likethewind designs

Design Philosophy

I love words.

From this love -- it is irrational to the extreme -- emerges my fascination with the Internet, since the web provides new ways of interacting with words. I mean this not only in the contexts of communication and social media tools. Though these things have profoundly altered the nature of interpersonal relations within the technogeneration, what persistently blows my mind is much more fundamental than that: what fascinates me is the actual word as it appears on the web.

In the context of print design, it is about the black on white of literature. It's about the way colours show up and about the things that a slight slant to a letter can do to alter an entire passage's meaning. In web design, those concerns remain, but now with the added focus on intermedia translation. I can code into this page, for instance, pitch and thus affect how screen readers - browsers for the sight-impaired - read out this page. I can also, without creating a mirror site, ensure that this page shows up correctly when printed, or viewed on a Blackberry, or projected onto a whiteboard. I can contend for all those different media with just this one HTML page.

Somehow, after years of creating websites, the notion that one piece of code can be accessed simultaneously in so many different ways keeps the geek in me alive. This explains why I'm so interested in online usability and accessibility, as the only way the often-touted revolutionary capacities of the Internet can be realised is by consciously practising web standards.

To that end my online design practices include:

• Ensuring my XHTML and CSS validate.
• Running some of the more popular accessibility tests, while remaining cognisant of the fact that accessibility is about more than checkmarks; it requires intelligent and intuitive data organisation as well.
• Embedding print stylesheets.
• Optimising page loading speeds.
• Running checks in a multitude of browsers and operating systems, though my own browser of choice is Firefox.

Site History

Though I've been designing websites since the turn of the millennium, likethewind.ca officially came into being in the fall of 2003. The current design, launched in Sept 2008, is the fourth iteration of the site. Like the three that preceded it, it is XHTML- and CSS-compliant and hosted on 1and1 servers. Please note that this is very much version 4.beta. Some of the pages are incomplete and there are still a few bugs that need to be sorted out.

As for the pink, I don't know. I honestly have no idea how that happened, but somehow I discovered I'd drawn myself a pink logo and found, to my surprise, I quite liked it.

Here are some things it is imperative you know about me: if I could have just one superpower, I would want it to be selective deafness; I like washing dishes, because clean plates feed my sense of accomplishment, but I hate sweeping floors, because the ground is never really clean enough; and I've lived in Toronto for nearly a decade but am still of no use to tourists, who I wish would know better than to ask me impossible questions like, "Where is the nearest subway station."

It is unfortunate, really. I am fond of walking and I love this city very much, and so I spend an unnatural amount of time wandering its streets. The only proof I can offer, though, of my living here is in the soles of my shoes, all of which have endearingly enormous holes that permit the entry of overly familiar pebbles and boulders.

And should it strike your fancy, email me.

Because that's another thing: I like letters.