Tyler Rubis

Category: POSIEL

  • Site Layout Planning

    Site Layout Planning

    2–3 minutes

    I’ve spent the last several days planning how I want my site to look, and what improvements I’m planning to make. I’m really aiming for something minimal so that my photography can shine through as the central focus, and keeping a simple, professional tone so the site can serve as a portfolio.

    I’ve gone through created mock-ups of how I intend to change certain pages on my site, to compare them to how the pages currently look. I posted these mock-up comparisons to my Instagram account @tylerrubisfilms to promote my website as well.

    Starting with the home page and general navigation, I’m planning to keep the overall appearance the same, with a single image and a short welcome message being the only piece of media on the page.

    As far as changes go, I want to replace the one still image with a gallery that will rotate through multiple photos one at a time. I also plan to make the navigation menu larger so that it is more visible and easier to access. I also want to minimize the gap between the picture/page title and the navigation bar, as I find the gap distracting.

    For my About page, I mostly plan to add a bit more information about myself and my artistic vision and goals, as well as add a second section that highlights some of my achievements.

    For my Blog page, my main goal is to add search filters, so as I continue to write and develop my posts, users will be able to find specific topics without navigating through my entire blog history.

    This is where the most work needs to be done. I haven’t yet imported my existing photos and films into the site, but my goal is to work backwards, starting with the pictures that I’ve taken during this course that are complementary to my blog posts, and gradually adding my prior work,

    My objective is to create one big page full of photos, where the user can click on each one to enlarge it and reveal additional information, links to a related blog post, or other photos that are part of the series.

  • Peer Assessment #1

    Peer Assessment #1

    2–3 minutes

    This week I am reviewing Sitong Li’s site luodenghua.com, CROWN OF THE KING. Immediately upon opening the site, I was greeted by an elegant, dark red patterned background and a selection of images that visually complemented the site’s warm colour palette.

    Navigating to the site’s About tab revealed a drop down menu with the options: About Me, About Game, and About Evan Lu. As I went through the 3 sections, I learned a bit about Sitong as a second year communications student at SFU and the focus of her website: a romance video game called Light and Night.

    The website focuses on Sitong’s favourite character from the game, Evan Lu, and through the character’s ‘about’ page and blog posts, provides the audience with background information and game/character lore in a simple and easily-understandable way. Sitong also explains that she intends to generally discuss the genre of romance or otome games where the player plays as a female protagonist and features male love interests, whether or not the viewer is themselves familiar with or plays said games.

    As a whole, the site is very aesthetically pleasing and presents a clear online persona of the author and her interests. As Danah Boyd wrote, even prior to the internet and social media teens have “tried to create publics from their own homes,” and they “often use media and new technologies to do so” (2014). This is something that can be seen in this website, as it is aimed at a very particular audience, sharing content for this specific public.

    I particularly like the thoughtfulness of the site’s design in terms of navigation, as nearly every page has neatly organized buttons that redirect the user to other related pages, or dropdown menus and text boxes that provide further context and information. This design allows the individual pages to maintain a simple appearance when first opened, but lets the user conveniently navigate deeper into the site.

    The site also makes effective use of images, either providing a visual reference for users who may not be familiar with Light and Night and the character of Evan Lu, or by adding personality and individuality, as seen in the ‘About Me’ page.

    If I were to make any suggestions, I would note that on a few pages, such as the ‘About game’ page, contain some quite small text, or text colours that slightly blend into the background such as on the Blog page. The layout of the Process Posts page also feels slightly cumbersome as navigating between posts requires returning to the initial page. Adding a way to navigate from post to post, within the individual posts themselves would make reading through them more fluid and seamless.

    Ultimately, Sitong’s site feels like an ernest and genuine presentation of one of her interests, while also having a unique and clearly defined visual aesthetic that seems to compliment the tone of the game and character in a meaningful and intentional way. While I may not be at all familiar with the website’s primary subject, I appreciate the site’s design and the intentionality behind it, and I am interested to see how it develops further over the duration of the course.

    References

    Boyd, Danah. 2014 “Searching for a public of their own.” It’s Complicated. pp 213-227

  • Mini Assignment #2: A Guest Post by Spider-Man

    Mini Assignment #2: A Guest Post by Spider-Man

    3–5 minutes

    Alright, alright, I know what you’re thinking: 

    “What on earth is Spider-Man doing in Vancouver, British Columbia?” 

