Dreamten Studios

I recently designed a few social networking icons for my site and thought I'd share them with the public. The icons are pictured below which you can download right off this page, or download this file to get layered and editable PSD files. The icon background gradients were done using a layer style, so they can be easily altered to accommodate any icon.



P.S. If the icons above are shown with an ugly grey background, it's because you're using Internet Exporer 6. Upgrade to Firefox 3.5 here.

CSS 3.0 introduces a slew of new exciting techniques for designers to utilize including new attribute selectors, border radius, text shadow, font-face, and more. Many of the common challenges faced by designers are being rectified by the latest CSS 3.0 standard and designers adopting the new standard will have a bevy of new tools in their design toolkit.

While these are great things to look forward to, the reality is that most of CSS 3.0's features are not supported by the antiquated, yet still widely adopted, 8 year old web browser, Internet Explorer 6. Standards based web browsers (such as Firefox and Safari) are quickly gaining momentum, but they are not yet ubiquitous, and according to w3schools browser statistics data, IE6's market share is still at a significant 14.5 percent. While this number is declining monthly, there are a ton of people browsing the web that have no desire or reason for change.

Several companies (such as 37 Signals, Xero, and even Facebook) have resorted to exclusion of visitors using IE6, forcing users to either upgrade their browsers, or go elsewhere. Entire campaigns have been started in attempts to eradicate IE6 usage due to its quirks that cause web pages to render differently than in other browsers. I agree with this sentiment - IE 6 is a last generation web browser that needs to be phased out. On average, I have to devote roughly 15% more time to my CSS layouts to ensure they work in IE 6. Discontinuing support for IE 6 would make my life so much easier, but how do you tell a client that their website won't be accessible by ~15% of the market? In my opinion, you can't. For now, IE 6 is the lowest common denominator that I have to account for.  Until this changes, CSS 3.0 won't matter much to me.

Just moved into a new office space and took some pictures of my setup consisting mostly of Ikea bought furniture. Also have a bunch of new work on the way -- most of them are larger projects that have taken awhile to develop and are finally wrapping up.

"Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward."

My wife and I have been blessed with a gift.  The newest addition to our family, Hannah Rumiko Lester was born yesterday morning at 12:18 am.

I plan on moving into office space in the near future and have been looking for the perfect desk to fit my needs.  I recently stumbled across a beautiful site for MILK (www.milk.dk) -- a simple, beautiful desk made of aluminum. No pricing is given on the site, which means it's probably out of my price range.  Very cool nonetheless.







Also check out the iDesk - idesk.sublevel.us. Not quite as slick, but worth a mention.

I recently discovered Martin+Osa (www.martinandosa.com), a new retailer developed by American Eagle that is reminiscent of Banana Republic and J.Crew. Although somewhat less trendy than their competition, their clothes are very classy and the customer service within the store is better than I've experienced anywhere. What really made me fall in love with the company was their website - particularly the slick and usable layout on their clothing detail page.

One of my biggest hesitations about shopping for clothes online is the fact that most online clothing retailers don't show large/detailed enough images of their clothing, or in the event they do, the site uses annoying pop up windows and/or tacky JavaScript-based image magnifiers. I was very pleased when browsing the Martin+Osa site to see that neither of these methods are used, but instead a nearly 1000 pixel wide image of the product is used as the background and subtle transparent layers of text are placed over top.



Each product has a number of tasteful photographs to see various perspectives and detail, and the images are instantly loaded using JS/Ajax, so no page refresh is required. Choosing different color varieties of the same product instantly loads a new background image and set of thumbnails, again requiring no page refresh. Finally, when you add an item to your cart, an animated JS shopping cart layer pops open to let you know the item is in your cart, and you again, never have to leave the page or refresh.

It is refreshing (no pun intended) to see a clothing retailer pushing the envelope and raising the bar for online clothes shopping.

The Enclave of McLean is a new luxury neighborhood consisting of four custom homes being built nearby in McLean, VA. Award winning home builder Madison Homes asked Dreamten Studios to design and develop a showcase website for this exclusive neighborhood which is set to be completed in July 2008.

Click here to view the project.

When it was time to design business cards for Dreamten Studios, I had a vision of a translucent plastic card that would stand out from traditional paper cards and convey our signature style and passion for design that go into every project we deliver. Our business cards have been featured on numerous sites including Faveup, PSD Tuts, and Freelance Switch.

Finally, after many months of design revisions and concepts, I've relaunched the Dreamten.com website. The website sports an all new design and template built on the WordPress platform. Everything from this blog, the pages, and the portfolio section are woven into the WordPress system, making updates easier (and more likely) as well as improving site features and functionality. The goal of this was to place heavy emphasis on the work and portfolio, since this is what most visitors and prospective clients are interested in. It took awhile before I finally created a layout that blended a modern feel with ease of use and clarity of information.