Ziki - Matthew Griffin's last published content

5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (10/10/08 Edition)

fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:35:59 +0200

Over the years I've run into this situation time and again: A client needs to be able to edit/resize photos on their own but they don't have any image editing software. In the old days, I usually ended up doing the work for them and billing them by the hour. Honestly, though, what web designer wants to spend all their time resizing photos? We want to think, create, design. Fortunately, now days we have slew of free online image editors to point our Photoshop deficient clients to. A wonderful list of online image editors has been provided by Six Revisions this week, and I suggest you bookmark it and use it to your benefit. Here are this week's 5 for Friday: (finish reading on website)

Tags: web design, blog, online image editors, retro, vintage, floral, brushes, photoshop, shapes,

I Design Websites, Therefore, God Is

wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:35:59 +0200

The majority of the most exceptional men and women in the historical landscape of philosophy have acknowledged the absolute necessity of a supreme being. Those who did not and were honest with the implications of their conclusions were forced into absurdism. But today, in a culture that is increasingly shallow and intellectually lazy, you'd be hard pressed to find an individual (educated or not) who knows anything of Thomas Aquinas' five rational proofs for the existence of God or has any concept of Aristotle's "unmoved mover". The words of these great thinkers are most often used by quote miners looking for nuggets to rip out of context and paste together into warped shadows of what once was. And fortunately for them we're none the wiser. We gained a little bit of knowledge about how this universe works and became so obsessed with our discoveries that we stopped asking why. We are not unlike Haley's man who, after stumbling upon a pocket watch in the forest, declares himself to be the master watchmaker (or that there must be a blind watchmaker). (finish reading on website)

Tags: web design, worldview, philosophy, aquinas, descarte, purpose,

5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (10/3/08 Edition)

fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:35:59 +0200

As some of you already know, I recently changed the name of my design studio from Liquid Design Media to Six House Design. For the most part it's been a smooth transition and I'm already seeing great benefits from my new website. But I'd like to take a moment and warn any independent designers thinking about making a name change that lack of planning can really eat your lunch. I recommend making a general timeline and checklist to guide you through the process. It's not nearly as simple as it seems up font. And now, this week's 5 for Friday: (finish reading on website)

Tags: web design, blog, links, ppc, ideas, photoshop, affiliate networks,

Simple and Stunning (Part 3): 10 Website Designs that Inspire

wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:35:59 +0200

This is the third installment of Simple and Stunning on Mirificam Press. In case you're new to Mirificam Press, Simple and Stunning is an ongoing list acknowledging excellent website designs that combine the simplicity of a great user interface with stunning layouts and color schemes. I've made a noticeable change in this edition, though: Instead of capturing only the initially visible area of each site, I included the scroll area below. My purpose in the previous method was to present a kind of first glance presentation. But with increasingly sporadic monitor sizes and resolutions, I think my new method will give you a better feel for the whole design. (finish reading on website)

Tags: simple, stunning, design, inspiration, inspirational, websites, layout,

5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (9/26/08 Edition)

fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:35:59 +0200

It's amazing how quickly Friday rolls around. It has been another great week for online web design blogs and resources. I especially enjoyed Six Revisions' list of CSS techniques for charting data. Charts and graphs are something that I rarely see tackled in the CSS world and Six Revisions did a great job. (finish reading on website)

Tags: web design, blog, links, css, charts, graphs, logo, headers, accessibility, disabilities,

Designers Beware: 10 Warning Signs of a Bad Client

wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:35:59 +0200

No other force has more power to make or break the spirit of the web designer than the all important client. The good ones make us love our work and the bad ones can make us wish we were dead. Sometimes when it gets really bad, we have to fire a client. But wouldn't it be great if we could tell the good ones from the bad ones right away and avoid them like we would bad fruit at the market? I don't think it will ever be quite that simple. There will always be a few bad apples that sneak in under the radar. But over the years I've learned a few warning signs that are dead giveaways for hard-to-please, controlling, whiny and/or needy clients. If you come across a potential client with one of these, think twice about the project. If they have two or three, run the other way. (finish reading on website)

