Responsive Site

The main thing that I liked about using tumblr to host my website is that it easily applies responsive templates when viewed on a mobile device. When it detects a mobile user is viewing the site is disregards any styles I applied to my site and uses the follow one, possibly using the Masonry Javascript Plugin:

It annoyingly uses my avatar for tumblr for a header image instead of my own though, which will need to be changed.

Linking URL

In order to get tumblr to recognise my newly purchased domain name I had to do several things. The first was to modify the A and CNAME DNS records to point towards tumblrs servers:

This meant that when people accessed my url the DNS redirected them towards and basic tumblr server. To get the chain to fully complete I had to gave tumblr my domain name so it could listen out for a request to their domain.tumblr server and serve up the appropriate page.

Registering my Domain Name

When creating a tumblr page for my personal website I found that I didn't like the fixed tumblr URL and decided to buy my own patch of the internet at andrewpledger.me. After getting some advice from people I used the domain .me instead of .info because although its a little more expensive, it has much better search engine optimisation.

Printing Invitations

Yesterday I received the art files from Jess and Connor to print out for the invitations. Although I'm not in the printing department the best price for printing the invitations was from a shop down the road from where I stay so I volunteered to go get them done. In order to save on costs and maximise our options we decided to print out 2 to a single A4 sheet in each colour and guillotine them up ourselves:

Although it ended up being a very time consuming task the end result and money saved were well worth the effort.

Portfolio Website Planning

In order to promote my own work in the context of the show I have decided to create my own person portfolio website. After talking to my tutors I found out that using a tumblr powered site would fulfill the requirements of the brief. Given the time constrains for this part of the project I would definitely prefer to do it through tumblr then to hand code a full site from scratch, tumblr is also inherently responsive. The way I plan to do this is to use the tumblr API to create and edit a theme to place my content into. Below is a view of the editor when viewing my existing tumblr page:

After studying and researching tumblr as a platform for networking and career building I think it is going to be a huge advantage to me in terms of professional development and promotion. The key positive points I found in my research were:

• Easy to communicate
• Building up a following is facilitated by a well used tagging system
• Maintaining a following is easier because you have to actively opt out of viewing someones content one you follow them
• Posts are able to generate latent popularity long after they are originally posts via 're-blogging'

WIP Gallery Space

Today I started to design the inside of what the show would look like so that I can get some feedback from my class on Monday. In order to maximise hanging space and not just have a boring spread of stuff just hung on the walls I have designed some pieces to fit in the middle. These will be single struts that hang from the joists on the roof and on the floor below, with fishing line and clips to secure the work in the middle.

Mapping out Exhibition Space

As part of my role as Exhibition Space team leader the responsibility of making sure everything fits in the gallery space and getting it looking good falls to me (with opinions coming from the group as a whole). To help me keep track of what we were filling the gallery space with I went on a quick visit and took extensive measurements of the building:

I then took these measurements and created a SketchUp model of the gallery with people inside to give a sense of scale:

Then using the build in share facilities I uploaded the model to Google's 3D Warehouse library:

The link to these models was then shared by me to the Facebook group we have set up for our class for discussing things when we aren't in lesson. Through this URL my classmates are able to view the model online as well as download and manipulate it through Google's free SketchUp program. I think this will provide a valuable asset to our group and speed up decisions about where to hang things and other stylistic choices. It also means we can put on a more extravagant show given the time constraints for set-up, because we can accurately model things before the day rather then trying to decide when we don't have the time.