Web History
What follows is a critical history of my work on the web since 1997. In it, I detail my various projects over the years, what I set out to accomplish with them, and how well I did, in light of what I know now. My basic design philosophy has evolved along the guiding principle of giving primacy to the content. I strive to never let aesthetic or egoistic concerns get in the way of making it easy and straightforward for the user to navigate the site and make use of the content they seek. Of course, such restrictions don't by any stretch mean that a site must be bland or ugly, simply that a well executed site will be an equilibrium between content and presentation, and tending toward the content whenever there is conflict between the two.
The projects are reverse-chronologically ordered as you scroll from left to right. Each thumbnail image can be clicked to open up a full-size(1024X768) screenshot of the site as it was when I finished with it. If the project in question is still on the web, I have also linked to it in the text, so you can visit it and try it out.
Info
contact - jddunn at gmail dot com
resume - txt
rates - negotiable, depending on the nature of the project
jareddunn.org
What follows is a critical history of my work on the web since 1997. In it, I detail my various projects over the years, what I set out to accomplish with them, and how well I did, in light of what I know now. My basic design philosophy has evolved along the guiding principle of giving primacy to the content. I strive to never let aesthetic or egoistic concerns get in the way of making it easy and straightforward for the user to navigate the site and make use of the content they seek. Of course, such restrictions don't by any stretch mean that a site must be bland or ugly, simply that a well executed site will be an equilibrium between content and presentation, and tending toward the content whenever there is conflict between the two.
The projects are reverse-chronologically ordered as you scroll from left to right. Each thumbnail image can be clicked to open up a full-size(1024X768) screenshot of the site as it was when I finished with it. If the project in question is still on the web, I have also linked to it in the text, so you can visit it and try it out.
Info
contact - jddunn at gmail dot com
resume - txt
rates - negotiable, depending on the nature of the project
jareddunn.org
Local Progress | 2006
Local Progress(launching soon) is my current labor of love. I intend to turn this site into a meeting ground where people who have web skills and small, local civic/political groups who want to get on the web cheaply can be matched up with one another and work together, as well as a basic informational resource for groups trying to get onto the web and use it effectively to grow and organize.
Local Progress(launching soon) is my current labor of love. I intend to turn this site into a meeting ground where people who have web skills and small, local civic/political groups who want to get on the web cheaply can be matched up with one another and work together, as well as a basic informational resource for groups trying to get onto the web and use it effectively to grow and organize.
The Aleph | 2006
TheAleph.org has replaced Suspension of Disbelief as the main focus of my written output. I'm looking longterm to make a sort of semantic, associative brain-map out of it. Right now it's vanilla MediaWiki with a couple of little tweaks. In the long run, I'm going to try to hack it to a) spit out the latest writing in blog / feed form, and b) not look nearly so much like an ugly wiki. But, for now, I just wanted to write and not worry about being on the bleeding edge of design and code and standards and all that.
TheAleph.org has replaced Suspension of Disbelief as the main focus of my written output. I'm looking longterm to make a sort of semantic, associative brain-map out of it. Right now it's vanilla MediaWiki with a couple of little tweaks. In the long run, I'm going to try to hack it to a) spit out the latest writing in blog / feed form, and b) not look nearly so much like an ugly wiki. But, for now, I just wanted to write and not worry about being on the bleeding edge of design and code and standards and all that.
Keith Taylor for County Clerk | 2006
A local campaign site for a friend of mine back home who is running in his first election, for County Clerk. The layout and graphics aren't mine. I did mostly backend on this, along with some CSS and browser testing.
A local campaign site for a friend of mine back home who is running in his first election, for County Clerk. The layout and graphics aren't mine. I did mostly backend on this, along with some CSS and browser testing.
EIU College Dems | 2005-Present
A quick, basic informational page for a student organization. They'll be folded into the larger revamped Colesdems site(see next) when it is finished.
A quick, basic informational page for a student organization. They'll be folded into the larger revamped Colesdems site(see next) when it is finished.
