have seen snips of the work I have been doing.

New Digs

The front page of the site will be a place to highlight some of my recent work and introduce myself to visitors. This is obviously very different from the approach I’m currently taking, which is to display a long list of possibly confusing blog posts.

The new site will be very image heavy, with big displays of the work I’ve completed as a freelance designer. I believe my work is my brand, and is the strongest selling tool I have.

I will still have a blog, and will still post links to other sites and articles. My new blog has been built to allow for a more art-directed approach, should a particular post call for that type of treatment. I have gone through my blog and removed old posts that didn’t serve the site. This process was an excellent opportunity to see how I’ve grown as a writer, and also a reminder that I do love to write. Expect more as the new site is launched.

More changes will be coming to how the blog functions, including additional RSS feeds for particular post types. These changes will be explained in a post announcing the launch of the new site.

The Engine Under The Hood

Probably the biggest yet least noticeable change to come is the change of what’s under the hood of this site. You are probably aware that this current site is powered by WordPress. I still plan on developing client sites with WordPress for the foreseeable future.

As a challenge to myself to learn a new platform, I made the decision to give ExpressionEngine a try after seeing many designers I respect use it to power their own sites. I still love WP, but now feel comfortable enough with ExpressionEngine to offer it as an additional option to clients.

Pencil It In

Next Tuesday, November 23 is the date I’ve set to launch. I’m very excited to for you to see the new site, and can’t wait to hear what you think of it. However, I didn’t want to go ahead with the change without letting you know ahead of time.

The next time you hear from me, this whole site will be different. But please, be sure to stop by. You might even find yourself leaving with a little gift.

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An interesting meme has been developing over on Dribbble, a community of designers who share the things they are working on at the moment. Started by Geof Crowl, designers have been creating postcards for the states and cities in which they live. Some places are well represented, while others may only have one or two graphics representing their location.

Given that I live in a small municipality of just over 13,000, I guessed that few fellow Dribbblers would share my locale.¹

So, I took the opportunity to represent my small region:

Other designers I admire have been creating beautiful postcards for their locales. Below are some of my favourites:

Of course, the Godfather of Dribbble Mr. Cederholm, has created one of the nicest postcards for the city of Salem, Massachusetts. Perhaps a few years older than Thames Centre; where they have witches, we’ve got soccer moms.

Few people have the creative talent that Kyle Steed has. This beautiful postcard for his home in Dallas is part hand drawn and part Poloroid photograph; truly a perfect combination.

I do not know much about Norway, but from this by postcard by Troy Bergland, it’s easy to tell that at least part of it is breathtaking.

One of my dreams has been to own a Volkswagen camper, and one of the places I would love to venture to in it is Arizona. The muted colours in this postcard by Matthew Spiel are just perfect.

I have no real draw to go to France, but the mix of photography and type in this shot by Stéphane Reverdy are beautiful.

Several times in the recent past I have tried to set type within a scene, only to have it not quite fit within the overall landscape. In this postcard, however, Jess Brown has nailed the perspective and concept.

One of my favourite design agencies, Paravel, calls Austin, Texas home. One of Paravel’s partners, Trent Walton, designed this antique-looking card featuring a photo of his hometown, and of course that classic Texas star.

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I love when designers take the time to flex their creative muscles outside of the bounds of their daily work. Good design should result in action; I think I may have some travelling to do this coming year.

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Last week I had the amazing opportunity to document the process of the filming of my friend Joel Geleynse’s newest music video. With a mix of live performance, acting sequences, and dance set in an old, run down machine shop, there was so much to capture in just a single day. It was definitely my biggest photo shoot to date with over 1000+ photos taken.

Below are some of my favourites from the day.

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On August 14, 2010 a group of 40+ dancers ages 6 & up participated in a flashmob dance in front of City Hall in Stratford, Ontario. My friend Meghan Seaman, owner of On Stage Dance Studio, and her friend Tori Sutton of the Festival City Twirlers organized the event as a way to give back to the community.

I was in attendance both as a friend and as a photographer. Below are some of the shots taken that day. More can be found over on Flickr.

A full video of the performance can be seen on YouTube.

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I am new at writing posts that are instructional in nature, so I hope that you can forgive me for going back and making corrections and additions as I find them. I also hope that these posts are helpful, and if so, please don’t hesitate to let me know or share them with your friends!

