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Welcome!
I'm Sara, a digital designer (well, multimedia professional, working as web and flash
designer with a pinch of web development) currently based in London, UK.
Feel free to take a look at my CV and Portfolio if you want to find out more about my work.
On my free time I can usually be found in the pub with a pint of lager, playing some of my
records or checking what else I can pollute with strong colours and patterns.
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Info
- Freelance Web Designer & Developer at FRS LondonInformation Technology and Services | Portugal, PTSummaryI'm a creative technologist; having a deep understanding of all the stages involved in a digital project. I work primarily within the design/development process but I'm usually involved at earlier stages of the project, consulting and helping to define scope – right through until the later stages of testing and deployment.
I'm passionate about all things digital and hold the opinion that the creative and technological stages cannot be separated from one another.
I work mainly with the Adobe Creative Suite - Fireworks, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver and Illustrator - and with Microsoft technologies - Visual Studio and the Umbraco CMS.
My professional goals include a desire to improve my Javascript knowledge and my logical thinking. I'm keen in exploring emerging digital platforms - particularly tablets - and in playing around with expressive interactive frameworks such as Processing.Specialties: Web Design, Front-end Development and Web Development.Experience- Nov 2011 - PresentFreelance Web Designer & Developer / FRS London• Front end development of several websites - CSS, HTML and Javascript; • Use of Google Maps API to create a custom interactive map; • Build of several websites using Umbraco CMS and Razor; • Optimization (performance wise and SEO) and heavy testing of several websites before launch.
- May 2011 - Oct 2011Digital Designer / EdComsWeb designer and front-end developer • Design of several websites and email marketing campaigns; • Front-end development of several websites, both individually and with the digital team; • Development of an Umbraco website; • Creation of brochures/print material.
- Jul 2009 - May 2011Web Designer / Alpine InteractiveWeb designer and Flash designer/developer • Wireframing, design and implementation of several websites; • Development of several Flash projects involving Augmented Reality, Papervision3D and Multitouch support; • Development of several websites using Umbraco; • Project planning and customer support.
Education-
2006 - 2009Universidade de AveiroBachelor in New Communication Technologies
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2008 - 2008Tampereen teknillinen korkeakouluBachelor in Information Technology
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2005 - 2006Universidade de AveiroBachelor in Design
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2002 - 2005Escola Secundária Camilo Castelo BrancoSecondary School in Arts
Additional Information-
Websites:
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Honors:Short film "Café" nominated for Best Argument, Made in Deca 07
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Interests:Music, cooking, computer architecture and concepts of programming languages, astronomy, reading, geeky and nerdy stuff, retro sci-fi illustrations, vinyl
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Projects
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Tweets
- You know it's time to restart Photoshop when you press arrow down and it copies the selected layers.
- The randomness of my playlists still amazes me - wmp just landed on "Latex Solar Beef", by Frank Zappa.
- @Adobe_Care Is there a way of downloading the apps on CC without using the installer? Can I download the trial versions and swap licences?May 16, 12 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- True, true story - Simply Explained http://t.co/ME0mhKrP
- @fredcerdeira Fair enough. I trololol to that =)
- @fredcerdeira people just like to bash windows, and I don't like that ;) nothing personal!
- @fredcerdeira yeah, and then get fired because I can't do any work.
- New disks, anyone? http://t.co/QzplSUXC
- @wolulcmit Nah, we have too many empty walls ;)
- Tagged: @hadinnerjoy - http://t.co/MKsM5iJX
- FOTC posters framed (finally!), now we just need to hang them on the walls. http://t.co/MKsM5iJX
- Wha...?!!? RT @mashable: Spankable robot butt? What's going on here? It's brand-spanking-new tech, that's what - http://t.co/PGCdUDB0
- Great joys in life - #2: chilled out breakfast with coffee, proper bread toasted, butter and awesome pumpkin & nuts jam.
- Photo: Really nice Coca-Cola poster, couldn’t find any information about it. Saw it a few times and always... http://t.co/Py9j1j1l
- Photo: Never managed to get a good shot of those - have the boxes around but flattened. The kind of thing... http://t.co/ywDYQdyK
- Uber normal day at the office: water all over the keyboard, dinosaur falling from the top of the screen.
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Posts
Really nice Coca-Cola poster, couldn’t find any information about it. Saw it a few times and always wanted to take a picture. Original photo by Ell Brown.
Never managed to get a good shot of those - have the boxes around but flattened. The kind of thing you buy because the packaging is so nice (personally, I’m not a big fan of muesli). There’s a need edition with green and blue boxes that I’d like to get, always thought they would look great as decorative pieces on a kitchen wall.
Me, Monday morning, raining, January and London.
(yes, on those days I’m also unable to speak properly).Brazilian edition of Journey to the Center of the Earth; the cover was created by Carlo Giovani and you can read an interview about how it was created here (portuguese)
The barber is in fact the character pictured here. If you need an haircut, this is the place.
