my (so called) freelance life

math for art majors

Cheryl and Co. package design (click for full image)

OK - who thought up this HTML stuff anyway? You can bet it wasn’t the art folks! It had to be some geeky brainy guy who said “Look! We can make stuff pretty by just typing in some letters and symbols - such as: > } div # { /> href: ” } COOL!” (Or - in my own words -  *&#$!(@!#&). Or maybe it was a bar bet. That was fine, until all of sudden, us right brain designers were expected not only to understand it, but  to create websites with it.

Ad for ECS Billing and Consulting (click for full image)

Maybe I speak for myself, but when I look at this stuff, it is TOTALLY greek to me. My brain has a terrible time visualizing how a series of numbers, symbols and letters could ever create something pretty. Granted - my math background is limited. Since I knew I would be an art major in college, I didn’t take all that calculus, trigonometry, etc. that my peers took in high school. I had a hard enough time with ninth grade algebra! I don’t think in numbers, I think in pictures. It gives my spouse (the financial guy) quite a laugh when I can’t remember if the population of a city is 4 million, or 400 million. It is just the difference of a couple zeros, right? So he coined the term “Math for Art Majors”.

I signed up to take classes on HTML, CSS, etc. at The Fuse Factory. I spent the first class whining and asking “Do I REALLY have to learn this?“. But the folks there were so patient with us that it has finally started sinking in. In creating this blog, I forced myself to choose a customizable template, so it would make me to go into the code and figure out how to change colors, fonts, etc. I’m sure it took me WAY too long to set it up - as it was mostly a case of trial and error. But in the meantime, I managed to absorb enough that when I went back to Fuse Factory this past Saturday for my class on “Cascading Style Sheets for Dummies” (they politely call it “Intro to CSS”) the light bulb might have actually flickered in my (left) brain.

There is a very interesting discussion on Linked In called Graphic Designers vs. Web Designers. Check it out - lots of opinions on who should be doing what. It asks the question if we, as designers, really need to know how to create websites? Or do we just need to design them, and hopefully have a great programmer on the payroll who can execute them? And what are the job options for each scenario?

I WILL learn to do this. I have mastered many other software programs, and there is no reason I can’t get this too. It will just be a little more challenging. My website is in a very rough place now - but “As God as my witness, I will get my website done!”