I am committed to improving accessibility to and usability of the web through web standards and semantic coding. Listed below is a selection of my online work. All of these sites strive for W3C (x)HTML 1.0 strict and CSS 2.1 compliance. Click on a thumbnail to visit a site. They're listed in a quasi-chronological order that has something to do with when I last worked on the design of the site. Sorta. Down below there's a collection of other web projects I have in the mix. If you are a non-profit organization in need of a website, please contact me at mcsantos at purdue dot edu.
English 106:
Intro to Rhetoric & Composition (Fall 2007)
- Current Status:
- Active
- Published:
- August 2007
- URL:
- http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcsantos/106f2007/index.html
I am particularly pleased with the clean simplicity of this site; especially since it has two perpetual navigation divisions (the main division directly under the header and the calendar division floated to the right side of the page container). Continuing my aspirations for flexible page widths that appear natural to both PC and Mac browsing habits, I blogged about what I call the pageheader's "sliding windows" technique over at insignificant wranglings. I like this trick since, with a little attention to contrast, the header looks natural at just about any browser size (even when the text and image only partially overlap. I do wish IE had a min-width property, but I guess that's still too much to ask for...
Dog Park Association of Lafayette
- Current Status:
- Active
- Published:
- June 2007
- Stable URL:
- www.dogparkinlafayette.org
I co-designed this site with several members of the local dog group (including my wife). Initially, I completely re-rendered a professional, intricate, table-based layout completely in standards-compliant xHTML and CSS (a source of pride). Since then, we reconsidered the color scheme (generating a scheme more in line with their logo); I redesigned the site's navigation and typography. I am particularly pleased with the little paw print bullets (if you don't like them, chances are you're not a dog person, and we probably won't get along...). The original design, which I was quite fond of, was created by Denton Lusk.
Friends of the Cary Home for Children
- Current Status:
- Active
- Published:
- May, 2005
- Stable URL:
- www.caryhome.org
I have worked with the Friends of the Cary Home since 2004. Their webste was my first venture into standards-compliance; I am particularly pleased with the standards-compliant Flash animation and conditional comment IE work-around (for those unfamiliar, the site uses different style sheets dependent upon whether you view it in Internet Explorer or another web browser, this allows me much more control over the appearance of the site). The site's base composition was derived from the organization's corporate logo--I wanted to design something warm and inviting, with a playful feel, yet still maintaining the seriousness of their mission and professionalism of its members. Recently I redesigned the site's typography, reducing font-size, increasing line-height, and using small-caps for the navigation. Future plans for the site involve a reconsideration of the typography and re-vamped navigation system.
North American Levinas Society
- Current Status:
- Active
- Published:
- April 2007
- Stable URL:
- www.levinas-society.org
I am particularly pleased with this design. I wanted to create a site that is calm, peaceful, composed and inviting--all the tenets I associate with Levinasian (non)-philosophy. Hence, I stayed away from dark blues and decided to use the deep cranberry red and soft shadows--which I hope suggests the somber, yet never cold, spirit of Levinas' work. I also hope it builds off the site's front image of the death camp, which I overlapped with a filtered dove and shadowed with a cranberry red to tie in with the site's theme. Futhermore, I wanted to maximize screen economy while maintaining aesthetic impact (I think the strong contrast of the sidebar and header effectively create this effect, and the header is only 110px). The layout of the site, a fluid two-column design, is based on Alan Pearce's A List Apart article on multicolumn layouts.
Graduate Student English Association
- Current Status:
- Active
- Published:
- September 2006
- Stable URL:
- web.ics.purdue.edu/~gradsea
I took over the GradSEA website in the fall of 2006 and redesigned the site to upgrade its table-based layout. The color scheme and personality of the site were derived from Kristen Seas' logo design. In addition to design duties, I serve as editor of the GradSEA gazette, the English Department's annual publication of student achievement and professionalization.
