Fuwa!
I am completely in love with the Fuwa, the Chinese good-luck dolls that are the mascots for the 2008 Beijing Olympics!

The web standards/tables debate
This post is going to get into some serious web design code geekery, just as a warning to some of my less technically-inclined readers. I promise I’ll return to visually appealing topics soon.
I’m inspired to enter the debate about web standards and tableless design because several of my instructors at school have implied that we students shouldn’t be learning tables. In our intro to HTML class, in discussions about web design and web standards…the message that “tables are bad” is coming through loud and clear. In my opinion, this message is wrong or at least misguided. And I think all of this stems from confusion about tables and their proper function in web design.
After trying to argue a little with my instructor in class last night, she advised me to write a blog post about the issue in order to take the discussion to another level. I thought, “That’s a damn good idea,” and here we are.
Inspiration/Mood Boards
This week in class, I had to create a website mood board for a fictional client. Our class was given a creative brief of sorts, with a list of descriptive adjectives that identified the company’s style. It was a super fun exercise that I intend to continue using in the future for work.
I’m familiar with inspiration boards (I have one hanging up in my bedroom), but I hadn’t thought about using them as a professional tool to help with visual prototypes. It’s a fantastic idea and it really helps narrow the focus on the core creative concepts (how’s that for some alliteration!).
Kinpro
Today I had a desire to look at bright colors, geometrical shapes, beautiful patterns. A search for “Japanese graphic design” led me to the artist Chisato Shinya, also known as Kinpro.

Personal Mosaic
Click to view full size
This was a fun idea inspired by one of my favorite photo bloggers, Boho Girl. I rarely do memes, but this one was interesting and surprising and of course full of beautiful photos.

