The website of Brandon Wang, student who wants to make a difference

Weblog

Formerly known as 16.3, here I speak on
design, WordPress, and the world.

[Portfolio] Not Alex Ltd.

notalex screenshot

Not Alex Ltd. A website where a guy named Kevin wrote about life, similar to what I do in my literature blogs. Random junk. He needed a great design to string everything together. Gladly, I was able to help.

The design is one of my more colorful ones, proving that, yes, I can do colorful designs and not just monochrome and super-simple. Grass, great typography, and cheese mix together to make one great theme.

Continued »

Publish date Wednesday, March 11, 2009

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[Portfolio] soul log

soul log screenshot

soul log was an interesting project for me. It demanded a childish feel, but I didn’t want to use Comic Sans throughout the design. I wanted it to be modern yet fun at the same time. I wanted the design to be usable, to have flourishes throughout the design, and to lay a heavy focus on the content.

The design used many design techniques, required a bit of Photoshopping, and made me think quite a bit on some parts. It was a great project, and I was happy to launch into it. Continued »

Publish date Thursday, March 5, 2009

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Sometimes, Forget IE!

Sometimes, you just want to throw out IE. Honestly. Sometimes you just wish it didn’t exist.

I am one of those people; the type of people that honestly wish that IE didn’t exist. More specifically, that IE6 wouldn’t exist. IE7 is better, but it’s all worse than Mozilla Firefox. IE6 can’t even pass an Acid test. That is just kind of sad.

I remember my original designs, making a beautiful design, uploading it, just to discover… this horrid bad light-blue border leaking through my PNGs. Although there are fixes for this, I still want to forget IE.

Unfortunately, forgetting IE isn’t as easy as just telling everyone to forget it. Every single school I have walked into seems to have seemingly forgotten about Mozilla Firefox and IE7. And the worst thing is that I can’t blame them.

Until IE6 gets phased, it’s still high on my view charts. Therefore, it has to be high on anybody’s priorities. I have compiled a list below of the things that I don’t mind losing, and that you shouldn’t mind losing either. Continued »

Publish date Wednesday, February 25, 2009

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[Portfolio] Brandon Wang, version 4

Version 4, the main page

I’ve done it. I have finally done it. The fourth reiteration of my website has finally been completed. It was a hard two days of work, but that I am done with it, I am very proud of the result.

The new website, I am glad to say, is 99% completely my own imagination, and completely my own work. I am also glad to say that the one percent extra is purely inspiration. Continued »

Publish date Tuesday, February 24, 2009

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Using <bdo> to Hide Your Email Address

There are many ways to hide your email address, ranging from using Flash to hex to linking to address-hiding websites, and even using stuff like “somebody at somebody dot com”

Unfortunately, the “somebody at somebody dot com” is the most common model, and the spammers have even figured out how to write scripts that read that.

What we need is a new way to hide email addresses.

Enter <bdo>.

Continued »

Publish date Saturday, February 14, 2009

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Things have been going slowly lately; I fractured my toe bone.

Publish date Wednesday, February 11, 2009

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Why Your Business Card Should Be Credit-Card Sized

Have you ever noticed how business cards are these long skinny things? Well, the other day I was doing some business card design.

I’m here today so I can tell you why you should use a credit card size instead of a business card size.

To start off, a business card is 3.5 inches to 2 inches. A credit card is 3.37 inches to 2.125 inches. Once you have that in mind, here we go. Continued »

Publish date Monday, February 2, 2009

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Color (or rather, the lack of it)

Color is an interesting thing. A lack of it is another.

Today, I would like to put out a challenge: can you experiment with creating a grayscale website layout? Is it possible?

I know I was a hard-core color fan before, but grayscale monochrome layouts do have its advantages. Most of the time, it looks cleaner.

If you do choose to do so, I have some important advice for you.

Continued »

Publish date Sunday, February 1, 2009

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Designing with a Focus on Content

When you design things, you should always focus on the content.

I constantly see websites with giant headers, then a introduction, then some more junk, along with some photos from their Flickr album, and then finally… the content.

This should have been reversed. The content should always come first (after a short and concise heading, of course) and then the footers, then sidebars.

As of writing, this website uses a dark one-column design.

Continued »

Publish date Saturday, January 31, 2009

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10 Great Free Fonts

Fonts are a necessity for any designer of any sort. And even if you’re not a designer, a few sweet-looking fonts never hurt anybody.

I’ve compiled a list of 10 beautifully designed fonts. They’re all free, and some of them are released for use for anything! It’s a great list of fonts, and they’re quite useful in some way.

Enjoy it. They’re all linked to web pages with links to download it.

Continued »

Publish date Friday, January 30, 2009

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My Stance Against Internet Throttling

Internet throttling is a serious crime, in my opinion. It’s like the post office looking through your mail, going “oh hey I don’t like that one” and then just throwing it out. It’s plain mean, rude, and it shows that internet service companies don’t even care about you. Or your success.

Recently, Cox announced that it would be joining the ranks of the companies who throttle the Internet. To throttle is to slow down or even block some connections in favor of other ones.

Cox said they would prioritize Internet traffic. And when one type of traffic speeds up, guess what? The other goes down. Continued »

Publish date Friday, January 30, 2009

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I am in the field for a new watch. After my current one spontaneously changed its time by thirteen hours, I just knew I had to look around. So far, I seem to like this one the most. I kind of like that digital / analog feel, but the bezel color isn’t all that nice. I got sixty dollars from Chinese New Year, so who knows?

Update: Not anymore. My dad convinced me otherwise…

Publish date Wednesday, January 28, 2009

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