I received an email this afternoon asking about my post about using high resolution images in a Tumblr photo post. They had included the {PhotoURL-HighRes} tag in their theme, but still the photos weren’t high resolution.

Tumblr has added an extra (confusing) step to having high-res photos on your blog. To include high-res photos on your blog:

1. Go to the Customize screen for your blog.
2. Select the “Advanced” menu.
3. Select “Enable high-res photos.”

From what I’ve read, any high-res photo you have uploaded since October 2008 has still been stored on Tumblr’s servers, so this step really just allows your theme access to those photos. However, if I’m wrong you will need to re-upload all of the photos so that Tumblr has a high-res version on their site.

Again, any questions or comments are always welcome!

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I hadn’t planned on writing so soon on another Tumblr theme development topic, but I have noticed a problem on several Tumblr sites that is really easy to fix and has benefits both for your readers and search engines as well.

What’s In A Name?

The manner in which Tumblr allows you to name your website pages in the <title> html tag is rather confusing. In the custom theme docs, the only Tumblr code used to describe the page’s title is {Title} which only displays the blog’s title, not the title of the actual page your reader may be on.¹

This is how Tumblr indicates a page’s title in each of its examples in the custom theme docs:

<title>{Title}</title>

A Little Bit Closer

Later on in the theme docs, Tumblr indicates that in order to display a post’s title on a page, you use the combination of the {block:PostTitle} tag (to determine if there is in fact a post title) and the {PostTitle} tags.

{block:PostTitle}
    <h2>{PostTitle}</h2>
{/block:PostTitle}

What they don’t indicate is that this combination of tags can also be used in the <title> HTML tag, as follows:

<title>{block:PostTitle}{PostTitle} | {/block:PostTitle}{Title}</title>

While this format is better than what we started with, it unfortunately only covers one specific type of Tumblr post: an article with a title. This means that the following still go without descriptive page titles:

• photo posts
• quote posts
• link posts
• chat posts
• audio posts
• video posts

The Solution

So what is the solution to this problem? You want a descriptive title for your blog, but the {PostTitle} tag isn’t cutting it.

Enter: {PostSummary}

Somewhat ambiguously, Tumblr includes a tag that will generate a title if one exists, and will fall back on a short summary of the post’s content if a title does not exist. This is perfect for all of the post types listed above, as well as articles which do not have a specified title.

On my blog, my <title> tag looks like this:

<title>{block:PostSummary}{PostSummary} | {/block:PostSummary}{Title}</title>

If you look around my blog (which I hope you do!) you will see that every page on this blog has a descriptive title in the browser title bar. This also translates into more descriptive titles for Google and other search engines when they index my website.

I hope this post helps you create a more pleasing reading experience for your readers. If you have any questions or any other feedback don’t hesitate to hit me up on Twitter or via email.

Addendum

I have written an addendum to this post, which includes Garrett Murray’s argument against using the method I’ve described above to title Tumblr pages. I have to say, it made me rethink using this method. I strongly suggest checking out the addendum and making your own informed decision from there.

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One of my favourite elements of my current blog design is the large images used for photo posts. When I post a photo that I or a friend has taken, I like that the photo will span the width of the site’s content, giving the photo priority in the content.

This morning my friend Phil Bowell emailed asking how I achieved this affect, when Tumblr limits photos to 500px wide when displayed in their themes. I thought the answer to be helpful enough to share with everyone.

When designing a Tumblr theme, Tumblr allows the designer to set the width of an image in a photo post to a certain width, using the tags {PhotoURL-500}, {PhotoURL-400}, {PhotoURL-250}, {PhotoURL-100}, or {PhotoURL-75sq}. This, in essence, limits designers to a maximum width of 500px wide.

However, they also include another tag, which is {PhotoURL-HighRes}. This produces the largest possible file that was uploaded when posting the photo blog post.

Using this tag, along with the css declaration:

.photo img { max-width: 100%; height: auto }

I can have the photo span exactly the width of the content container.

With these two bits of Tumblr code and CSS in place, I usually post the URL of a Flickr photo using the 1024px version. This way, it will span the full length of my current design, and should I make my layout any wider, I shouldn’t have to go back and change all of my photo posts to accommodate a wider image layout.

I hope this helps you break free of the implied 500px width limit in Tumblr’s theme designs, and allows you to decide for yourself how you wish to display your photos and images.

Addendum

I missed a very important step in getting your site to display your high-res photos:

1. Go to the Customize screen for your blog.
2. Select the “Advanced” menu.
3. Select “Enable high-res photos.”

Hope that helps!

