I am Kai Chan Vong,
UI designer & front-end developer at JustGiving & Volley.me
UI designer & front-end developer at JustGiving & Volley.me
Let’s face it, the web is broken. For those of you reading who aren’t technical – I’ll sum it up, so many of the things we’ve done with technology have been hacked together without proper thought or consideration.
Lets look at the computer and the mouse… Apple, Nintendo and now Microsoft have all realized how broken they are and have begun fixing it with the iPhone, the Nintendo Wii and of course project Natal. The whole direction is to make the use of tools as least abstract and more natural.
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March 20th, 2010
At JustGiving I frequent get asked about what is the future is on some level or another. Sometimes people ask me what’s going on with HTML5, other times it’s about Google Buzz or Google Wave. I tend… like most politicians, to be unable to tell them the future for the difficult bits and for some of the more obvious ones – I say what I think or that others have validated online.
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March 14th, 2010
Hey, so I wanted to quickly do a blog post about my new stylesheets that we’re using on JustGiving. They’re awesome. And boy do I mean awesome.
We’ve finally been given the chance to separate away from the .NET skins file and build on MVC which allows me – as the front-end developer, to work and build nicely semantic code. In the past we had to carefully dodge and tip toe around controllers, fearful of our jQuery not working. But now… awesomeness prevails. I’m able to separate my global styles from my process styles. So what does this really mean?
read more...Tags: CSS, web standards
Posted in web development | 2 Comments »
March 9th, 2010
Oh gosh. It’s that time again isn’t it. Just a month into the release of my new site, I’ve taken my brand and extended it further. I guess this is the one thing that as a designer we all suffer… the never ending search for happiness (props to EAK for the link).
Then, having read a 24Ways Article by Meagan Fisher who insisted that Photoshop was evil and you can build your site fully in markup… I gave it a go and the current blog (not in the image below) was the output.
Tags: 24 ways, CSS, design, kai vong site, markup, meagan fisher, mockup, photoshop
Posted in design | 1 Comment »
January 19th, 2010
My latest project was for a recruitment agency client – Pool Digital, whom required a CMS custom built to their needs with a design that worked ubiquitously around their brand and logo.
The build involved photography, jQuery, PHP, HTML, CSS, Google Analytics on top of a install WordPress in rather short turn over time during the Christmas break. I got the chance to work alongside acclaimed ‘SheSays Golden Stiletto Winner‘ award winning copywriter, Yasmin Quemard of Iris, Dare and AKQA fame.
Tags: Company, design, Pool Digital, portfolio, Recruitment Agency, website
Posted in portfolio | 1 Comment »
January 18th, 2010
Home through ice, food on grill, vacuuming buddy Sookie cleaning like the little domestic robot she is and I’ve got a presentation to complete ready for tomorrow (I started writing this on Friday!).
Suki has still been working hard on those pine leaves that my little Christmas tree left as a parting gift. They are pine leaves right?
read more...Tags: book, design, Designer, Ellent Lupton, font, review, type, typography
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January 7th, 2010
As well as working as a front-end developer… another passion of mine, is in design through sketching ideas and UI layouts.
Below is a homepage sketch from Oct. 2008.
Alongside sketching ideas, I often carry out guerrilla user testing sessions with family & friends to learn quickly how people interact with websites, data and information when visualised.
Tags: design, sketches, user experience, UX
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January 6th, 2010
It’s been a wonderful Christmas and New Years break hasn’t it? Just swell I would say. What have you been up to?
Thanks to the wonderful world of Advertising that I’ve been imersed in since getting into the US hit TV show, ‘Mad Men‘ – I’ve started to think about how I’ll be reinventing myself. It’s a wonderful show and it’s drama and dark characters really have me addicted. Yet it’s not been enough to keep me away from the somber light of my beautiful little Mac.
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January 1st, 2010
Almost a week has passed and you might be forgiven to think nothing has occured on the site, yet the following got implemented:
Tags: New site, updates
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November 10th, 2009
Following the redesign of this site I had a number of interesting comments on the design. Being a bit of a perfectionist at times, has meant that I’m not fully content with it all. However, instead of feigning contentment with it, I’ve put together this post to explain my current gripes and how I’m going to amend it.
White space on the homepage – I didn’t really like the homepage at first… especially when viewing it on Windows. However I’ve given it a bit more space and I’ll continue to play and invoke a little bit more emotion and dynamic information here, whilst keeping it neat and simple.
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November 4th, 2009