Coles County Dems | 2004-Present
In the months leading up to the 2004 Election, I was approached by friends from back home about setting up a web presence for the county Democrats. This was the first result of those efforts. It was centered around a blog, but also had a mailing list manager, a calendar, and other tools for organizing on the web. They had a decent amount of success with it, and now we are thinking about what to do to take the next step for growing the site and the community. This is likely set to be relaunced as a drupal site with social networking and lots of other goodies soon.
In the months leading up to the 2004 Election, I was approached by friends from back home about setting up a web presence for the county Democrats. This was the first result of those efforts. It was centered around a blog, but also had a mailing list manager, a calendar, and other tools for organizing on the web. They had a decent amount of success with it, and now we are thinking about what to do to take the next step for growing the site and the community. This is likely set to be relaunced as a drupal site with social networking and lots of other goodies soon.
Kuleshop | 2004
Kuleshop was one of my first freelance gigs, and I'm afraid it ended up being sort of a mess. I was referred by a friend, and it turned out after the fact that my skillset didn't quite match what they needed(ie, Flash.) Plus, I was working remotely, and also had to work with their previous web firm, who still ran the backend, but didn't have time to re-do the frontend stuff on time. That ended up being difficult because I never really had a live dev site to work with, just graphics that I had to kind of put together in my head and hope they turned out the same when they were run through the backend.
This was mostly just grind-it-out Photoshopping... changing color schemes on nav graphics, getting product photos whipped and cropped into shape, and so on. I made quite a few original graphics in the same sort of theme as their existing ones, which was kind of challenging, often working without the original psd files or fonts. The only layout I did was for the Favorites section, but it was kind of different than what is pictured, which I've reconstructed because I was dumb and didn't get a screenshot before they changed it again. The main difference is that the top menu was graphical rollovers instead of text links.
I hope I did right by it at least minimally, and I definitely learned a lot about how to conduct yourself professionally as a freelancer. It was a lot harder than I thought, and I worked way more hours than I estimated / billed. But, hey, at least it paid for my iBook, and it was a valuable if stressful experience in trying to be a grownup businessperson.
Kuleshop was one of my first freelance gigs, and I'm afraid it ended up being sort of a mess. I was referred by a friend, and it turned out after the fact that my skillset didn't quite match what they needed(ie, Flash.) Plus, I was working remotely, and also had to work with their previous web firm, who still ran the backend, but didn't have time to re-do the frontend stuff on time. That ended up being difficult because I never really had a live dev site to work with, just graphics that I had to kind of put together in my head and hope they turned out the same when they were run through the backend.
This was mostly just grind-it-out Photoshopping... changing color schemes on nav graphics, getting product photos whipped and cropped into shape, and so on. I made quite a few original graphics in the same sort of theme as their existing ones, which was kind of challenging, often working without the original psd files or fonts. The only layout I did was for the Favorites section, but it was kind of different than what is pictured, which I've reconstructed because I was dumb and didn't get a screenshot before they changed it again. The main difference is that the top menu was graphical rollovers instead of text links.
I hope I did right by it at least minimally, and I definitely learned a lot about how to conduct yourself professionally as a freelancer. It was a lot harder than I thought, and I worked way more hours than I estimated / billed. But, hey, at least it paid for my iBook, and it was a valuable if stressful experience in trying to be a grownup businessperson.
Jared Dunn Dot Org | 2003-Present
The front page of JaredDunn.org is an ongoing experiment in life data aggregation. I've got MagpieRSS sitting under the hood and pulling in and parsing feeds from various social networking content sites that I frequent. I update my info on those sites(or in some cases, it's collected automatically), and then it automagically shows up here as fairly complete picture of what I'm doing, seeing, reading, photographing, and so on at any given time.
The front page of JaredDunn.org is an ongoing experiment in life data aggregation. I've got MagpieRSS sitting under the hood and pulling in and parsing feeds from various social networking content sites that I frequent. I update my info on those sites(or in some cases, it's collected automatically), and then it automagically shows up here as fairly complete picture of what I'm doing, seeing, reading, photographing, and so on at any given time.
