Ivy Tan

This is my blog’s current design. Since it is relatively new, it hasn’t achieved much in terms of recognition but it is the design that I am most proud of. It is the first time I had incorporate transparent PNGs to my designs thus completely eradicating a graphic header. The illustration of the flower was drawn on Photoshop using the vector pen tool.

One drawback with this design is Internet Explorer 6’s inability to read PNGs. PNG support is only available for the most modern browsers, and as such, this site isn’t as compatible as its predecessors.

This is the second Wordpress theme designed for my current blog. This layout was an experiment for creating a one-column layout. Like its predecessor, everything was scripted according to web standards and optimized for search engine listing. It was this layout that won my blog an award from my web hosting company.

This layout was also the first time I had designed a fancy footer to compensate for the lack of a sidebar.

This is the first Wordpress theme I created for my current blog. The illustration of the pendant was based on a necklace I bought in Montreal. This is the first layout I created with full compatibility with all modern browsers. Many SEO techniques including valid coding and customized permalinks were used to ensure a high placement on Google and Yahoo!

The SEO optimization was a success! All new entries are placed on the first page of Google and received a pagerank of 4 very soon after its launch. The design was featured on many CSS galleries, the most notable being Design Meltdown. See full list here.

I was playing around with unconventional ways of designing a web log and decided on a horizontal scroll, instead of the traditional vertical scroll. In terms of search engine listings and global accessibility, such a layout will fare very badly because bots and browsers aren’t able to surf the site well.

In terms of design, this site was quite a success! It was featured on various CSS galleries and popular design magazines; the most notable being Smashing Magazine and Design Meltdown.

The site was designed in 2006 in Adobe Photoshop. The HTML and CSS was hand-coded on Notepad. The site took around 20 hours to complete.

I designed four layouts for Leave the Pack Behind during my 1.5 years there.

#1: 2006 Layout

This is the first layout I created for LTPB. As I was still quite new to the organization and was unsure of their expectations, I designed a very basic layout putting usability first before aesthetics. Everything, except the logo was created by me. Coding was handcoded on Notepad.

#2: Contest Layout

Every year, Leave the Pack Behind holds a quit smoking contest. The theme we decided in 2006 was inspired by Survivor, the reality tv series, where the last quitter survives and wins $1000 from the organization. From that theme, I designed the logo, which is essentially a non-smoking logo jazzed up to look like the Survivor logo.

#3: Summer Layout

Since Leave the Pack Behind is a campus program, they do not operate during the summer. Nevertheless, the organization wanted to maintain the site so that potential smokers may continue to find information on the site.

#4: 2007 Layout

Using the organization’s official colors, I designed a new layout for 2007. This layout is the first time I’ve attempted to use AJAX and Javascript; I used the famed Accordion script for the site’s menu - all in hopes that a little animation would excite our visitors!

These flyers are designed to promote an carbon monoxide testing event for Leave the Pack Behind. They are aimed at university students in Toronto. It is fully designed on Photoshop in 2007.

This is a poster designed for a Leave The Pack Behind marketing campaign in 2007. The cigarettes were drawn on Adobe Illustrator. The rest was put together on Adobe Photoshop.

There are business cards I designed for Leave the Pack Behind. The colors green and orange are the flagship colors for the organization. The design took roughly 1 hour for both cards and was fully designed on Adobe Photohop. Year of design: 2006.