Tags: web design, client, bad, warning, communication,

5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (9/19/08 Edition)

fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:35:59 +0200

This is my first Friday back from my much needed and long anticipated vacation. I have to admit I've been dragging a little this week trying to get back in the swing of things. But that doesn't mean that the world of web design was feeling the same way. I enjoyed getting back to reading my favorite blogs after my little break. Here's what I stumbled upon this week: (finish reading on website)

Tags: links, blogs, stock, icons, photoshop, web host,

The Hierarchy: Using Heading Tags the Right Way

wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:35:59 +0200

If you've been using CSS and web standards for awhile, then you probably already know that the HTML heading tags h1-h6 are meant to denote a hierarchy of importance—the most important, of course, being

and the least important being

. If you're new to CSS layouts and web standards then you might think heading tags just make text bigger or smaller. But there's a lot more to heading tags than most web designers realize. And in order to build beautifully semantic websites that degrade gracefully, a proper understanding of the tags is a must. (finish reading on website)

Tags: heading, h1, h2, h3, web design, semantic, standards,

5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (9/5/08 Edition)

fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:35:59 +0200

I'll start this week's 5 for Friday by warning you that I will be on vacation next week and taking a blogging break. This will be the first week in almost a year that I haven't blogged. Don't worry, though, I'll be back the following week with the usual flow of articles. This week, everyone seems to be talking about Google's new browser Chrome. It's an interesting topic but it's almost completely eclipsed the real break-through product by Mozilla called Ubiquity. Ubiquity is a browser plugin that uses natural language to allow users to perform previously multi-step tasks with simple commands. I'd like to go on record right now as saying, "Mozilla is onto something here." (finish reading on website)

Tags: web design, blog, links, ubiquity, chrome, news, browser,

Show and Tell: A Christian Designer's Guide to Faith in the Workplace

wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:35:59 +0200

How should a Christian manage his or her Christianity in the workplace? This is a question most Christian designers have considered at one time or another during the course of their career. In our current age (especially in America), the attitude of employers toward public displays of faith varies dramatically from one workplace to another. Some Christian designers work in a laid back work environment where outward displays of faith are seen as generally harmless (annoying at worst). Others work under management that is openly hostile toward Christianity. Still other Christian designers work for religious organizations where it's expected that every employee will let out a "praise God" from time to time. (finish reading on website)

Tags: web design, worldview, christian, reformed, dominion, workplace, public, faith, vocation, career,

5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (8/29/08 Edition)

fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:35:59 +0200

There were some seriously long article titles this week. I can't argue with the content, though. I especially encourage you to read the A List Apart article. It would be interesting to work out a Christian worldview on the issue. Aaron Rester makes some good points and he may ultimately be right that "cartographer" is a better metaphor for the web design vocation than "architect". I'm just wary of some of the pop philosophy he uses to get there. Any comments? (finish reading on website)

Tags: web design, links, magazines, frameworks, themes,

Rollover Lite: A CSS Rollover Everyone Can Enjoy

wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:35:59 +0200

I realize that there are about a million rollover tutorials out there. Some use JavaScript, some use CSS, but there are very few that are geared toward creating semantically correct rollovers that degrade gracefully. That's exactly what I'll be doing here. (finish reading on website)

Tags: css, html, rollover, links, semantic, standards,

5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (8/22/08 Edition)

fri, 22 Aug 2008 08:35:59 +0200

I really enjoyed all the comments and interaction that took place on Mirificam Press this week. It has always been my hope that this blog would attract thinking designers who will converse, not only with me, but with each other. It seems like that's exactly what's happening. I'd like to send out a thanks to all of the Mirificam Press subscribers and readers. Now, here's my 5 for Friday. (finish reading on website)

