More than you ever wanted to know About Crystal Odenkirk...
Let's face it, 10% of you who are reading this page are probably looking for ideas for your own "About Me" page. Another 4% of you are old friends who got nostalgic and put my name in Google to see what I've been up to. 1% says you're a prospective employer/client trying to find more info on whether or not I'm reliable, trustworthy, or any good at what I do. (The last 85% are probably spambots who see "Wordpress install! Yummy!" and hit all the pages on the site looking for security problems. I think I can safely laugh and point at this group without addressing them directly).
To those looking for ideas for their About pages:
After looking at thousands of designer bios and blog About pages, the best advice I can give you is: don't waste your time looking at thousands of designer bios and blog About pages. It doesn't matter what other people are doing. Pull out your notepad, grab a variety of pens in funky colors (I prefer maroon), and jot down who your audience will be -- not just your target audience, but your likely audience. For each type of audience, consider why they're looking at your About page and think of at least one way you can help them. That's your About content. How am I helping you? By pointing you to a Smashing Magazine article on about pages.
To old friends/family who found me in Google:
Hi! Great to see you! This is my web development/graphic design blog and portfolio. You aren't going to find much here that you're looking for. If I ever have some free time (you know, some time next decade), I'll turn my old, currently unused, domain into a personal site with pictures of my plants and amusing stories about my adventures in the dreaded Real Life, but in the meantime, I suggest you reconnect with me on Facebook instead. I am signed up in other places, but that's the only one I actually check.
To prospective employers or clients:
Welcome to my portfolio and blog. The Design and Blog Philosophies below are mostly here for you, so you have an idea of my approach to problems and of what I'm like to work with.
I got started in design back before the "personal computer" was much more than a dream. My grandfather was the marketing and display guy at the largest local department store in town, and before I could walk, he already had a drafting pen and T-square in my grubby little hands.
From him, I learned my two most valuable truths about design and life in general:
- If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.
- A solution that isn't practical isn't a solution.
Finding the intersection of these two basic principles is the business of a good designer. Putting the emphasis on the practical right from the start has steered me into a career of working with legacy systems to improve them. This requires a lot of attention to consistency and a visceral understanding of iterative design over a long period of time -- you can't always improve all things at once or you confuse and frustrate users instead of helping them. You have to develop a long term solution that eases users into a more modern and ultimately more usable interface.
It's also put me in a more technical role than many designers. When I was in print, I wasn't always the creative on the ad, but I was always the one who took the design and made it come out the same on the press as the slick photoshop file the designer showed the client. In web development, I don't just play in photoshop and hand the design to someone else. I write all my own css and (x)html, and I can troubleshoot or help write the php, jsp, or javascript that makes it work. Most importantly, if I'm working on part of your site, I'll do whatever is necessary to make sure it integrates with the rest of your site and looks seamless to the people viewing your site.
My style is "match your style". I'm not doing my job right if people look at a page and say "Oh, that's an Odenkirk!" They should only see you. Maybe that means I'll never be a superstar world-famous designer with a bevy of awards on a shelf, but I'm good with that. I'm not here to be a star. I'm here to make you one.
Design Philosophy
I come from the forgotten land of hand-cut print layout. Elements overlapped. Lines and text were hard and crisp. Diagonals were easy to create, and it was harder to stay inside the box than it was for an element to break out of the boundaries of its container. Everything was tactile. You could pick it up, move it, and put it somewhere else.
Transitioning to digital, in both print pre-press and for the web, gave me new tools, new opportunties to experiement with colors and textures, but I have never lost that sense that anything I design should feel like you can reach out to touch it, that there is a collection of elements physically occupying the space.
Blog Philosophy
The last thing the design world needs is one more opinionated voice weighing in on the same trends every one else is talking about. Good thing, since I have no interest in being that "one more voice." I'm too busy to waste my time rehashing things you'll find in 50 places already, and you probably don't give a damn what I think about "pixel-perfect" design or the future of @font-face anyway.
So why bother even creating a blog?
Good question.
It might be fairer to call this a library of essays, links and resources that's managed dynamically. Don't expect weekly updates. I'll add things to the site when I have something worth adding, and not a minute before. The code references and practical cross-browser solution lists are here for my benefit, but I thought other people might find it useful to have them collected in one place for easy copy/paste without a lot of extra explanation (though I'll include links to explanations for users who need more than a reference). If you've got a practical solution to the everyday problems of development that you think should be listed here, send it to me.
