Chinese Poetry and the Beauty of CSS

My personal website was in serious need of revival. It did not follow the standards of the World Wide Web Consortium and the navigation system for it was brutal. It was very dependent on the navigation system of the browser for users to move within.

I decided to create a gallery of web pages built with XHTML and CSS Layout. It would be a way to show various designs, but I needed them to all carry a similar theme, so that they did have some relationship to each other.

Many years ago, while visiting friends in Halifax, Nova Scotia, I discovered a bookstore. It was the kind of old bookstore that had piles and piles of books everywhere. There were books on the floor, on tables, and even piles being used as tables. It was definitely the kind of place a book lover could spend hours getting lost in. My kind of place. After, perusing the many shelves of books, I found a book of classical Chinese Poetry.

Chinese Poetry is very emotional and visual. The emotional drive the poets deliver with is breathtakingly inspirational. Reading only a few lines, I was able to visualize scenes and characters acting in accordance with the poem.

Instead of using greeking (http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/), which is typical of most designer to use for presentational designs, I chose to select some poems from, “One Hundred Poems from the Chinese” translated by Kenneth Rexroth, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Rexroth). I tried to design the web pages to best suit the mood of the poem in a metaphorical manner by imitating the aesthetics of an old book.

The gallery can be viewed at:

http://www.michaelcbreuer.com

Note: Pink Floyd’s Roger Water was apparently a fan of Chinese poetry and used it in some of his songs.

Read more about this at:

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2085

http://www.cjvlang.com/Pfloyd/index.html

The Rise of Comic Books

I have always been a fan of comic books. I think I was 8 when I read my first Spiderman comic and have been a fan of the medium since. I am impressed at how strong it has grown and evolved into a means of communication. Sequential art and graphic novels have become accepted as literary means of expression.

The reason I have brought this topic up is because of an article I read at:

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/comics-not-just-for

It was appropriately titled Comics: Not just for laughs! by Rebekah Sedaca. It was an article written on how the comic book form is becoming a popular method of delivering visual instructions and sequential actions. Reading through the reader comments, it was fascinating to see how many professionals in the industry advocate using comics to express an idea in a clear and concise manner that can easily be understood. Viewing the actions removes the need of printed language.

Its awesome to see something that has been looked down upon or considered something for adolescents become as strong as it is today.

I would also like to make a quick reference to Comic Life (www.plasq.com). I recently discovered it among my applications on my Mac Book Pro. Making a comic strip or full comic book has never been so easy. Give it a try and see what creations you can make.

Here is a page I made quickly in Comic Life with an image and the capture option:

Now you try…