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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I’ve been putting this off for a while now, waiting for my site to finally feel settled. With the launch of the new design yesterday, I decided today would be the opportune time to share what led to where I am today.

I’m going to start with a couple of terrible, incomplete, but necessary screenshots. These were when I was first trying out the Athlete brand. Looking back, I’m almost embarrassed to say I designed these, however design is not just about the end product but about the process by which we get there.

Sometimes I design things like this just to get a feel of how certain elements work together, such as the browser frame jutting out from the top of the content section to give the design some depth. It also gives me a chance to work out the type of grid I want to use to build my content in.

Once I had gotten these out of my system, it was time to buckle down and really think about what I wanted to communicate. I was just getting into photography, and was thinking about ways to showcase some of the higher quality work I was producing. I also wanted to play with some big, bold type and Helvetica Neue, a personal favourite, was an obvious choice.

I actually completely finished this site, and was so close to pushing it live when it was done. I had some amazing help from friends like Jonathan Christopher and Phil Coffman, who really helped me hone in on how to get this site to function and look its best.

This was my first experiment in using the Pods CMS plugin for WordPress, and it really changed how I viewed WordPress as a content management system. In the past I have built sites using WordPress and a messy array of custom fields that I would later have to explain to the client. Using Pods, I could create unique panels for each set of data I would have to work with, creating fields for only the types of data I would need. For instance, the Portfolio Pod only had a title, a screenshot, a project link, and a description. I didn’t have to mess around with custom fields or other pieces I wouldn’t need. It was really a dream come true.

I am still very proud of this design, and it took a lot for me to let it go. What I eventually realized, however, was that it was so dependant on my photography that, should I not have the chance to take appropriate shots for the header section, the design would quickly get stale. Plus, it really felt more like a band’s website with the musicians in the header.

So, I went back to the drawing board. I realized I wanted a few specific things out of my design:

• A clean, minimal layout.
• Beautiful typography.
• A header image that would rotate through different projects.
• A way to display client testimonials.

Around this time, I started playing around with a tagline that would become the driving force behind my freelance company:

We craft amazing experiences.

About a year ago I wrote a blog post about taking pride in your craft. It was a revelation to me to begin thinking about design as a craft; something you constantly develop and perfect over time. During my time at the church I worked at I had also developed a passion for creating irresistible experiences. I wanted what I created to be of such high quality that people couldn’t help but be drawn in.

With all of this in mind, I struck out in a new direction. I made some modifications to the amazing 960 grid system by Nathan Smith to extend it to 1008 pixels wide by increasing the margins to 12px. This gave the typography a bit more room to breathe, as well as allowing the screenshots and photography to display a bit wider than normal.

This design really followed the same general layout of the previous shot, with type on the left of the screenshot. What this meant was that the screenshots weren’t quite as wide as I would like. This site also really felt incomplete. All it could really do was display projects, not communicate what I could offer. And so, back to the drawing board again.

There are few things I am as proud of as this design. I felt it had beautiful typography, clear communication of what I offered, a beautiful wide display, and clean lines everywhere. The browser chrome, which is also featured on Sam Brown’s new Massive Blue design, was generously supplied by my friend Rogie King.

Some people made the comment that this site had a lot of content to read, to which I would reply, “That’s the point!” I knew that the types of clients I wanted to work with would not be put off by maybe 600 words of text. Through clear information hierarchy, I felt I was able to clearly communicate what I did, what people who I had down work for felt about what I did, and present a bit of a sales pitch down at the bottom (which didn’t get written until later on).

I was also pretty proud of the icons I designed for this design. I am not a great icon designer, but inspired by work I had been seeing on Dribbble around the time I was working on this design, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. You can see some of the icon design process here.

In so many ways I felt this design was the right way to go, however I still needed to tweak it a bit. There was another layout around this time that I unfortunately can’t find a screenshot for. The main display image took up the entire width of the site, and had a height of almost 600px. It was big, bold, and very “me” in a lot of ways. Not sure why I talked myself out of it, but I did. I still regret that decision.

After several retries, several designs and a bit of fighting with WordPress, I finally felt I had come up with something I would be happy with for a long time.

This site was full of win for me. From the logo on the front page that revealed a sliver of the screenshot beneath (idea courtesy of Rogie King), to the inclusion of a “recent work” section, to a more balanced look throughout, I really felt this site was a strong design.

What this site did lack, however, was personality. Looking back, it feels a bit like a template taken from somewhere on the web. The masthead image is plain, the navigation is plain, the overall look is, well, plain.

