Designer introduction

[jeromegn]

Hi everyone,

I've been fiddling with Ruby on Rails for a few years now and I've
been loving the experience! I know my way around the Rails MVC
architecture and can code in the views without problem.

Here's my portfolio: http://jgn.me/

I'm either looking to help an open source project to gain that little
user experience touch its missing or for a paid gig/job.

I hope this helps,
Jerome Gravel-Niquet.

[Jeremy]

I'm in the same boat. I've been working with Rails for about a year
now, and have yet to apply it to anything real, so if there's
something open source going on that somebody is working on, I'd love
to dig in and get dirty!

[Doug Avery]

I'm primarily a designer, but I've been doing buildout work and front-
end updates on RoR projects for about a year and a half. Slowly trying
to learn Rails myself, but in the meantime, bugging the developers for
more info whenever I get the chance.

The biggest barrier I see for designers is getting Rails projects up,
running, and easily testable when you don't have tons of dev
experience. I've slowly learned about installing and updating Rails
projects, raking the DB, etc, but every project seems to add a new
quirk that's hard for me to work around. Hoping we can get into some
basics here that help new Rails designers!

[Ray Drainville (Argument from Design)]

Hi, I'm new to the group, don't hurt me too badly :)

I've found moving into Rails to be really enlightening--and
productive. There's still a lot more to learn--a *lot*--but we've seen
a lot of great results since moving over to it from PHP about three
years ago.

About a year into our move to Rails, I picked up a great book on
Ruby--"Learn to Program" by Chris Pine (Pragmatic Programmers) & I
highly recommend it. It made the transition to actively generating ERB
templates far easier. Gaining this ability has reduced (somewhat) the
burden that our developers have had to carry. There's a lot I still
find rather difficult--integration testing being one of them, or, more
accurately, the the development of steps--but it's a lot easier.

Best,

Ray

_____________________________________________________
Argument from Design--Web & Graphic Design
Western House 239 Western Road Sheffield S10 1LE UK
<http://ardes.com/> | <http://blog.ardes.com/>

[jeromegn]

Are you the Doug Avery from Viget?

I'd have to agree, I've been doing RoR for a long time, yet I still
can't wrap my head around testing. I successfully deployed something
(thanks to the very easy Phusion Passenger) but there's way too many
concepts involved in RoR (all its conventions,) making it hard for
newbies to get to a higher level rapidly!

[pimpmaster]

Looking good Jerome!

I am sure you won;t have much trouble getting work as there seems to
be a shortage of quality designers with backend knowledge. We are a
rare breed indeed.

My background is really design and illustration, but I have found
coding to be rather seductive and learned to enjoy it as much as
sketching. Currently have 5 Rails apps under my belt and working on
several more - this stuff is addictive to say the least!

My portfolio site is currently being demolished and reconstructed, so
here are some links in the meantime:

http://www.merbivore.com
http://seasonssportfishing.com
http://funksoulrebels.com/steven
http://fineprintschool.com
http://www.careermee.com
http://www.housecafemusic.com (also designed most of the album covers)

Right now I am booked solid (overbooked really), but I have found that
it never hurts to network your ass off regardless.

PS: Love the concept here, and it's extra nice to see some of the
Railsforum crew already signed up - hey hey!!

[Matthew MacLeod]

I'm primarily a developer myself, but I'm a graphic designer by day. I
work for a small operation, so we don't have the resources for a
designer, meaning I have to learn the medium as I go...

I've never worked on a web project with a dedicated designer before,
but I may be doing so in the near future, so it would be great to get
a bit of perspective from you guys on ways to make it as easy as
possible.

No portfolio at the moment, but my combined print workflow and web
content management software (Skynet :) is used at http://www.theskinny.co.uk
and http://www.journal-online.co.uk

We've also got a little music download service that uses Amazon S3 at http://www.tentracks.co.uk

On 3 Feb 2009, at 15:21, jeromegn wrote:

> I'd have to agree, I've been doing RoR for a long time, yet I still
> can't wrap my head around testing. I successfully deployed something
> (thanks to the very easy Phusion Passenger) but there's way too many
> concepts involved in RoR (all its conventions,) making it hard for
> newbies to get to a higher level rapidly!

I certainly found that when I started developing Rails apps it was so
easy to throw things together that I skipped out on learning about how
things like testing and deployment actually work under the hood. It
comes back to bite you later!

