Design – Page 2 – GraphicImprov

Statistics and a Story

stats logo

The little logo is from the first time I got a chance to revamp the CREA Statistics pages.

Originally, that was all I was asked to do, but of course I wanted to prove I could do at least one better. The stats pages consisted of about fifteen board member statistics from various associations and boards from across Canada, comprising the “meat ‘n taters” of local real estate sales. It looked something like this…

original stats page

It was early stages and it had all the information promised, but it didn’t ‘sparkle’. There wasn’t proper branding. People couldn’t find the facts easily and the boards wanted a bigger exposure. The hodge-podge of colour and icons was distracting, but such was the days of early HTML. This version had stuck around a little too long.

My director asked for an single icon for the upper banner.

So, I took it upon myself and with the help of a couple of colleagues, rebuilt the thing from the ground up to make it more visual and with some up-to-date code and some re-use of some illustrations I had done for other CREA sites. There was so many sites, but that would have to change later.

Update No. 1

(click on image for full page)

With cleaner banner and icon in place, I added some graphs that could be updated by the stats deptartment. Building on the last build, I recoded and rebuilt it myself so text could also be supplied by the local association and uploaded to their folders. No compromise! I taught the stats-dept to update the separate data-text files and voilà, the pages could be updated far easier, with the help of some CSS2 and JavaScript to pull the text and graphs in and into place. The graphs could be clicked on and pop-up in larger detail. The headlines and text would all fit in. However it wasn’t long before it become a little rusty as well. CREA Stats was it’s own site and the next step was to make it even easier to update content, encorporate as part of the entire CREA site experience, as a whole and the best part… it would be responsive.

Updated Again

More Board Stats Here…

pull down

The graphs have gone to the left and still pop up larger in the centre to view. The editing for the stats-dept is even easier with some redefining of the folder structure, some updated JavasScript, CSS3 and HTML5. The “Dark Mode” was added and code updated recently (not by me), but the layout is pretty much the same. (I would have liked to see the pulldown brightly coloured and using ‘focus’ code, but I don’t get to play with it anymore)

The top header defines access to all the CREA web sites in one place for a unified responsive ‘power’ site.

The main page is the National at https://creastats.crea.ca/en-CA/ or Français at https://creastats.crea.ca/fr-CA/. The right column has the same pulldown to get at all the individual boards and associations from across Canada that have since joined the stats pages. It started out as less than 20 and bloomed to over 65 boards showing their stuff on over 500 pages.

Bike-Packer for the Long Time Rider

Bike Packer

I used to ride my bike with a few guys in the summer on long trips. We rode 5-600km in 2 weeks or so. We rode in Quebec, Newfoundland and northern Scotland – which I can tell you – is not flat.

I had a school project that required 3D [Maya] and some video. We had to come up with a product to sell.

Bike Packer idea

My idea – since I loved to bike – was to create a bike pack that converted to a back pack. You could lock up your bike and hike into a spot, camp and hike back out. The idea came to me in Scotland, when we had to leave our bikes to climb a hill. You certainly couldn’t take the bike up the “Munro” hill. Unloading your bike would take seconds and you had an easy to carry pack that you could take into your hotel or hostel.

I’ve not been biking the last 4 years, since being injured in a car accident. I’m hoping to bike again someday. Maybe I’ll even get to make a real Bike-Packer.

In the meantime, watch what you’re doing.

Don’t text and drive. Put the phone down or use hands-free if you have to use a phone. But, really, just use some common sense. You’ll be saving more lives by waiting until you’re off the road.

Bye Bye, Tai Ping

Today’s digital choices makes decisions so varied, it can almost be a problem making a final decision. Client involvement means further changes and not always good. People like to be able to make a contribution and they don’t know what they want until they see they don’t want that.

Tai-Ping

Take for example the above images for a local restaurant take-out menu header. [2015-ish] It’s easy to make changes in digital, make new shapes and try a dozen different good choices while working. The final choice by the owner was it was too fancy and looked too expensive and so he decided he didn’t want to change after all, so the design was tossed. All in all I did ten or so designs with variouus type faces and they only took a couple of hours of computer time. Not at all a huge loss really. Had it been from sketches to line art, it would have been a week or more just for an initial presentation and $$ out of pocket.

Not that I would have charged Nelson for a design. After over 15 years of hanging at Tai Ping, I consider him a friend. The place is gone and I will always miss him and his ‘home’ cooking, It always felt like he was doing it just for me.

The Tai Ping has gone the way of so many restaurants – victims of Covid-19. I hope we can meet again.