After launching the site, I submitted it to several design galleries. I do this not so much for the recognition but for the benefits of having large sites link to you. However, as embarrassing as it is to admit, not even CSSMania — who appears to accept just about anything with a CSS file linked to it — didn’t even accept the submission. Justified or not, this really stuck out as another indication that this design was just a little too plain.

So, back to the drawing board yet again. This time, I was starting to question whether the Made by Athlete brand was appropriate for me (which, as I announced yesterday, wasn’t) so I began working on a new design with my own personal branding.

Using the same 1008px grid I used on the Made by Athlete design, I constructed this site that really portrayed personality while still communicating what I do. I really liked how Paravel let their screenshots break out of the box, and I wanted to do something similar to my site. Looking back, I think the implementation is a little too close to what they have done, but I was still a ways away from launching this.

I really loved the diagonal lines on the side of the site, that stretched to the right as far as your browser window would allow. I also liked that I reintroduced the overlapping effect with the main display image, giving the site some depth.

A few other things I really liked about this design:

• I like that I was able to communicate who I was and what I did in a more personal way.
• I love that each page would have its own colour scheme.
• I had just started working with Futura on the Hello Kelly Myspace design, and had started to fall in love with it.
• I liked the way I was able to have portfolio sections, differentiating between web, print, and other types of work.
• Because of the way this site was layed out, my dream was to do something similar to Jason Santa Maria, Yaron Schoen, Trent Walton and others with a more art directed approach to blogging.

This site also came very close to being fully developed. I wanted to try to learn something new, and so I used this as an opportunity to start teaching myself ExpressionEngine. I still have a bit to learn, but I feel pretty strongly that I will be offering ExpressionEngine development as a service sooner than later. It is such a joy to work with, and in my mind is even easier than Pods for the end user.

Although I really liked this design, I was not happy with what I would have to give up to launch it. I’ve really enjoyed working with Tumblr, and couldn’t imagine giving up on the platform just months after switching to it. I was also inspired by something I read on Frank Chimero’s profile:

Make only what you need, right?

While I enjoyed working on ExpressionEngine, for my purposes a combination of Tumblr and Cargo Collective is really all I need. Maybe one day in the future I’ll need some more advanced features that these services can’t offer, but for now this is the perfect combination of providing what I need and doing so in a simple, accessible manner.

Which leads me to my most recent design. I was constrained a little bit due to having the site already setup on Tumblr, which meant my home page would be a blog and not an introductory page like my ExpressionEngine site. There are pros and cons to this reality. On the pro side, I won’t be losing the audience I have developed over the last few years blogging here at PatDryburgh.com. The con is that it becomes a bit harder to communicate what exactly I do. And so, I decided the best way to circumvent this issue was to just be really clear in my site header.

The other element I wanted to make sure I highlighted in this design was my photography. While working on the Made by Athlete designs, I was just getting into photography and wasn’t certain it was something I wanted to pursue in a serious manner. Now, after just 4 months I have now worked on my first serious photo shoot and have been learning a lot. It’s definitely something I want to push in my site, so I wanted to make sure the layout of the photo posts was bold and attractive:

I wanted the photography to display across the full width of the post (as the screenshots in this post do as well), giving them prominence and letting the reader see the shot without having to click to see a high resolution version.

The other big change from previous designs is the use of a serif font, specifically FF Tisa Web Pro delivered by Typekit. Inspired again by Frank Chimero, as well as Liz Danzico’s Bobulate, I fell in love with FF Tisa Web Pro, and decided it was perfect for what I wanted to present: clean, delicious typography on a simple, modern layout.

I am sure there will still be tweaks to this site as time goes on, and I do have a few ideas to develop a bit of an art directed approach to some of the posts. With the move to freelance, I am sure I will have more to share about my design process, and would love to hear your thoughts as well!

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When I was first learning design, my main goal was to build a few websites for my band, maybe help out a few friends, and just have a bit of fun with it. My girlfriend at the time would constantly tell me I should take some courses in web design as I seemed to be pretty passionate about it and had a bit of natural talent for it. I shrugged those suggestions off for months, instead following a path towards ministry and music.

As I was working at the church as a music director, I found myself with a few opportunities to flex my budding design muscles. From message series branding to designing the logo of the new church plant, I had an awesome opportunity to learn design while creating something that would be used in real life.