Suspension of Disbelief | 2003-2005
This was the last design for the front page of, Suspension of Disbelief. Much like the last entropy design, it was an update of the older version to conform with new web standards and browser capabilities. The layout was in box-model CSS(with the exception of one table-based hack. I just couldn't get it to work totally the same after the changeover, in a typical example of the compromise often required between design standards and design practicalities.) It mostly adhered to principles of accessibility, useability, cross-browser compatibility, and web standards(some small liberties were taken that wouldn't be elsewhere, as it's a personal site.) I think it was a good, solid layout, far away enough from minimalism to catch the eye, but fairly well-organized considering the amount of elements I tried to cram in there.
This was the last design for the front page of, Suspension of Disbelief. Much like the last entropy design, it was an update of the older version to conform with new web standards and browser capabilities. The layout was in box-model CSS(with the exception of one table-based hack. I just couldn't get it to work totally the same after the changeover, in a typical example of the compromise often required between design standards and design practicalities.) It mostly adhered to principles of accessibility, useability, cross-browser compatibility, and web standards(some small liberties were taken that wouldn't be elsewhere, as it's a personal site.) I think it was a good, solid layout, far away enough from minimalism to catch the eye, but fairly well-organized considering the amount of elements I tried to cram in there.
Entropy | 2002-2004
This was the final design for my weblog, Entropy, and the single design with which I am most satisfied to date. It manages to present a large and varied amount of information and functionality in a readable and somewhat unique format, while also incorporating an unusual amount of color and texture compared to many of my more minimalist efforts. It was also the first layout that I did entirely from scratch in CSS and with accessibility, usability, and validation strongly in mind.
This was the final design for my weblog, Entropy, and the single design with which I am most satisfied to date. It manages to present a large and varied amount of information and functionality in a readable and somewhat unique format, while also incorporating an unusual amount of color and texture compared to many of my more minimalist efforts. It was also the first layout that I did entirely from scratch in CSS and with accessibility, usability, and validation strongly in mind.
Suspension of Disbelief | 2001-2003
This was the previous design for the front page of my domain, suspensionofdisbelief.org. Again, there was a lot of varied information to deal with in this case, and I think I did a fairly good job of presenting it all without becoming overly confused or cluttered. This design was around for nearly two years, and the new version is mostly faithful to it, excepting minor layout changes, updates of legacy code and lots of other improvements under the hood.
This was the previous design for the front page of my domain, suspensionofdisbelief.org. Again, there was a lot of varied information to deal with in this case, and I think I did a fairly good job of presenting it all without becoming overly confused or cluttered. This design was around for nearly two years, and the new version is mostly faithful to it, excepting minor layout changes, updates of legacy code and lots of other improvements under the hood.
Eurotrash | 2002-Present
This is a one-off page I did to chronicle my trip to europe in the summer of 2002. It was my second experiment(and first of any appreciable scale) with using CSS for layout as well as text formatting, was done rather hastily in the days leading up to the trip, and thus doesn't have the usual sort of quality control that I tend to put into more permanent sites. Still, I think it's kind of cool looking, and it served its purpose quite well at the time, allowing me to have a record of my travels, and my friends and family to have a way in which to follow and talk about my progress.
This is a one-off page I did to chronicle my trip to europe in the summer of 2002. It was my second experiment(and first of any appreciable scale) with using CSS for layout as well as text formatting, was done rather hastily in the days leading up to the trip, and thus doesn't have the usual sort of quality control that I tend to put into more permanent sites. Still, I think it's kind of cool looking, and it served its purpose quite well at the time, allowing me to have a record of my travels, and my friends and family to have a way in which to follow and talk about my progress.
Informed Dissent | 2001-02
Informed Dissent was a site I put together in the weeks after September 11th, 2001. It was intended to be a social and political discussion between friends regarding the changed world we found ourselves in, and how we should deal with it. Sadly, it never really came to fruition due to school and work commitments that prevented us from being able to devote the necesary time to it. The design and the few months' worth of discussion we did generate will probably get put back online somewhere eventually, but it's not a big priority right now.
