The Lab

This section is devoted to spec designs and code, that is fake stuff I've created on my own to demonstrate my skills in either arena. You may ask "But Matt, you have lots of 'real work' in your portfolio, why are you reverting to the demonstrations of someone right out of school?" The complex nature of modern development roles mean that you are just one of many people on a team. Bits of design or code may be augmented by or combined with that of other people. Often it evolves into something different from what you did originally, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. Point being, its harder to get a sense of what kind of code or design a person actually does by looking at something that is the result of a team of 10-20 people. I've come to see the value of doing somethign like this, whether you are "right out of school" or a 20 year veteran. I think its a good idea either way.

*2009-10-02: I should note I just started this with the launch of my new design, so things are a bit thin at the moment. I will be adding new items as I get time over the following weeks.

Right Brain

This is "creative" stuff. Design work that starts in photoshop, illustrator, or sometimes on paper.

  • Spec Comps for Napster - * I didn't finish this yet, but as I have nothing else to post I'm putting it up right now in its unfinished state.

Left Brain

This is "technical" stuff. Code and/or widgets I've written (probably in Javascript) to do little things

CSS

View my CSS Demo

I made a demo for those interested in seeing my standalone CSS skills. That is just my CSS, without the attrition of general site maintenance in the way. I put this together in about 6-7 hours thats comp to completion. It is just a fairly standard 960 layout made in a quick and dirty way as a demo. If I can get some time I will update some future versions to refine this page a bit more. Click here for more information

* I should also note I only tested this for compatibility on FF3.5.5, Safari 4, IE6 and IE7. IE has a few issues I couldn't get around in my "1 day web page", which are:

  • Sign In/login overstate issues (wonky/non-working) -IE6
  • Submit button needs script for rollover -IE6
  • arrows for job bullets vanished randomly - replaced w/ standard discs IE7

Photoshop JS

The following are some scripts I wrote for Photoshop CS3 to create guides in a few useful ways. These are scripts I made for personal use and are fairly procedural/quick and dirty.

To use, in os x place scripts in your Home directory in a directory called "Adobe Scripts" ("~/Documents/Adobe\ Scripts/"). In windows I'm not sure where this would be (sorry).

I made a screencast on my blog to show how these are used as well.