Tags: links, 5 for friday, web design, blog, adobe air, css, email, html,

Truth by Consensus: The Wiki Worldview and the Future of Knowledge

tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:35:59 +0200

Several times in the recent past, I've attempted to workout the Christian worldview of the wiki model. But each time it comes up I find myself quickly overwhelmed by the task. Until now I've abandoned the project in favor more straight-forward design concepts. But a recent conversation made me realize what an important worldview issue the wiki really is. The wiki method of collecting and distributing knowledge has deep implications for the future of social theory and epistemology—implications which haven't even begun to be fully explored by the Christian community. Should Christians give approval to a collection of knowledge that was essentially voted into truth by the masses? Does the Wiki model break the historical Christian principle that truth and reality are objective? These are some of the questions I will discuss in this article. I'll be using Wikipedia, that behemoth of wikiness, as my primary example. (finish reading on website)

Tags: wiki, wikipedia, postmodern, postmoderinsm, relativism, consensus, worldview, christian,

5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (8/15/08 Edition)

fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:35:59 +0200

There were some great blog articles posted out there this week but I'd like to point everyone to one article in particular. The Traffikd article about search engine optimization for local results is a must read for any independent web designer. Steven Snell does a great job giving a concise rundown of the the ins and outs of local search engine optimization. (finish reading on website)

Tags: seo, local, design, illustrator, photoshop, tutorials,

Dynamically Resizing Text with CSS and Javascript

wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:35:59 +0200

As the number of screen size and screen resolution possibilities increase, gracefully resizing text becomes more and more important to the usability of websites. I recently worked on a project in which my client wanted to incorporated resizable text into a redesign of an outdated site. In fact, resizable text was the primary directive I received when I was commissioned to work on the project. Their previous website was built in Flash and they had been receiving complaints for several years about how small and unreadable the text was. Meeting their requirements was an exciting new challenge. With a little Javascript and an EM-based layout I was able to meet and exceed their expectations. This article explains how to set up a page for dynamic text resizing and implement a Javascript-powered dynamic text resizing program. (finish reading on website)

Tags: javascript, text, resize, em, css, dynamically, scale, scaling, text size,

5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (8/8/08 Edition)

fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:35:59 +0200

I'm posting this week's 5 for Friday from College Station, TX where my sister is graduating from Texas A&M University. She's the model of a Christian with a homeschool eduction and I'm very proud of her for this accomplishment. On a separate track, I was extremely encouraged by all the thoughtful comments on my creative sub-culture article this week. Thanks for all the insight and please, anyone who has any other ideas on the subject, email me or leave a comment. I'm always interested to hear from other Christian designers trying to break out of the creative ghetto. (finish reading on website)

Tags: links, blog, web design, typefaces, navigation, graphing, charting, polls, color schemes,

Design Sub-culture: Christians Would Rather Copy than Create

tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:35:59 +0200

Reformed Christian writer Doug Wilson once said, "Whatever the world can do, we can do five years later and not as well." While this may be somewhat of an exaggeration, it's not that far off. For the past 150 years or so, the Christian community has been declining in just about every creative arena. And in the last fifty years you would be hard pressed to find more than kitsch coming from the Christian creative community. There are exceptions for sure. The International Arts Movement, for example, has proven that this rule is not unbreakable; but by and large, the creative sub-culture in evangelical Christianity is about as deep as a West Texas lake (for those of you who've never been to West Texas, we have no lakes). What has caused this fall? Why has the once rich creative wellspring of Christianity seem to have dried up? And what can we do about it? (finish reading on website)

Tags: christian, creativity, design, copy, knock-off, cheesy, sub-culture, worldview, new media,

5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (8/1/08 Edition)

fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:35:59 +0200

This week A List Apart announced the 2008 web designer survey. If you're a "person who makes websites", make sure to stop by and take it. Also, by now I'm sure that all of the Mirificam Press readers have had their fill of layout tutorials. Good, semantic layouts are important but I assure you I have said all I have to say on that issue for awhile. I'll be doing some more specific tips and tricks type articles and focusing on the state of creativity in Christendom in the next few weeks. (finish reading on website)

Tags: web design, links, grunge, photoshop, social networks, blockquote, css, layout,

