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| My
first efforts at web site design centered around the band, Guns 4 Hire.
For each holiday, and other special occasions, I created a new opening
page for their site. While it is no longer on-line, and the techniques
and styles for site design have changed over time, it's still interesting
to look back at the way things used to be. What you're going to see
is quite an eclectic mix of stuff. Some pages have embedded midi
files. Again, look for the little square on the page to access the
controls to turn off the music if you prefer to view without sound. |
MASTERS
DIGITAL DESIGN
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ORIGINAL
PAGE -- The first page that went on-line for
this site - February 1999 Archived April 3, 1999.
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SECOND
OPENER -- My first attempt at what I thought
was an image map. I spent I don't know how long cutting that picture
into different pieces and trying to get the coordinates just right so that
they would line up. It wasn't until several months later that I discovered
the proper way to map the coordinates on a single image. Live and
learn ... April 3, 1999. Archived October 16, 1999.
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THIRD
DESIGN -- Beginning attempts at Java script.
While this page, now, would take only minutes to create, I remember spending
days on it, trying to get the darn thing to work. Archived April
2000.
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FOURTH
OUTING -- I was experimenting with so many
different techniques and ideas that in the space of a little over a year,
the site underwent 4 complete re-designs. Each time I came upon a
new site, I wanted to re-do mine. But when I finally settled on this
one, it stayed up for almost 3 years. Archived January 2003.
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FIFTH
REFURBISHING -- My first use of Flash for
a navigation menu. January of 2003 saw a shift in the predominant
colours on web sites. It seemed that everyone was drifting back to
the darker tones after several years of pastels and neutrals. The
site had also taken on more of business character as I was full swing into
designing and building sites for others. This incarnation remained
on line for 3 years, until I came to the decision that, once again, I wanted
my pages to reflect a personal environment. Archived May 2006.
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GUNS
4 HIRE
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FIRST
OPENING PAGE -- Went on-line February 1999.
Archived April 1999.
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EASTER
1999 -- Still in the
throes of trying to use all sorts of animations.
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ST.
PATRICK'S DAY 1999 -- Little mice, leprechauns
and green beer!
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APRIL
FOOL'S DAY 1999 -- Originally, I wanted to
have nothing on the page except the 'eyes', but quickly realized that it
wouldn't be immediately evident what site the viewer was visiting.
Didn't want them thinking they had wound up somewhere unconnected with
Guns 4 Hire so I changed their logo to blue and stuck it in the corner.
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HALLOWEEN
1999 -- The photo on this page started out
as just a joke -- they weren't really surrounded by all those pumpkins.
I was attempting to replace each of the band members' heads with a pumpkin
while learning to work with layers. Got just a bit carried away,
and one thing led to another. Here is the final result. This
image wound up causing the Guns 4 Hire site to be selected as Site of the
Month at LOADSTAR'S LAIR.
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CHRISTMAS
1999 -- Another re-touched photo - this one
with Santa reading the boys a story. The wheel and the guitar from
the original photo were airbrushed out and the picture was split down the
middle, separating Vance and Sonny from Glenn and Mike. Santa Claus
and the Christmas tree were inserted in the middle, and the tones &
highlights adjusted so that all three separate images matched. The
addition of the shadows was particularly challenging.
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NEW
YEAR'S EVE 2000 -- Nothing special about this
one, except that I had about 15 minutes to throw it together. Very
rushed during the holiday season this year.
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VALENTINE'S
DAY 2000 -- My first
experiment with borders as background images.
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ST.
PATRICK'S DAY 2000 -- Spent quite a bit of
time looking for photographs of leprechauns - not real ones, of course,
but people dressed up in costume - with no success. I had wanted
to place a leprechaun with a pot of gold in the midst of the band members.
In the end, I had to go with the mice from last year's page because I just
plain ran out of time. And I broke down and placed a midi on the
page. Somehow, St. Patrick's Day just requires music!
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HALLOWEEN
2000 -- The wonders of technology ... Just
when you think you've finally got a format down, something else comes along
to pique your interest.
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VALENTINE'S
DAY 2001 -- Still experimenting
with that 'technology' from Halloween 2000.
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MISCELLANEOUS
- THE BABY FEBRUARY 1999 -- What a dreadful
mistake this was! It was the closing page of the Guns 4 Hire site
when it first went on-line. Although 'cute', the file size of the
animated graphic of the dancing baby was huge! Over 300 KB.
And if that wasn't bad enough, I had also added a midi file. Because
of my lack of experience, and the fact that I had a cable modem, I didn't
realize how long this monster took to load for most visitors. But
the majority of them sat through it and I will be eternally grateful to
Terri Gadd from Dryden, Ontario who had to sit through the loading of that
page more times than I can count so that I could get it working.
Needless to say, it didn't stay up for very long.
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| Wonderful memories of
a much simpler time ... of curiosity and altruism and idealism ...
when the internet was a fresh frontier full of innocence and promise. |
©1998 - 2009
Masters Digital Design ®
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