-Matt

--
Matthew MacLeod

Creative Director @ The Skinny

t: 0131 467 4630
m: 07976 121 482

www.theskinny.co.uk

[jeromegn]

Matthew,

Did you design those sites? You've done a better job than many
"dedicated designers" out there! You seem to have grasped a few
concepts of web design quite rapidly.

Congrats on your work.

On 3 fév, 11:11, Matthew MacLeod <m...@theskinny.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm primarily a developer myself, but I'm a graphic designer by day. I  
> work for a small operation, so we don't have the resources for a  
> designer, meaning I have to learn the medium as I go...
>
> I've never worked on a web project with a dedicated designer before,  
> but I may be doing so in the near future, so it would be great to get  
> a bit of perspective from you guys on ways to make it as easy as  
> possible.
>
> No portfolio at the moment, but my combined print workflow and web  
> content management software (Skynet :) is used athttp://www.theskinny.co.uk

>   andhttp://www.journal-online.co.uk
>
> We've also got a little music download service that uses Amazon S3 athttp://www.tentracks.co.uk

[Daniel Lopes]

Hello, I am a designer and Rails developer from Brazil, and partner of
www.areacriacoes.com.br. Company focused in create websites and apps
with a good and simple design.

In design field we work with Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and 3D Max.
In webdesign field with allways use XHTML(CSS and JQuery) and Flash.
In development world we love Rails, Flex, AS3 for Flash Projects.

Our website www.areacriacoes.com.br and blog.areacriacoes.com.br

[Matthew MacLeod]

On 3 Feb 2009, at 16:33, jeromegn wrote:

Did you design those sites? You've done a better job than many
"dedicated designers" out there! You seem to have grasped a few
concepts of web design quite rapidly.

Congrats on your work.

Thanks, that's good to hear! It's been a bit of a steep learning curve, but I can't say no to a challenge.

On 3 Feb 2009, at 16:30, jeromegn wrote:

The designer who also does XHTML/CSS knows exactly
what HTML elements and what CSS techniques he will use for each part
of his design, knowing many elements will have the same style and that
the style need to be flexible enough to have a variable width/height
on a specific <div>...

That's the thing that worries me about contracting out to another company. There's too much of a risk that the markup won't be flexible enough to deal with real-world usage. Past experience tells me that when you contract out to someone who isn't involved in the project, it can take as much time to fix the broken markup as it would've taken to do it in the first place!

[Chap]

Designer / Developer here in Philadelphia.

www.chapambrose.com

[Jordan Isip]

I'm another slashie (designer/developer) here from Seattle. Recently
I've teamed up with a Ruby developer and we do client work and build
our own products (all with Ruby on Rails).

http://www.fixieconsulting.com

[Dan Nawara]

I'm a slashie as well (I love that term).

Front end focused, but back-end savvy.

Most recently working with obtiva.com's RAILS developers on their
Front-end needs.

[scottmotte]

Another here - though reverse it. I'm skilled on the back, and I sort
of 'get it' when it comes to design.

http://spitfiresky.com

On Feb 4, 11:03 am, Dan Nawara <dnaw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm a slashie as well (I love that term).
>
> Front end focused, but back-end savvy.
>
> Most recently working with  obtiva.com's RAILS developers on their
> Front-end needs.
>

[ryanlonac]

Hey guys, glad to be part of the group. Another slashie who just moved
up to Seattle. Thanks to scottmotte for letting me know about the
group.

http://rwldesign.com.

[Bob Martens]

Hi, name is Bob, happy to read up on everything here.

I've been working with Rails for a while, and do really bad design
with some spare time. I prefer simple and ineffective to anything
else. ;)

Looking forward to talking with everyone and learning more.

[Ollie]

HI, names Ollie

I am a Designer and Front End Developer, I have been doing front end dev work in rails for the past year and a half. Currently working at http://www.touchlocal.com as Senior Designer (a rails site). Also working on three other current Rail sites currently which you can see in my portfolio http://www.olliekav.com.

Group looks cool

--
Ollie Kavanagh
-----------------------------------
OK design
Phone: 07701083386
E-Mail: oll...@gmail.com
msn: olli...@hotmail.com
aim: olliekav
www.olliekav.com
-----------------------------------