Indestructible Website: How to Build an EM Based Layout that Won't Break

tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:35:59 +0200

The EM is a measurement just like PX or PT. One EM is equal to the pixel measurement of the current font size. So, for example, 1em on a web page with a font size of 16px equals 16px. The direct relationship between font size and EM allows us to build layouts that scale along with the font size. This means that a visitor with a browser font size set to "large" will see a perfectly scaled version the layout rather than a skinny layout with really big letters. (finish reading on website)

Tags: em, layout, css, standards, scaling, font size, em based layout,

Christmas comes but once a year...

wed, 02 Jan 2008 23:09:39 +0100

Or does it? This year we enjoyed 5, that's right, 5 Christmas celebrations. Our poor kids are probably so confused! We had our own family Christmas here in Midland followed by Christmas with the Matthews family at the lake house in Belton (both previously posted). Then it was on to another celebration with Papa Wes, Gigi, Kate, and Matt P. in Liberty Hill. And then there was the Griffin gathering at the Roost (in Canyon Lake). Finally, the festivities culminated with a brief stop at the Motz house in Abilene. With that, our tour of the state was concluded! Here are just a few of the many, many shots take in Liberty Hill, Canyon Lake, and Abilene.

the real Christmas morning...

Emma's first Christmas!

Morgan cuddles his toy airplane!

A sampling of the crowd at the Roost...

Lee & Sylvia with 4 of their 7 great-grandchildren

My parents with the kids

The 4 Motz kids

Motz kids etc...

4 generations...

My mom plays Santa Claus

I read some of my favorite Christmas books to my babies...

Christmas at Home and The Lake

mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:05:08 +0100

In order to save the trouble of packing up all the presents and lugging them all over the state of Texas, we decided to have a little family Christmas before we headed out. Here are some of those pictures and some pictures from the Matthew's Christmas at the Carpenter's lake house in Belton. You will notice an increase in photo quality about half way through the intimate family Christmas pictures as Ashleigh received a new digital SLR camera during the process.

The following photos were taken with the SLR. Great job Ash!

Christmas Cookies & Morgan's Real Birthday

tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:52:27 +0100

On Friday night, Morgan made his first Christmas cookies. Of course, he loved it (since he loves cooking and eating!). Here we are cutting out the shapes...

Here he is enjoying the fruits of his labor...

Here are a couple random shots of the kids with Matt this week. Morgan loves to stretch with his Daddy (and Emma loves to watch)...

On Saturday-Morgan's real birthday-we all went to the park to enjoy a pizza picnic and some playtime.

Morgan had so much fun on the big slide!

Here they both are on the swings...

Morgan and Emma are starting to play together. Morgan even shares his blocks...

Out with the Old and In with the New

mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:00:37 +0100

We had the green theme on the blog for almost two year but we finally decided to make a change. Our family is growing, so our blog will too. Hope everyone enjoys the new design.

Emma Gives Us a Scare on Morgan's Birthday

mon, 10 Dec 2007 02:06:26 +0100

As some of you already know, Emma gave us quite a scare last night. We were over at the Goodman's house for a Christmas party and the kids were sleeping in one of their back rooms. A little bit after 11PM, one of our friends noticed a strange noise coming from the kid's room. I went down that hall thinking it was probably just Morgan jabbering but it turned out to be Emma. She was having a difficult time breathing and the sound was her gasping for air.

We immediately called an ambulance but the minutes we had to wait were torture. Emma just couldn't get a breath. Finally, the ambulance arrived and drove Ashleigh and Emma up to the hospital with me following in the van. A couple of breathing treatments later Emma calmed down and started breathing easier.

She was diagnosed with croup—a virus that causes the wind pipe to swell. Most of the time it's not very serious but in Emma's case her throat was getting close to swelling completely shut. The doctor decided to admit her to the hospital. That's where Ashleigh and Emma are right now. I'm staying at the house with Morgan.

Emma is looking good now but we would still appreciate your prayers. We are thankful for God's mercy on our family and we are reminded that every breath we take is by his grace alone.

Here's a picture of Emma in her special breathing tent.