Today it rained heavy in Vancouver. Since we agreed to take yesterday off instead of today, I was on my regular schedule.

At the office, Emily asked me and few other people if we wanted to go see the Remembrance Day ceremony at Victory Square which was just two blocks away from our office. I had watched it on television several times before, but had never been to an actual ceremony. So I thought, for the first time, it would be nice to be there and see with my own eyes.

With three other colleagues including Emily, I got to the Victory Square around 10:30am. There were about a few hundreds of people I guess. Like I said, it rained heavy today, and the windchill was also pretty low at the moment, so Emily and I were shivering during the whole time. Plus, my trouser cuffs were all wet since I was in my loafers, which was not very smart of me.

Nonetheless, what I liked about the ceremony was that it actually made me think about the past and the people who fought for this land and also for my homeland Korea. I mean, if it wasn’t for the ceremony, I don’t think I would have paid much attention to the actual meaning of the day other than simply remembering to put a poppy on my chest.

Looking at the veterans and soldiers marching, passing by me, I thought it must had been difficult for some of them to stay out there for more than an hour in this weather. Some were old and some were very old. None of them looked spiritless, though.
It was solemn and honorable I’d say.

After the ceremony, I felt like I was Canadian. Felt somewhat patriotic to this country, my 2nd homeland.

If you missed it, you can watch the highlights at CTV.ca or click here.

There are many inspiring web designers. Each day I find more and more sites and individuals worth to be saved on my bookmarks.

Today I’d like to write about three designers who inspire me both visually and spiritually. They are all very successful designers and pretty well-known in the web design industry. Not only they have the right styles to grab people’s attention with their talents and creativity but they’re actively sharing their faith with others on the web. I think they’re some great examples of how I should use my skills and glorify God at the same time.

1. Camerom Moll

I’ll start with Cameron Moll since I got to know about him before the other two.

When I was at VFS, one of our instructors told us about Authentic Jobs, a job posting website for designers and developers, created by Cameron Moll. He is an Interaction Design Manager at LDS Church in Salt Lake City, Utah, and also an author, speaker, and a father of four sons. He’s a co-author of CSS Mastery, which is sitting right beside my iMac, and Mobile Web Design, both published by Friends of Ed. Working full-time at a church is something I really want to do someday, when the time is right.

2. Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain

One day, at the bottom of Cameron Moll’s portfolio, I found a link to a design studio, 31Three. I clicked on it out of curiosity, of course, and there was another talented Christian designer, Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain. At first I noticed he was residing in Ontario, and I was almost thrilled when I found out he was the one behind two of my favourite CCM sites, Hear it First and Your Music Zone. How cool would that be if you can design and build sites like that which will ultimately let people hear and sing more praises!
In one of his weblog posts, he tells the meaning of the name, 31three, which was quite inspiring to me.

“When I was starting the business 5+ years ago, my wife and I were wrestling with what to name it. After a couple days of thumbing through dictionaries and thesauruses looking for the perfect name, Heather stumbled on an obscure text in the book of Exodus (31:3) that talks about God placing his Spirit on a guy named Bezalel to be creative, and to make stuff.”

3. David Joyce

Last person on my list is David Joyce. I can’t remember where I found him. Probably on Styleboost or WebCreme.. or Best Web Gallery. He even has a separate category named as “God,” where he posts thoughts and ideas about God and his spiritual insights. The lasted post on the God category is What makes me a Christian. Here he talks about God’s grace and I thought that was a really cool thing to do.

Happy to see designers of faith who are actually good :)

A few month ago, there was a post on VFS blog to introduce a book design project that our class had done in Term 4.
The administrator asked some of us to provide them with a bit of information with pictures to give them more ideas of how it was done and why it was such a great experience.

I didn’t send any insights of mine since there was almost no spare time for me back then, but I was glad that they did mention my name with a little comment from Robin who was our instructor for Print Design and Typography classes.

“[Annie] used an unusual book format (page proportion) and quite professional typesetting skills to create a professional and intelligent final book design.”

You can see the full post here.