Informed Dissent was a site I put together in the weeks after September 11th, 2001. It was intended to be a social and political discussion between friends regarding the changed world we found ourselves in, and how we should deal with it. Sadly, it never really came to fruition due to school and work commitments that prevented us from being able to devote the necesary time to it. The design and the few months' worth of discussion we did generate will probably get put back online somewhere eventually, but it's not a big priority right now.
The Shadow | 2001-2003
The Shadow was another one-off site I did, this time in order to document and analyze a rather difficult period in my life. The writing portion never really got to an endpoint I was satisfied with, but the design was simple and complete. This was the first time I used CSS for much of anything at all, and it turned out not too badly in retrospect. I'm normally not fond of white text on black backgrounds, for eyestrain reasons, but it was thematically approporiate enough in this case to flout one of my self-imposed rules. I'm not sure if this will ever come back or not, since I'm out in the adult world now and some of the content is pretty sensitive stuff that I'm not sure I want floating around in the Google permanent record.
The Shadow was another one-off site I did, this time in order to document and analyze a rather difficult period in my life. The writing portion never really got to an endpoint I was satisfied with, but the design was simple and complete. This was the first time I used CSS for much of anything at all, and it turned out not too badly in retrospect. I'm normally not fond of white text on black backgrounds, for eyestrain reasons, but it was thematically approporiate enough in this case to flout one of my self-imposed rules. I'm not sure if this will ever come back or not, since I'm out in the adult world now and some of the content is pretty sensitive stuff that I'm not sure I want floating around in the Google permanent record.
SXSW 01 | 2001-Present
This was yet another one-off design I put together in order to document an experience, this time my trip to Austin, TX for SXSW Interactive Conference 2001. Also, it was yet another case where I flouted my self-imposed rules, this time against heavy usage of frames in a design. These rules are very general, and breakable for good reason, in that they are mostly dependent upon the content being presented. Usually, frames are bad, as they make linking to content difficult, and search engine ranking almost impossible. However, the content being presented here was mostly pictorial, and the framed layout proved to be the most efficient and aesthetically pleasing way of presenting it in this case, so I went with it. I'll get this back online here at jareddunn.org eventually, as part of a future project to get all of my photo archives back online.
This was yet another one-off design I put together in order to document an experience, this time my trip to Austin, TX for SXSW Interactive Conference 2001. Also, it was yet another case where I flouted my self-imposed rules, this time against heavy usage of frames in a design. These rules are very general, and breakable for good reason, in that they are mostly dependent upon the content being presented. Usually, frames are bad, as they make linking to content difficult, and search engine ranking almost impossible. However, the content being presented here was mostly pictorial, and the framed layout proved to be the most efficient and aesthetically pleasing way of presenting it in this case, so I went with it. I'll get this back online here at jareddunn.org eventually, as part of a future project to get all of my photo archives back online.
Entropy | 2001-2002
Here we begin to enter the pre-modern era of sorts in terms of design. The rest of these were made before the days of the 5.0 browsers that supported CSS well, and before the days when web standards and accessibility were really on the radar for designers. They were fine for the time they were made, but wouldn't really pass muster by the standards of today's somewhat less chaotic web. Many of them are also no longer extant online, or if they are, they're no longer under my control. The first is the previous incarnation of the design for entropy, before I reworked it entirely, brought it up to "code" as it were, and removed a lot of the clutter on the sidebar.
Here we begin to enter the pre-modern era of sorts in terms of design. The rest of these were made before the days of the 5.0 browsers that supported CSS well, and before the days when web standards and accessibility were really on the radar for designers. They were fine for the time they were made, but wouldn't really pass muster by the standards of today's somewhat less chaotic web. Many of them are also no longer extant online, or if they are, they're no longer under my control. The first is the previous incarnation of the design for entropy, before I reworked it entirely, brought it up to "code" as it were, and removed a lot of the clutter on the sidebar.
CPSC 199 Course Page | 2000
CPSC 199 Section WC was site I did for a class taught by a professor for whom I was working at uiuc. This was a very basic design, appropriate to the amount and type of content being presented. It was a small site of around ten pages, and included all of the standard information that a basic course page should have... syllabus, schedule, supplementary reading, instructor bio and contact info, and so on. The image-based menu at the top followed the user through the whole site, for ease of navigation. In retrospect, it should also have had text-based alternative navigation for text-only browsers and screenreaders, but at the time this sort of thing wasn't really a concern. Other than that, a pretty standard course webpage, and probably aesthetically better than most I've run across in my time. It's no longer on the web.
