Robert Denton - Media and Design Consulting

Robert Denton - web strategist and designer

Perpetual nodesign in process…
the cobbler's shoes and all that.

About this site and Robert Denton

I am the Web Strategist at Bowdoin College. For the past five years I have helped lead two redesigns of our entire web site. One was an implementation of an outside firm’s design, and the second in 2004 was my own design. You can read more about it below.

I work in the Bowdoin Design Group within Communications and Public Affairs. We are dedicated to creating, serving, and consulting on media and design projects and applications affecting Bowdoin’s web presence. We work closely with Information Technology to accomplish our goals.

Before these projects Bowdoin I implemented one major redesign based on a visual design from an outside firm, shortly thereafter I built the first online tour, audience focused “gateways”, redesigned the Admissions web site, and built the UI for a Student Information System web access tool.

I’ve been working with publishing in one form or another since high school and have been involved in in many facets of publishing and production from what was once called “new media” in the late 80s, desktop publishing, computer assisted design, and multimedia production. Now it’s called “web design” but it’s all the same banana really, just different medium and mechanisms.

I started a MovableType blog in late 2001 and the archives live on… it’s mostly scratch pad material and link blogging. I stopped writing anything in 2004 or so and slowly focused the site’s information around link-spam (link blogging) and a few articles typically about product annoyances or design issues. I have now moved it off-site to my own domain robertdenton.org.

Education


MFA, Photography—School of Art & Design, Univ. Illinois, Chicago [site design doesn’t let me deep link into the graduate program section]

BFA, Photography—Univ. Houston
Cum Laude

Aside from photography, concentrations for both degrees included art history, design studies, and digital media.

Background


From about 1988 to 1995 I was in school and working as an artist making work to hang in galleries. While completing my BFA in Photography, I taught a few classes at Houston School for the Performing and Visual Arts for David Sheard, the wonderful director of that department. I also made money by doing a summer camp, waiting tables, and doing freelance desktop publishing (yech). During this period in Houston, TX. I participated heavily in the art community putting on shows, being in shows, and living in one of the worst but best art warehouses in the city.

In 1993 I moved to Chicago for an MFA. This was a huge change for me. I went without any vehicles, I knew nobody in the city, and I was becoming more interested in functional design as I ventured deeper into a fine art program. I like to say that I studied myself into a theoretical corner. I could not continue making gallery art. That aside, my favorite part of my art degrees were the seminars where I studied color theory, design history, art history, usability, the history of photography, the history of film (Ken Burns and Frederick Wiseman joined a few sessions of that seminar), and more…

After graduate school in Chicago 1995 I moved to Maine where I worked in a video production shop V.P. Film & Tape. I was hired as the multimedia designer. We produced and developed applications in Macromedia Director & Authorware, animation for broadcast, screensavers, and more. I left the company with a colleaque and we started Sputnick I.D.A. where we continued on in the same manner. Our clients included Maine Public Broadcasting, National Semiconductor, Osram Sylvania, and several marketing groups in Maine.

Other interests (in no particular order)