    And you know what, that’s a pretty reasonable question to be asking. Surely I should be swinging around the streets of Manhattan catching bad guys, stopping runaway trains, and helping cats out of trees right? Well, it’s a little bit of a weird story…

    A few days ago, I caught some tough dudes in ski masks hijacking an armoured truck right in the middle of Fifth Avenue. Nothing too crazy; it happens every other week. A few well placed webs and the thugs are dangling from the lampposts with the truck parked right below them. I figured I might as well take a peak and see what these guys were trying to snatch, so I popped open the back of the truck and it was NOT what I expected. Half of the interior was taken up by a glass box with a whole miniature ecosystem built inside it, and in the middle, laying on the artificial grass was a raccoon. I snooped around the rest of the truck, trying to find any hints as to what a couple of street thugs were doing trying to steal a terrarium on wheels, but it turned up empty. The only hint was a label on the enclosure that read “Burnaby Mountain Park.”

    I did some digging but I couldn’t find any information on the raccoon or the truck, and when the NYPD interrogated the hijackers, they said they got the job from some anonymous businessman and didn’t know anything else. Heck, I even took the little guy, who I decided to start calling Reggie, over to the Baxter building and let my friend Reed run some tests but he couldn’t find anything unusual either. 

    By this point I had gotten pretty fond of Reggie, but I could tell that he didn’t feel at home in my apartment, so I figured the best thing I could do was to get him home. Now, I didn’t know this but APPARENTLY no mail couriers want to transport a live raccoon, and all of my so called friends with their secret superhero jets were “too busy” to help me get Reggie home so my only option was to throw him in a baby carrier and and take him home myself. FYI, New York to Vancouver? NOT a short trip. Reggie and I hitched a few rides on trucks, trains, and even a nice guy with a Winnebago in Montana.

    The point is, it took us three and a half days but eventually we made it, and I gotta say, it’s pretty nice here! We got into the city around seven in the morning so I decided to explore with Reggie and take a few selfies for my ahem friend Peter Parker over at the Daily Bugle. We got some good web swinging in, but I will say that metro Vancouver is definitely no Manhattan, and I ran out of tall enough buildings to swing from pretty quickly. Reggie and I got a few odd looks on the SkyTrain but after a LONG journey, we made it to Burnaby Mountain.

    As soon as we got on to a trail, Reggie started getting all excited so I let him out of the baby carrier and he instantly started scampering around. Aw man, I wish I had taken a video, he looked so happy! I walked around with him a little more before I got a message that a certain school’s secret jet happened to be passing by and that they’d be willing to give me a ride home, so Reggie and I said our goodbyes (or at least I did, he kinda started rummaging in a garbage bin) and I got ready to leave.

    So yeah, long story short, I travelled 2,500 miles just to drop off a raccoon. Was it worth it? Three long nights riding on the tops of cargo trains and semi trucks? Absolutely. I got to see Vancouver, hang out with my friend Reggie, and Scott even let me fly the Blackbird on the way home (well, for 30 seconds before I told him that I didn’t even have my driver’s license)! So at the end of the day, I’d say it was a solid 7.5 out of 10 trip.

    And don’t worry Reggie, I’ll come back to visit!

    -Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man

  • Mini Assignment #1: Meme

    Mini Assignment #1: Meme

    The objective of this assignment was to create a meme that reflects my online self.

  • Site Setup and Installation

    Site Setup and Installation

    1–2 minutes

    I could say that my site setup and installation has been fun, easy, and straightforward, but that would be a lie. Over the last few weeks, I have been troubleshooting my website and have fully reset and restarted a handful of times. One of my biggest challenges initially was trying to find and work with a theme that didn’t require an additional purchase of a “premium” package in order to access all of the features. After several attempts to use other themes, I ended back where I started, with the default Twenty Twenty-Five theme from WordPress.

    As I went through, trying to set up my site, I knew the kinds of features and pages I wanted but had a hard time trying to implement them. As a photographer and filmmaker, I want my site to act as a portfolio, so I know that I want to have a page dedicated solely to my photos and information about my films. I also know that I want my blog posts and process posts to be neat and organized separately from my portfolio.

    Since I’m aiming for something similar, my main points of reference for my website’s design have been other photographers’ websites, particularly Greg Girard’s (www.greggirard.com) and Liam Wong’s (www.liamwong.com), as they are two of my favourite photographers. I also watched several videos on building websites with WordPress, 

    How to Build a Portfolio Website on WordPress (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5TbR5LV2cw) and How to Create a Portfolio Website With WordPress(2026) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAjcTYc86pg) 

    Since I already have an existing body of work, I’m aiming to import that to my site, while focusing my blogs on current projects and photos. My goal is to post a photo or photo series weekly, and go through the details and thought process in the blog, having a featured photo as well as a link to the series in my portfolio.