When I left the church, I had this new found passion for design, but wasn’t sure what to do with it. It was mid-March, and school wasn’t going to be an option for at least 6 months. I did, however, know a friend whose father owned a design studio in London. We had a meeting in which we discussed the possibility of me coming on as an apprentice, and not long after I started working at Images. My responsibilities ranged from web design and development to digital print management, a field I was not familiar with but which I have had the opportunity to learn a lot about in the past two years.

Also over the past two years, I have been teaching myself a lot more about web design, print design, and most recently photography. I have loved every moment, and have come across some amazing opportunities. Some time last summer, Michael Mistretta of Fusion Ads approached me about taking on some overflow ad design work, an opportunity I was more than happy to take on. Since then, I’ve had the chance to design about 35 ads, each time taking on the challenge of communicating a company’s message in just a single 130x100px graphic.

I have also had the opportunity to work on some other cool projects, including a WordPress theme for my friends at Band Themer, a couple personal projects, and some other work I have coming down the pipe. All of this led me to my announcement on Thursday.

Going Freelance

My father, for 9 years of my teenage and adult life, as well as many years before I was born, owned his own business. I watched him wake up early in the morning and come home late on occasion to take care of things at work. We didn’t go on many vacations, though that’s not to say we didn’t go on any at all.

What I do remember most, however, was that my dad was able to design his own life. He was able to come to school events during the day, or leave work early to catch us playing sports. He could take us to hockey practice in the morning knowing he set his own hours.

I don’t have kids, but I can appreciate the freedom my dad had. Even though it wasn’t total freedom (he still had to work, had to pay rent on his shop, pay an employee or two, etc), my dad was able to do what he wanted to do. I admired that a lot.

And so, about 6 months or so ago I started seriously considering going freelance. I was debt free, free of responsibilities, had started developing some clients of my own, and could imagine pursuing my own business. I realized that I would never be fully content until I had at least had the chance to prove myself in the open market, to buckle down and tackle my own work. I needed the opportunity to challenge myself.

And so, on Thursday, I gave my two weeks notice. The response from friends on Twitter and Dribbble was overwhelming to say the least. It was a bit nerve-wracking leading up to finally telling my boss, but once I did I knew I had made the right decision. The kind words and encouragement from friends all over the world only helped to bolster my resolve: I am going freelance.

Made by Who?

Many of you will remember that not long ago, I launched a site for the freelance design work I was doing at the time called Made by Athlete. I had spent 4 or 5 months trying to determine a strategy for my freelance business, and thought I had come up with a great brand (I still believe I had). However, after a lot of thought and discussion, culminating in a conversation with some friends on Twitter, I decided to forgo the Made by Athlete brand.

I’ve been on Twitter now for over two years. I’ve been writing at PatDryburgh.com for twice that. When friends think of me, they know that I am a designer. That type of brand recognition is perfect for word-of-mouth marketing:

“Hey, do you happen to know any designers?”

“Yeah! My good buddy Pat Dryburgh works in design! You should give him a call.”

Adding a second layer to this in the form of a separate brand name only adds unnecessary confusion. If I had employees, that’s a different story, but right now it is just me. I am the business, I am the brand. And so, for the foreseeable future I will be working under my own name.

New Digs

As you can see, this post coincides with a new design for my site. Between the launch of the Made by Athlete site and this one, I have worked on at least two or three other designs for this site, going back and forth about what I wanted to accomplish with it. Having observed some incredible discussions around design and business lately, I’ve decided that I really want to work more at making this site a place of ideas. I want to share what I’m learning and get your feedback as well.

For a while now, I have been a proponent of not having comments on my site. Inspired by sites like Daring Fireball and others, I came to believe that my site was my place for my voice. But I am not John Gruber. I am not Shawn Blanc. I am Pat Dryburgh and I thrive on conversation. That is how I learn best. I learn from the conversations happening on Jonathan Christopher’s site and sites like it.

That said, this site is still powered by Tumblr, which does not include a comment system. I am also not a fan of the plugin comment systems available. However, what Tumblr does have is a notes system, where if someone responds to a post of mine using the reblog feature, their response shows up in my stream, where I can find it and respond in turn. There is also always Twitter, where some amazing conversations have happened over the years. And if you would like to keep the conversation private as many people have, my email is just a click away.

Accepting Work

I have two projects currently on the go, one that should be wrapping up in a week or two and another that will take me until the end of May. After that, I am open to accepting projects. If you or someone you know would like to discuss how I could help with your design needs, please don’t hesitate to connect with me.

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