About

Greetings! This is Em.

I specialize in illustration and storytelling through design by combining illustrative concept design, 3D animation, and visual development to embody deeply meaningful and story-driven work. My work with branding, print-advertising, and 3D rendering shows how intention and cultural diversity links to all design.

I believes that my desire to improve and to push myself beyond my limits is where my strength lies. The goal is to share stories through design and to assist others in realizing their dreams can become much more than their imagination.

Workspace Setup Assignment.

Associate a domain with a hosting account (only if registered with separate providers).

I registered my domain name exsdesign.com when I bought the hosting plans with Namecheap, so I did not need to do this, but if I ever need to change hosts, I can keep the domain where it is if I update the name servers.

Request that your domain be reclassified to a category that will allow for site access in more restricted environments.

Since my site is new, it was being flagged as suspicious by the College firewall, and I could not view it on campus wifi. I requested that it be reclassified as a personal site at PaloAlto Networks paloaltonetworks.com so that it will be viewable at schools, banks, and hospitals in case I apply for a job at one of them.

paloaltonetworks.com request for reclassied personal domain permissions.

Plan your folder structure to aid in file management for your web projects.

Use strategic nomenclature to name files and folders in a way that helps to describe the content of your website.

Review HTML coding concepts to create a template to use as boilerplate code for new pages.

I created a basic HTML template to simplify the process of creating new web pages so that I do not have to build each page from scratch.

Use a local development stack to create, preview, and update pages with PHP on your computer.

A local development stack will allow me to use PHP for my website without havng to publish every page to see the changes I have made. I am using MAMP for this.an image that shows MAMP's start screen open and running in front of a browser window that has a page open at localhost

Use PHP to eliminate redundant code in your template.

My HTML template is useful, but I would have to update every page that uses it if I made changes to the code down the road. I used PHP to simplify the repetitive process of creating multiple pages. With PHP I can put all the code that needs to be used on more than one page into a file that I can pull for each page, then I only have to make updateds to that code once at the source instead of everywhere it is used.

Use your PHP template to create an index page to assist with site navigation during development.

My hosting company will not allow anyone to access a folder that does not have an index page, so I have created a home page with some temporary text to use until I build the real thing.

Create an FTP account to access your hosting space.

I created a new FTP account that I can use to move files from my computer to my hosting space and back

a screenshot showing a new FTP account for my exsdesign.com domain

Configure an FTP client to connect to your hosting space using FTP.

I used Filezilla to connect to my hosting space using FTP because it is the fastest way to move files back and forth, and I also used the settings in a site definition so that I can connect in a single click instead of typing the information in every time.

a screenshot showing my hosting space connected in Filezilla with a new site definition to save the connection information

Streamline the process of connecting to your hosting space by saving the site connection settings in your FTP client.

I have created a new email address that uses my domain that I created and opted to route mail sent to that account through my existing Gmail account so that I do not have to check another account.

Create an email address that is associated with your domain name.

Configure an email client to send and receive emails from your new account.

A CTA is a sentence that tells the user what to do next and provides a link to the next page.