CPSC 199 Section WC was site I did for a class taught by a professor for whom I was working at uiuc. This was a very basic design, appropriate to the amount and type of content being presented. It was a small site of around ten pages, and included all of the standard information that a basic course page should have... syllabus, schedule, supplementary reading, instructor bio and contact info, and so on. The image-based menu at the top followed the user through the whole site, for ease of navigation. In retrospect, it should also have had text-based alternative navigation for text-only browsers and screenreaders, but at the time this sort of thing wasn't really a concern. Other than that, a pretty standard course webpage, and probably aesthetically better than most I've run across in my time. It's no longer on the web.
Entropy | 2000
This was the first design of any consequence for my weblog, entropy, undertaken around the time that I upgraded from my student web account to a domain and paid hosting. Before this, it was basically just plain text on a colored background divided up by a couple of tables. Here, I finally tried to apply some actual design skills and principles to it. This was a very minimalist design, reflecting my lack of confidence at the time when it came to dealing with a lot of elements in any one design. I had tried much more ambitious layouts, and never really been satisfied with them, so I stripped it all the way down, started over, and evolved upward in complexity from there. This was a good instinct, and prefigured my emphasis on the content over the visual elements in most of my designs to come. This was a solid first effort at a weblog design, but nothing spectacular in retrospect.
This was the first design of any consequence for my weblog, entropy, undertaken around the time that I upgraded from my student web account to a domain and paid hosting. Before this, it was basically just plain text on a colored background divided up by a couple of tables. Here, I finally tried to apply some actual design skills and principles to it. This was a very minimalist design, reflecting my lack of confidence at the time when it came to dealing with a lot of elements in any one design. I had tried much more ambitious layouts, and never really been satisfied with them, so I stripped it all the way down, started over, and evolved upward in complexity from there. This was a good instinct, and prefigured my emphasis on the content over the visual elements in most of my designs to come. This was a solid first effort at a weblog design, but nothing spectacular in retrospect.
Govindjee Web | 1999-2000
This is the first external web project I did, and it was a rather extensive one. The Govindjee Web(the site is still extant, but I haven't had control over it for years, and it has changed for the worse in many ways since then) was a site for a plant biology research lab, and also a chronicle of the career and output of Dr. Govindjee, an esteemed researcher into the mechanisms of photosynthesis. I started out with a horribly disorganized mass of several hundred pages' worth of data, and by the time I was done, the site was easily navigable, searchable, and usable. This was more of an information design project than a visual design one, as the client had rather firm(and at times very wrongheaded to me) ideas as to how the site should look, and I was forced to mostly conform to his expectations, right down to those really ugly beveled buttons. Still, I left the thing a lot better off and more efficiently organized and coded than it was when I began, and that's the really important thing in my book.
This is the first external web project I did, and it was a rather extensive one. The Govindjee Web(the site is still extant, but I haven't had control over it for years, and it has changed for the worse in many ways since then) was a site for a plant biology research lab, and also a chronicle of the career and output of Dr. Govindjee, an esteemed researcher into the mechanisms of photosynthesis. I started out with a horribly disorganized mass of several hundred pages' worth of data, and by the time I was done, the site was easily navigable, searchable, and usable. This was more of an information design project than a visual design one, as the client had rather firm(and at times very wrongheaded to me) ideas as to how the site should look, and I was forced to mostly conform to his expectations, right down to those really ugly beveled buttons. Still, I left the thing a lot better off and more efficiently organized and coded than it was when I began, and that's the really important thing in my book.
