---
title:  "Project Facelift, New and Old"
pubDate:   2021-02-25 16:41:41 -0600
tags:   ["projects", "photography", "update"]
preview_image: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Xevion/Paths/master/.media/banner.png"
description: "Through December, I decided to make heavy visual changes to many of my biggest projects, creating custom banners, of which I am quite proud..."
---

Through December, I decided to make heavy visual changes to many of my biggest projects, creating custom banners, of which I am quite proud...

[![/Paths/ Banner][paths-banner]][paths]

The most advanced of them, the cells in the background are designed to mimic the real Paths project as closely as possible.
The angled gradient stroke on the text helps break up the text on the background with all 

If you want to see [the SVG form][paths-svg], Adobe Illustrator exports it perfectly!
It's a shame though, [not all browsers support it][paths-svg-glitch], as I figured out on my laptop shortly after using a SVG.

[![/phototag/ Banner][phototag-banner]][phototag]

Besides being my first major project, this banner means something personal to me as every one of those photos in the background are *mine*.
I took them with my own camera. You can find every single one on my [photography portfolio][photography-portfolio].

[![/Boids/ Banner][boids-banner]][boids]

The first banner I designed, I'm still not exactly happy with how it came out, but regardless, it works well enough I guess.

[![/power-math/ Banner][power-math-banner]][power-math]

A very simple banner indeed.

[![/contest/ Banner][contest-banner]][contest]

Yeah, I'm not super proud of this one either.

To be clear, I am not normally a graphic designer - HTML & CSS is something I struggle with for hours and hours trying to get right 
(I hope my efforts have paid off in all that you see), so making designs like this was both a challenge and a learning experience like no other.

I'm so happy I did it, and I hope those who see it see the work I put in to make my projects look good. Fingers crossed I return to Illustrator for every major project.

---

I created [**power-math**][power-math] in order to create a method for me to practice simple and fast arithmetic problems among others.
I designed it with LaTeX rendering in mind, to give it that feel of 'reality' other fonts can't give.
Once again, another dark theme app since I'm lazy and don't know how to do light themes.

Using Vue sped this process up *a lot*, and very quickly I had a working application with awesome visuals and animations.
Additionally, since the project is completely client-side, so you can [practice with it yourself][power-math-pages]!

<video autoplay muted>
    <source src="/img/power-math-demonstration.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>
I'm probably embarrassing myself quite a bit here with how slow I am - I wasn't kidding when I said I made this project so I could get better!

![power-math settings][power-math-settings]
The project is setup to support many different kinds of problems, each with their own difficulty settings, as well as the ability to completely disable them.
On top of that, by hovering over each level of difficulty, you can preview what a problem might look like, latex supported!

---

This post was not posted on time correctly, so if anything seems out of place - that's why. I attempted to refurbish it
so things read cleaner and aren't out of place, but I'm not perfect working at 1:40AM in the morning.

[paths]: https://github.com/Xevion/Paths
[paths-banner]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Xevion/Paths/master/.media/banner.png
[paths-svg]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Xevion/Paths/master/.media/banner.svg
[paths-svg-glitch]: https://i.imgur.com/ynZ5vqy.png
[phototag-banner]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Xevion/phototag/master/.media/banner.png
[phototag]: https://github.com/Xevion/phototag
[boids]: https://github.com/Xevion/Boids
[boids-banner]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Xevion/Boids/master/.media/banner.png
[power-math]: https://github.com/Xevion/power-math/
[power-math-banner]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Xevion/power-math/master/.media/banner.png
[contest]: https://github.com/Xevion/contest
[contest-banner]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Xevion/contest/master/.media/banner.png

[photography-portfolio]: https://www.rcw.photos/
[power-math-pages]: https://xevion.github.io/power-math/
[power-math-video]: /img/power-math-demonstration.mp4
[power-math-settings]: /img/power-math-settings.png