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Posts
- Dec 02, 11
I recently came across an issue while trying to upload large files into Umbraco: they would always timeout, even after the usual changes on the web.config file:
1234<system.web><httpRuntime maxRequestLength="1048576" executionTimeout="3600" />...</system.web>Yesterday, while plotting on my batcave, I came across the solution (and the problem). IIS7 on Windows Server 2008 is limited to a maximum upload size of 30MB. You will need to do the following changes on your web.config file to able to upload large files:
12345678<system.webServer><security><requestFiltering><requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="200000000" /></requestFiltering></security>...</system.webServer>That will do it. Also, if you (and your clients) are uploading large files into Umbraco, using the Desktop Media Uploader is probably a good idea. The only issue I found is that it is not able to recognize custom media types.
Good bedtime reading:
Large file uploads in ASP.NET - Feb 12, 10
At some time ago at work I was playing around with Physics in Flash, using Box2Dflash. There are more 2D engines but I decided to give it a try because it was the first one I saw, at one year and half ago. At the time it was untouchable to me due to my lack of knowledge in AS3 and OOP in Flash, and I was very glad that one year later I managed to play around with it.
This is a simplified version of my original file, where I was generating the number of spheres based on the number of entries in an xml file, and attaching an image to all spheres. On that version we were also trying to integrate the spheres with a touchscreen we had at the office but we ran into problems because the interaction between the two media is different; the library used to detect the touch interaction tries to migrate the mouse movements, what is not very effective in some situations. If you are curious about it you can check it here.
- Feb 12, 10
Hello all,
I found this really nice tutorial on abduzeedo and the first thing that came to my mind was that it will look really good animated. Flash was the most obvious option and here is the final result (click on the post image to view).
I used an AS2 example but I started the migration to AS3; the source will be available here when I finish it.
Sara
- Sep 17, 09
Hello all,
This week I was making some experiences with jQuery and CSS3; for various reasons in the last few months I was not working intensively with html/css and feel I needed some updates. I tried jQuery for the first time – I was using mootools, but jQuery will be more useful to me now – and tried some new features of CSS3, like @font-face. I can imagine a lot of websites on the future using Helveticas .
I fond this nice and smooth accordion using jQuery; accordion can be a pain, particularly if your using the default ones of jQuery or those created with Sprys on Dreamweaver.
And now @font-face: this is an exciting new feature of CSS that will certainly change the way designers build websites. @font-face is working in Firefox 3.5, Opera 10 and Safari 3.1+. Chrome doesn’t support this feature – yet – and IE is a special case (why are we not surprised?). Microsoft developed their own implementation of this, using a proprietary Embedded Open Type (.eot) format. In fact, this is working since IE 5. If you want to use @font-face on IE, you must encode your .ttf or .otf. There are some converters from .ttf to .eot, and from .otf to eot – some of them free, some of them paid. The small example I made is not working with .eot because i couldn’t find a free converter. Any suggestion is welcome
There is, however, a problem with IE rendering .eot fonts: the anti-alias is terrible. In fact, it seems there is no anti-alias at all.
You can see my example here; please note that older browsers may not display the new CSS3 features:
http://www.sara-coutinho.com/labsdemo/jquery_css3/
I also tried the new multi-column text option and it seems to be working perfectly. In the example it has a “matrix” effect because the text is inside the accordion and resizing when it moves.
You can find more about CSS3 here.
Hope you find this useful!
- Sep 13, 09
This week I was browsing PSD tuts and found this really nice tutorial explaining how to create a nice typographic illustration. The good thing about this tutorials is that we can learn a lot of new features/properties/etc of a program. The final result will be very similar to the example provided, but you’ll certainly increase your knowledge and use some of the “tricks” in the next projects.
I changed the text to “Queques & Absinto”, the name of a friend’s blog that likes Art Nouveau. I definitely recommend a visit.
This is the final result:
- Sep 13, 09
Hello all!
Labs is a new section of my website where I will post the latest experiences I’m working on. From simple stuff to not-so-simple ones. I will try to keep this section updated so please stay tuned!
Sara
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Top ArtistsMidnight JuggernautsCrystal CastlesJorge PalmaAirJusticeDaft PunkThe PresetsPink FloydMGMTI MonsterMiami HorrorLate of the PierDeep PurpleThe DoorsDavid BowieBoards of CanadaDeath From Above 1979The WhoThe CureJimi HendrixRed SparowesFoalsCocteau TwinsAmy WinehouseMassive AttackMundo CãoCut CopyFlight of the ConchordsThe Emperor MachineThe Future Sound of LondonSuper Furry AnimalsMetronomyLed ZeppelinSimian Mobile DiscoZero 7Cansei de Ser SexyChromeoRichard O'BrienColosseumThe Rolling StonesXutos & PontapésTrans AmScissor SistersThe KillsBauhausGoldfrappEnigmaMamonas AssassinasJean-Michel JarreHere We Go Magic
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