Graphic Design Poetry, con't again...

From one happy customer...

"Doug Bonneville, as recently shown
into quite a designer, has grown.
making sites for the others,
(and even their brothers)
has finally fixed one of his own."

Check out www.watkinscabinet.com to visit the happy customer!

Watkins Cabinet website launched...

Well, it launched in December but I forgot to post it! Watkins Cabinet, at www.watkinscabinet.com, was an excercise in design restraint, use of grid, use of ajax, sifr, and a few other design processes to boring to post about. The result is a very clean, minimalist design. We are trending towards all things Swiss these days, having grown very bored with drop shadows, rounded corners, gratuitous CSS, grunge textures, and Photoshop filters.

On that note, we even find a strange appreciation for the ugliness (if you can call it that) of www.drudgereport.com, which has never really changed it's "design" since getting on the web 10 years ago. It's an eminently readable and usable site, according to many experts, but it's backed up by the fact that, love him or leave him, drudgereport.com has over 500 million hits a month. 

I think of drudgreport.com like a jeep with no doors, top, or maybe even muffler. Just raw news-moving power. The main content of the page is only 11k for HTML, and one graphic header of a few K. Other images are slurped in but they don't affect the HTML load time. We have two SEO and design experiments live, which will be filling up with content over the next few days. Bon Report, at www.bonreport.com, and E-Ink Report, at www.einkreport.com. Both are "drudge clones" in a very strong sense. We'll see how the experiment goes!

New BonFX website in the works

It's just a matter of days...Phase 1 of our new website will be up. What's interesting is our "all-in-one" homepage. Everything you really need will be right there on the front page! The only secondary page will be the new "Bon Blog" which is Phase 2. The new site will incorporate a list of services, portfolio, brief "about us". There really isn't much to say, so why make extra page clicks? We'll toss in a tad of JQuery for good measure to handle some eye-candy.

In the meantime, take a gander at the Bon Report, a new site for Catholic headlines.

Graphic Design Poetry

Update! This post has been updated and now lives over at BonFX.com:


http://bonfx.com/15-top-graphic-design-limericks-for-your-amusement/


A few of these are now also available at http://cafepress.com/bonfx as t-shirts and mugs. Enjoy!


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My son nabbed Edward Lear's "Complete Book of Nonsense" from the library not too long ago. It was one of my favorite books growing up. I wondered if it was possible to write limericks about Graphic Design, Adobe, user interfaces, etc. I post the results for your amusement and bemoanment:

There once was a UI Designer
Who thought a right-nav was more finer.
But users bemoaned
When they could not find "Home",
And simply restarted their browser.

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There once was a client so wiley
He asked for every source filey.
He'd edit them twice
And say "Now they're nice!"
And we'd stare at him with a blank smiley

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There once was a designer so immature
She had not yet heard of a ligature.
She'd kern "f" and "i"
And then make a sigh
While wishing for one nice clean character.

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There was an "Adobe Updater"
Who's button said "Update me later".
Whenever we'd work,
It popped up like a jerk.
And so we are "Updater" haters!

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A prominent button called "Home"
Caused UI elitists to foam.
"It should not be there!"
And they tore out their hair,
Then banged their heads on a big stone.

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In Dreamweaver there was a bug,
But Adobe was silently smug.
"Pretend it's not there!"
Said support with no care,
And swept the bug under the rug!

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There once was a graphic designer
Who could not draw a straight liner
Fresh out of school
She thought she was cool
And soon was a cook in a diner!

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There once was a trendy typsetter
Who thought "less is more is more better"
I'll sit here and scratch
at my tiny soul patch
Until my design is one letter.

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There once was a client so bozo
He thought he'd design his own logo.
He did it in raster,
And thought it was faster
Because bezier curves he did not know.

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There once was client so lame
He flipped when he saw a wireframe
"The graphics are sparse,
And your firm is a farse!"
But we knew that this man did have no brain.

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There once was a program called Freehand
It was the best tool in the whole land
But the software was sold
To Adobe the bold
And Freehand was soon no more at hand.

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A designer with senses so fickle
He felt every unaligned pixel
"It's off by a bit!
What are you a twit?"
And for lunch he ate ought but sour pickles.

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There once was a blogging designer
Who said "I will sooner retire!
I'll write blogs all day,
And sip my latte."
But soon found his finances goner.

===

A slicer called Image the Ready
Who's UI was certainly heady
Some said, "It's so easy"
But many got queasy
Until Fireworks made them steady.

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A program called Photo the Shopper
Was loaded with menus and slopper
"Just raise the price
to make naughty nice"
But users soon proved this a flopper.

===

Adobe the Great was a giant
To whom all it's slaves was defiant:
"While charging more price,
I'll make things less nice!"
And to this day all are compliant!

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There once was a program named Flash,
Who thought he could make lots of cash
"I'll make cool splash screens",
But this sickened his spleen.
And so Flash turned to applications.