Erik Teichmann Design

Music for Advent and Christmas

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:57:34 +0000

Project: Poster for Advent and Christmas music events

Client: New Hope Presbyterian

Role: Design, Layout, Production

Details: Tabloid size poster to promote music in Advent and Christmas Services

O HAI

admin — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:41:54 +0000

LOLspeak is infiltrating the universe. Imagine my surprise when my Flickr page greeted me this morning with this:

It is a language now.

Tabs in HTML Forms

admin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:04:23 +0000

This isn’t what you think. Tabbing between form fields is a built in behavior in modern web browsers that admittedly saves a load of time and is extremely convenient. This article is not about tabbing between form fields. It’s about tabbing IN form fields.

As someone who spends a lot of time in a web browser, and a lot of time again coding in a web browser, this has been one of my biggest pet peeves. One of the principles of clear code is lots of whitespace. Tabs help set hierarchy and make code much more readable. In your web browser, if you press the “Tab” key in a form field, you just jump to the next input. This is inconvenient! I want to make my code readable! And I don’t want to press the spacebar a thousand times to make it so!

Fortunately, there’s a great Firefox extension that fixes this! It’s called “Tabinta”, which stands for Tab in Textarea. Simply install the extension and you’ll be able to make tabs in multi-line text inputs! It’s simple to turn off as well (just right click!) and offers a wealth of configuration options through Firefox’s about:config. I’m seriously so happy I found this.

Right-oh, nose back to the grindstone!

Upgrades

admin — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:40:56 +0000

I’m really excited for the upcoming Wordpress 2.7 update. I know that as soon as it gets here, it will be underrated, but I’m excited now regardless.

The new admin interface is my main reason for excitement. I never really knew what problems people had with the older admin interfaces, but after test-driving 2.7, I see a lot of room for improvement in 2.6.x.

Regardless of the changes, I’m just thankful that Wordpress is Wordpress. I maintain a website for one of my clients that uses Joomla, which I personally think is just a mess.

Appalachian Mountain

admin — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:28:20 +0000

Project: Appalachian Mountain Family Mission Trip Poster

Client: Christus Victor Lutheran Church

Role: Design, Layout, Production

Details: Tabloid size poster for a family mission trip. An approachable design with a wide appeal was desired.

NOT the Process

admin — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:38:44 +0000

Clients: Please don’t do this. And yes, it has happened like this.

Client Questionnaire with CformsII

admin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:20:37 +0000

In order to make it as easy as possible for a potential client to engage my services, I decided to switch from a PDF based client questionnaire to a web form. While this would be an easy enough task with HTML, I decided to use the excellent cformsII Wordpress plugin. This plugin can create elaborate custom contact forms, with many swanky features such as regular expression validation, email confirmations, CAPTCHAs, and a database store.

CformsII is extremely easy to setup. Just download the plugin from the Wordpress plugins site, extract it with your favorite zip program, and upload the entire folder to your wp-content/plugins/ directory. Login and activate the plugin. You’ll notice a new “cformsII” entry on the tab bar. Click on it to start creating your forms.

The cforms screen should make sense to you pretty quickly. Simply add form fields to the list, select the type, and choose any additional options, like required fields and regular expression validation. When you’ve created the form, the options below will set up the delivery of your data.

Now that you know how it works, why not hire me to do it for you?

I love the color brown.

admin — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:52:27 +0000

Ok, so I had enough of a break this week from doing everyone else’s projects to get into the nitty-gritty of updating my own site. I’ll be cracking on here as I’m at leisure. So far I’ve updated the color scheme (I love brown!), the header graphics, favicon, and categories. I’ll still be working on the sidebar and navigation, as well as the little details. I’m very happy with how this is coming together!

Keenagers Calendar

admin — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:55:18 +0000

Project: Keenagers Events Calendar

Client: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Role: Design, Layout and Production

Details: A twelve page booklet promoting various events throughout the year for a seniors group.

Back Nine

admin — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:51:34 +0000

Project: Back Nine Golf Poster

Client: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Role: Design, Layout and Production

Details: A poster for a women’s golf outing.