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I did not get into design because I love design.

This may sound surprising to some, as I most definitely love design now. I love beautiful typography, thoughtful layouts, information hierarchy, and clear communication. I feel pride when I create something beautiful and useful, and joy when I see others doing the same.

That’s not where it began, though. I did not begin learning design because I had any interest in design, art, typography, or user experience. I didn’t open Photoshop for the first time because I was excited to use the layer effects. Unlike Andy Rutledge, a designer I respect and admire, I didn’t feel a calling to design. I got into design for people.

Ministry by Design

Before I entered the design industry, I was a music director at a church. This wasn’t your average church; we were strategic, with a laser-focus on our target demographic of outsiders.

To be specific, our target demographic were males, ages 33-37, with a family and income in the middle-to-high income range. These were not people comfortable with going to church, singing hymns and seeing a collection plate pass them by. So, our services were strategically planned to alleviate as much of this tension as possible. We blew up bottles of Diet Coke with Mentos, locked our pastor in a glass case with chains on his wrists, played the video for Promiscuous by Nelly Furtado, and much more.

Why did we go to all of this trouble? Because, at least in Canada, church is not a popular place to be. I don’t have a source, but someone mentioned once that maybe 1/10 people in Canada go to church on a regular basis.

We planned our services down to the minute with secular music, dramatic pieces, stage design and props for the message. Everything that happened from the moment visitors entered our parking lot to when they left was calculated, thought-out, and executed with excellence.

All of this was done in order to communicate a message. We designed our services to all lead to a single point, a bottom line that we tried to communicate weekly. This focused strategy helped the church grow from around 50 people to over 1000 in just over a decade.

For People

During my time at the church, I became increasingly passionate about people, about finding ways to communicate to them in a way they could understand. Outsiders, or (in web-speak) first-time users, were in the front of our minds every step of the service design process.

With all of this in mind, it’s easy to see why making the move to the design industry was such a natural step. We have the unique opportunity to whittle a message down to its core, in order to communicate it as clearly as possible. We can design interfaces to guide a new user from Point A to point B, and help them accomplish the tasks they wish to in a way that is easy and even enjoyable.

Yes, typography and layout and information hierarchy and semantic code matter, but each of these only find meaning in the context of people interacting with your design.

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I gave a talk this past Saturday at Podcamp London where I shared a little bit about how social media influenced my decision to quit my job and strike out on my own in freelance design. The talk (which wasn’t as well planned out as I would have liked) sparked some interesting discussion amongst those in attendance.

During this discussion, I made a statement that I would now like to retract:

Social media will not make you rich.

What an ignorant thing to say! What kind of delusional, out-of-touch person says something like this? How did I get away with saying that with none of the 50 or so in attendance running up and slapping me in the head?

Rich

I’ve thought a lot about that statement since I made it, and I believe I need to clarify. In the context of the discussion — how to apply social media to grow your business — I still believe it’s a true statement. Social media cannot make anyone rich. You need to have substance, something of value, to share through social media. If all you have is a Twitter account and hope to make a living you better start reevaluating your business plan.

I believe social media can enhance your business. It can create and expand brand recognition. It can connect you to people in your industry and enhance your recruiting efforts. It can be a way to listen to your customers in a way that lets you affect real change in your business.

However where you really get rich, where social media begins to really have an exponential impact on your life, is when you begin to open yourself up to relationships. When you begin to interact with those you find through social media, whether through Twitter or your blog or Tumblr or whatever social media application you’re using, and you allow those people into your life, you will find richness beyond anything you thought possible could exist on the other side of those glowing pixels in front of you.

Value

The biggest influences I had when making the decision to go full-time freelance were the people I had met through social media. These were people in all types of industries, in all different stages of their career and life.

Some were working freelance on their own, while others had found joy in their employment. These people were creating amazing products, or were servicing customers in inspiring ways. Some just offered a word of encouragement while I was working on my own work, or gave some advice to make my work even better.

I have made true, lasting friendships through social media. Many of the people I have met online I have also had the privilege of meeting in person. Some people I have begun to make plans to meet in the future. Others I may never have the opportunity to meet offline, but that does not diminish the impact their words and presence have had in my life.

This is value. This is how social media has made me rich. It has infused me with a desire to make something amazing, encouraged to strike out on my own to achieve my dreams, and has blessed me with friendships I intend to carry on for years to come.

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