Camp Firebelly 2009

Putting the sleeping bags away

Craig Clark — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:58:55 +0000

The sleeping bags have been rolled up and the laptops have been put away. This must be the sign that camp is finally coming to a close. Today held our final meeting with Radio Arte, where we launched the website, showcased our poster, and unveiled our newly designed interior and exterior space of the main broadcasting booth. All were met with great appreciation and love from Radio Arte. We cannot thank Radio Arte enough for giving us young designers the opportunity to create designs that will grow and change their image for the next few years. You can see the finished projects and our adventures along the away on our flickr page.

Thanks to everyone who helped us on our way during this great week and a half, from the Firebelly staff – Dawn, Antonio, Will, Keith, Darren, and Shannon. To the many who’ve helped us build and achieve the projects including Rick Valicenti, Jason from Delicious Design League, Jason from Bright Bright Great, The Post Family crew, Chris from Someoddpilot, and the many other new friends we’ve had the opportunity to meet. I think I can speak for the rest of the campers when I say this has been one of the most exciting, challenging, and awesome projects we’ve had the pleasure to be a part of.

Thanks again to Firebelly for opening their doors, hearts, and air mattresses for us! And letting us create some great work for a great cause!

Final Night

chris — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:18:52 +0000

This is it…last night as a camper at Firebelly. The website is done, the poster is signed, and the space is rockin’. What an amazing 10 days with an amazing group of designers and people. This, for me at least is going to be one of those things moments in my design life I will not forget.
We will see tomorrow how excited Radio Arte is with everything we have done over the past ten days, but if their response is anything like the one we got from The Post Family tonight, we will be in good shape!
The Post Family came in to view our Collab-o-rama projects, everyone was unique, and effective! We spanned the board as far as projects go, but all really well done and engaging.
For the last ten days, we have; had a client meeting, mood board, client pitch, revisions, screen printing, web-design, interior graphics, interior design, exterior graphics, CD cover, and our Collab-o-rama. And thats only the projects!
The group of people it takes to put on a large camp like this is astonishing. Dawn and her crew really stretch out into the design community and pull in some big names to spend time with us and teach us what they know.
As far as the campers, this group of designers will go on and out. They will all do different things with this experience, but one thing is for sure, we are all better for having the opportunity to spend that last ten days with Firebelly.

Keith is Awesome

lorraine — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:48:12 +0000

Everything I Needed to Know (about coding), I Learned at Camp Firebelly

When we received our assignments last week, I was really excited to be on the website team. Not only was it great to get to work with the others in my group and Jason Schwartz, among other guests, but I was really looking forward to getting to help code the site. After an intense weekend crash-course-marathon-coding-event, I have come to one conclusion: Keith is Awesome.

Now, I don’t want to suggest that any of the other Camp Staff members are any less awesome than Keith… (A special thanks goes out to Dawn for having us, Will for helping/learning along with our team, Antonio for supplying a great stock of movies, and his girlfriend for the most delicious cupcakes in Chicago.) However, over the course of the past weekend, Keith has managed to accomplish what two semesters of web-design classes were never able to do in college: I now feel like I understand what I am doing. How did he accomplish such a miraculous feat? Why, with Four Mind-Blowing Revelations. I now present for your consideration the 4 MBR’s:

Crash Course/Ordered vs Unordered Lists
The first night , Keith totally blew my mind by giving us a brief overview of the basics of laying out a website in code to get it ready for styling in css. Prominently featured was an explanation of Ordered vs Unordered Lists. Is the order of the items in your list necessary for understanding the list? For example , are you outlining the steps of assembling your own golf cart? Then use an Ordered List. Are the items in your list just listed in a certain order, but not necessarily need to be in that order? Use an Unordered List.
The Subtle Art of Hiding Text
Have an image with some text on it and think you don’t have to type that text in the html? Wrong! Including the copy in the html and then hiding it is essential for SEO and Accessibility. To do this, Keith taught us his not-so-secret ways of subtly making said copy disappear. Magic!
Image vs Image
Much like the Ordered vs Unordered List revelation, Keith made the issue of Image versus Background Image easy as pie . It seems that if your image relates to the content of the page, then it needs to fit into an image tag. But, but! If your image relates to the style of the page, then it needs to be set as a background image.
…and last, but certainly not least, A Brief History of html, xml, and xhtml Languages
Did you know that xhtml was created because the Powers That Be thought that coders were being too sloppy with their html? Or that xhtml is ultimately falling out of use because the browsers themselves are lazy? The future of html is looking pretty bright and HTML5 promises to be better than ever. How could it not be with a proposed tag?? Here are a few that I would like to see: , , and

By this time, things were getting a bit loopy due to lack of sleep . Strange comments were known to have been overheard. I started making really bad analogies such as comparing the relationship between divs, margins, and padding to a padded white room. Finally, the coder hand-signs started getting busted out. And let me tell you, the site is looking pretty darn good: get excited…because we are.