Think for Yourself | 1999
This was the last design for my student site. I still have a bit of a soft spot for it aesthetically, because it's really unique and cool looking, but it was a nightmare in terms of usability, searchability, cross-platform performance, and so on, reflecting my complete ignorance of such issues at the time. The imagemap at the top was for navigation, and used javascript rollovers to simultaneously display the various section buttons and change the image at top-left when you clicked on various parts of the galaxy image. This was before I knew that frames weren't a good idea for texty content as well, though this implementation isn't totally egregious or anything, for a personal site. Suprisingly, I was smart enough to provide alternative text-based navigation at the bottom, which mitigated some of the confusingness, but ultimately failed to save it in terms of being an effective way to present the large amounts of textual content I had. This was my first good visual design, but knowlege in terms of information architecture and usability was still a ways down the road.
This was the last design for my student site. I still have a bit of a soft spot for it aesthetically, because it's really unique and cool looking, but it was a nightmare in terms of usability, searchability, cross-platform performance, and so on, reflecting my complete ignorance of such issues at the time. The imagemap at the top was for navigation, and used javascript rollovers to simultaneously display the various section buttons and change the image at top-left when you clicked on various parts of the galaxy image. This was before I knew that frames weren't a good idea for texty content as well, though this implementation isn't totally egregious or anything, for a personal site. Suprisingly, I was smart enough to provide alternative text-based navigation at the bottom, which mitigated some of the confusingness, but ultimately failed to save it in terms of being an effective way to present the large amounts of textual content I had. This was my first good visual design, but knowlege in terms of information architecture and usability was still a ways down the road.
Think for Yourself | 1998
This student site from 1998 was my first design that comes close to deserving the name. Really not at all bad, except for the navigation being stylistically obscured. It may have looked cool, but it was probably fairly difficult for people unfamiliar with the site to get around. Again, this was way before I really thought about any of these things, design-wise. The first dabblings of an amateur getting the feel for a new medium. Not too bad, for a second effort, especially when you look at the first one, just to the right.
This student site from 1998 was my first design that comes close to deserving the name. Really not at all bad, except for the navigation being stylistically obscured. It may have looked cool, but it was probably fairly difficult for people unfamiliar with the site to get around. Again, this was way before I really thought about any of these things, design-wise. The first dabblings of an amateur getting the feel for a new medium. Not too bad, for a second effort, especially when you look at the first one, just to the right.
Think for Yourself | 1997
This was my first webpage of any kind, from early 1997. It was laughably horrible, just like everyone else's first page, and is included for reasons of levity and hilarity. So, go ahead, look and laugh! I know I do. Man, was I ever a dick back in 1997!
This was my first webpage of any kind, from early 1997. It was laughably horrible, just like everyone else's first page, and is included for reasons of levity and hilarity. So, go ahead, look and laugh! I know I do. Man, was I ever a dick back in 1997!
Other
I have only included here projects for which I did all, or the vast majority of the design and coding work. Other projects to which I have contributed over the years include:
KBS Web - I had nothing to do with the design of this site, thankfully, but I did redo the whole backend, reorganize the library(of which only a fraction is publicly available, for copyright reasons) as well as much of the intranet for the lab behind it. Details of what this involved can be found in my resume.
Gangbang - A perhaps unfortunately-named collaborative weblog. This was an ongoing discussion between six geographically far-flung friends over the web. I contributed quite a bit to the design process, but didn't do the actual coding or layout. I also wrote there for the entire lifetime of the site.
Signal Drench - A now-defunct online music magazine for which I wrote and did some layout and editing work. Some fragmentary archives can still be found at Newartillery.com and The Internet Archive.
I have only included here projects for which I did all, or the vast majority of the design and coding work. Other projects to which I have contributed over the years include:
KBS Web - I had nothing to do with the design of this site, thankfully, but I did redo the whole backend, reorganize the library(of which only a fraction is publicly available, for copyright reasons) as well as much of the intranet for the lab behind it. Details of what this involved can be found in my resume.
Gangbang - A perhaps unfortunately-named collaborative weblog. This was an ongoing discussion between six geographically far-flung friends over the web. I contributed quite a bit to the design process, but didn't do the actual coding or layout. I also wrote there for the entire lifetime of the site.
Signal Drench - A now-defunct online music magazine for which I wrote and did some layout and editing work. Some fragmentary archives can still be found at Newartillery.com and The Internet Archive.