English 419:
Multimedia Writing (Spring 2006)
- Current Status:
- Archive
- Published:
- August 2006
- Stable URL:
- web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcsantos/419/home
As this course focuses on XHTML coding, I wanted a minimalist site that still expressed some advanced techniques. I am particularly pleased with the color scheme--the periwinkle blue softens and energizes the otherwise subdued and professional gray. Also, I like the background screen shot of Dreamweaver taken during the site's composition process. I believe this homepage design really captures the themes of the course: understanding the codes (both technical and social) operating behind appearance. This site captures my current fascination with small caps as headings--an urge I have resisted in designing my personal site.
English 106:
Intro to Rhetoric & Composition (Fall 2006)
- Current Status:
- Archive
- Published:
- August 2006
- Stable URL:
- web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcsantos/106f2006/home
This is another design that works to capture the course's theme, although I am not quite sure it is as successful as my 419 class (above). The course looks at the history of higher education: from Socrates through postmodernism and complexity theory. Hence the focal image of "presenting a university." Looking at the site now, I might re-think the choice of Copperplate Gothic as the header font, though I am still quite pleased with the usability of the calendar navigation in additional to the float:right site navigation. The site also offers links to several corresponding Drupal sites that were used for forums.
English 106:
Intro to Rhetoric & Composition (Spring 2006)
- Current Status:
- Archive
- Published:
- August 2005
- Stable URL:
- web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcsantos/106f2005/home
An archived site, it has a similar design to a site from a previous semester. The course focused on intellectual property law, and I attempted to design the site with several installation type things to represent the theme of the course. When does an act of "borrowing" become an act of art? Since the course divided into two longer projects, I designed to radicially different calendar sections. Tansey's picture. DJ Spooky box designed in a class exercise in Prof. Jenny Bay's New Media class. These, combined with the Dali rollover, all seek to push the boundaries on what we call "intellectual property." Although the site is quite out-of-date, I leave it as an early example of my work.
Other Projects that Perhaps I Shouldn't Advertise...
Again, click on the thumbnail to view the project.
Guide to Web Standards Design of a Professional Web Presence
I'll be proud of this site one day, though its still under construction. I started putting this together while teaching my multimedia writing class: essentially, these pages are the lecture notes I used to introduce my students to standards-compliant coding. I'm looking forward to finishing the site the next time I teach multimedia writing (hey, search committees, this could be at your school...)
Digital Delivery: Spectral Audiences and Student Writing
This project won the Parlor Press Award for Multimedia Writing in 2006. If you stray away from the introductory page, the installation uses Flash to "present" (har) student projects from my Visual CoOperative Project (discussed in my teaching portfolio). The installation is my first exploration of the argument that dominates my dissertation: that digital communicative technologies spectralize the rhetor's subjectivity in ways that radicially undermine the literate/print assumptions of Platonic/Aristotelian rhetoric. Specifically, Aristotelian rhetoric's aversion to delivery manifests its potential objections to digital streams.
A Polite Conversation on Human Understanding
This was my first project with Flash. Though it needs some tweaking (audio stream and compression issues), I am proud of what I was able to teach myself for this project (thanks to Karl Stolley for some patient assistance). Unfortunately, due to some sloppy usability, you can't stray from the movie page and return to resume progress (to start the movie, simply click on the "movie" tab from the page's top navigation). I'm working on how to do a standards-compliant Satay method that allows you to include Flash player controls just part of my on going struggle with standards-compliant video embeds. My purpose in the piece is pretty clear: to demonstrate that, while Burke might be a bit too constructivist to be considered a postmodernist, his approach to language would drive any self-respecting modernist bananas. Special thanks to my voice talet: Ryan P. Weber and Nathaniel A. Rivers. Humble apologies for my terrible rendition of Burke (I had only heard him speak once when I made this project... this is the example I use to reinforce to my multimedia students the value of research).
Digital Text Project: Espen Aarseth
Here's the first website I ever coded. I had been playing around with HTML for about 3 months when I started the site. Its inspiration comes from Prof. Dino Felluga's Guide to Critical Theory. I keep it hanging around as a reminder that we all start somewhere (even if somewhere is a frame-set, table-based, multi-layed, crazy fonted, never-finished funhouse).