The Aten Blog

The Aten Blog

We have things to say about design, process, and code. Read about them here, subscribe to our feed, or follow us on twitter.

Design4Drupal, Boston 2011

This past weekend Scott and I joined more than 300 Designers/Themers at the third annual Design4Drupal, Boston. It was a great opportunity to connect with other designers in the Drupal community and to learn a few new tricks. I also had the chance to present two sessions, one on Advanced Web Typography, with Scott, and another on CSS3 & Preprocessors.

Designing DrupalCon Denver - Part 1

At the closing session for DrupalCon Chicago the announcement was made that the next North American DrupalCon will be in Denver, Colorado. What awesome news for the Colorado Drupal community! In the days before Chicago, there were a number of materials that needed to be created to go along with the Denver announcement. I had the privilege of designing print materials, the slides for the presentation, and the announcement website. In the interest of keeping things as open as possible, I thought I would share the process used in creating those materials.

AASHE.org Redesign

We've been working for the past few months on a redesign for aashe.org and are glad to announce that the site is live and ready for the public. We're still ironing out a few kinks but I thought I would take this time to cover a bit of the process around the redesign. This project was unique in that AASHE had a development team that would be implementing the site. It was great working with Julia, Matt and the rest of the AASHE team and they did an excellent job tackling the development side of things. So with development taken care of, we were able to focus solely on design and front-end interaction.

The New AtenDesignGroup.com

Over the past few months, we've been working to redesign our website to better reflect our identity, our work, and our process. The new design gives us the flexibility to create custom designs for featured projects, a better framework for writing blog posts, and a much prettier interface, both on the front and back-end.

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Enhancing Drupal Interfaces with Javascript & Flash

At DrupalCamp Colorado, Scott and I presented Enhancing Drupal Interfaces with Javascript & Flash. We covered why you should use Javascript or Flash, how best to use these technologies, and some examples from recent projects where we've improved the user experience.

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Wireframe Template - A Starting Point

Throughout our design process there are a number of tools & conventions we use to make it easier to get to the design concept. Here’s a simple template we use to create wireframes, a little faster.

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Print Design for the Web

Lately I've been feeling pretty good about the direction the web is taking in regards to design and the things that can be accomplished online.

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Design

Telecommuting

About three years ago, my wife, Jen and I packed up and moved back to Rochester, NY (where we met in college). I’ve been telecommuting ever since.

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Getting Inspired

As a designer, it's important to stay abreast of the latest work in the field. When I'm looking for inspiration, I have a few sources that never let me down.

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Design

Not My Baby

I am all about process. I love process. I feel secure knowing that when I finish one step, there's another step right there waiting for me. Having a solid process is liberating, allowing you to focus more on what you're doing, and less on what you should be doing.

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Design

About the Author

Ken Woodworth

Art Director

Ken is a proficient illustrator and designer with a gift for creating beautiful, intuitive design systems for even the most complex requirements. Ken’s work has been linked from a wide range of CSS design galleries and praised by prominent designers and authors in the web standards movement. Ken’s design capabilities are matched by a thorough understanding and ability in multiple production techniques, including (X)HTML/CSS and Flash, which makes his designs not only beautiful, but highly functional.

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DrupalCon Denver 2012 - Gold Sponsor