Hello everyone!
As it's proper, I would like to introduce myself.
^ This is me. In my core, I'm a designer, but once I've learned what design truly means, classic job descriptions stopped to apply to me. For me, design is a philosophy of improving the world around us and making it more humane and easier to live in. And I have been doing it for 18 years now.
One of my main objectives is to perfect myself in everything that I have a passion to do, because otherwise it's not worth doing. I have renaissance approach when it comes to work - I am trying to learn as much as I can from different fields, sometimes completely different, and then use that experience to create something good.
In my career I have started as a graphic designer, played bass guitar for fun and learned to appreciate music and mathematics behind it, I have worked as multimedia designer, 3D modeler and have learned how to code for front-end and back-end of web sites. Many different interests have influenced how I do my work and because of them I tend to see the broader image in every task or problem I have to solve. I have made peace between artist and a programmer inside me.
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
--Oscar Wilde
This image is part of my unusual CV (vx.rs/cv). You can check out how I built it on Behance. I tend to use Golden ratio in design and front-end a lot ;) I consider it on of the most beautiful proportion systems.
Web design
Web design is more than a job for me, it is my vocation. I have started to meddle in web design back in 1997. Since then I have learned that web site is not just a piece of code, nice graphics or a collection of articles. Web site is a complex structure that relies on many factors like good planning, analytics, marketing, SEO, clean and usable code, trendy graphics and numerous other aspects that all work together in harmony.
While working as a freelancer and in a few companies, I have acquired skills that enabled me to create a complete site from scratch just by using the most basic tools - Photoshop, Illustrator, web browsers and code editors.
I don't believe in popular design trends like flat design or material design. They are great, but when you rely on them too much, you fail to creatively express yourself. This is the reason why I tend to build everything from scratch, tailored to projects' needs. I don't want to build another site that is drowning in the sea of same, I want to create it by my own rules.
Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.
--Bruce Lee
Experience
Since 1997. I have worked mostly alone or in teams that were assembled for specific projects. I have enjoyed freedom as a freelancer, but I have also enjoyed working for companies because of the stability and interesting projects they provided. During this time, I have made ~100 different web sites, including web related and multimedia projects.
In 2007. I wanted to see if I can make my own CMS and after few months of work, I have managed to do it. It was fast, it had templating system, control panel, image gallery and much more. Goal achieved, I knew I could do it, but I also found out that I don't like working back-end development as much as I like doing design and front-end.
After that I have worked in few large corporations, gained plenty of different kind of experience and stability. Unfortunately, when you work for large corporations, you are only doing small portions of work and mostly unrelated. This has started to bother me and I felt like I was wasting my time that way. Money was good, but it was pointless on a long run.
Now I am again working for myself, doing my own thing and learning new stuff. This may a tough decision today, but what are we living for if not for new experiences and fulfilled life?
Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.
--Albert Einstein
What am I working on right now?
At the moment I have one interesting personal project - I am trying to create my own front-end framework that will resemble Bootstrap or Foundation frameworks. It is located on Github and anyone will be able to use it for free when I finish it.
I have named it Nexus Framework and it has following features:
- Responsive grid system
- Responsive typography
- System for building icon fonts with ease from SVG
- RequireJS for asynchronously loading of your resources
- Gulp process
You can check it out here: http://vx.rs/nexus
Contact
If you want to follow what I do, you can follow me here since I tend to use this network as my new blogging platform OR you can follow me on twitter @vlasterx
I will write about new web design trends, technologies, frontend and much more.
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It's really nice to be here. After "big brother / mass surveilance" networks, this platform has a freedom vibe I started to like from the start.
See you all around.
Vladimir