Portfolio of web designer and front-end developer Cristiana Bardeanu

I normally don’t do print work – actually besides my own business cards, I never done any print work at all. But when Pedro, a friend of mine asked me to help design his wedding invitation, I just couldn’t say no.

A good friend of mine Malgosia moved to a new apartment and asked me to add something personal to her new place, and we both agreed that the best thing to do would be a wall painting.

Sliding header images are everywhere now with the expansion of jQuery and other easy to use javascript libraries, so I thought it would be useful to share some tips and principles on how to design a good header.

This post focuses on how to narrow down the design options by analyzing your clients favorite websites.

A good client of mine – hi Anthony! – need a small website designed in a real hurry and after getting it all up and running, I thought this would also make for a good opportunity to share a bit of insight into my creative process.

A few weeks ago I was a bit stuck with some of my web design work so I decided to take a break and have some fun with my little home photo studio.

I meant this post to be like a general checklist that developers can use when coding a PSD or PNG layout. It covers some basic design principles and things that are most commonly misinterpreted in the coding phase and that usually come back and haunt you when dealing with the client (or angry designer).

When designing your portfolio website you should always remember that the main purpose of having a portfolio website is to get you more work. So if you’re busy designing or redesigning your portfolio, here are some tips I hope you’ll find useful.

This is the second and final part of my “work setup” series where I go over the most common applications I use in my web design work. Also, in case you’ve missed it, check the first part where I go over the hardware.

I finally finished one of the most frustrating paintings I’ve worked on so far and I’m very relieved to finally get it done and also quite happy with the results. So I guess it pays to be persistent. And a bit neurotic.

All designs look nice and crisp in Photoshop or Fireworks (or whatever graphic editing software you’re using). But as soon as we start converting those images into a live website, trouble happens. Artifacts, fuzzy text, banded gradients, pixelated photos, not to mention ever-increasing file sizes.

When starting out, a lot of new designers face the challenge of actually finding work and building a portfolio. Outside the typical “work for friends and family”, bidding websites like Elance.com or Guru.com seem like a good place to start.

I had quite a few emails from people interested to know what kind of setup I normally use for my work. So today I’m going to run through my hardware setup and in a follow up post I’ll go over the software.

It was wet and cold these past few days here in Amsterdam, but decided to get out of the house anyway and take short a bike ride to a nearby park just outside Amsterdam. And take a few photos as well!

This is the first in a series of paintings I’ve started some months ago, trying out a new technique in oil painting which closely resembles the way the “old masters” used to paint.