Tiny Corner of Pitt(sburgh) Assignment: Biddle’s Escape Coffee Shop
Arielle Reed
Located in Regent Square, Biddle’s Escape Coffee Shop is home to magnificent coffee, a beautiful outdoor seating area, and a positive environment that seems to inspire creativity in its patrons. I encourage anyone interested in finding a quiet space to read or work to explore this tiny corner of Pittsburgh. Check out my site here!
Cover Letter:
During the second week of this course, I was emailed an application for a Marketing job. On the side, it had a list of skills with check boxes next to them. “Please select everything you have experience with” the list said. It included InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, GoogleAnalytics, Hubspot, and working in a CMS. I don’t think I fully understood how valuable this course would be in the real world before I saw that list. By the end of the term, I will be able to apply to this job, and check off at least some of the boxes.
Technology has always been a challenge to me, but as a writing major interested in making my work more accessible to the public, being literate in technology is something that I know will benefit me greatly. Although I was a bit intimidated by the HTML/CSS project when I began (a feeling most likely rooted in watching my engineering friends struggle with HTML during our freshman year) I was well aware that this would be a hugely valuable skill. When I began, I was a bit shaky, but before I knew it, I found that I was actually enjoying myself.
Although some aspects of HTML/CSS were confusing (and in some ways I still find them so) other aspects were so satisfying to use and explore. I had the power to move text around, change colors and alignments, and insert images and links! It’s a wonderful feeling knowing that my website (although still slightly 90s looking) is something that I created by hand, from scratch.
The content was easy for me to create. Biddle’s Escape perfectly fit the assignment idea of a “Tiny Corner of (Pitt)sburgh” and is a place that I already tell people about whenever I get a chance to.
Honestly, most of my stylistic and design choices developed organically rather than intentionally. I played and played with the code until I was satisfied with the construction of the site. Some things were fortuitous accidents, others were intentional choices. I based a lot of things around the pictures that I chose. For instance, the first picture on my site is a photo of the stained glass window above the entryway to Biddle’s Escape Coffee Shop. The words in the picture are bright orange, and the window frame is a complimentary purple—so I chose to match the site to the picture, and made my background purple.
I wanted to include a lot of links (like those of the food trucks) because I felt that since Biddle’s is a very community-based space, other aspects of the community should come through on the website too. I also have included some links to a few local coffee blogs that critique Pittsburgh coffeehouses.
Lastly, I chose to use a Creative Commons license simply because I think the idea is so cool. All of the videos we watched earlier in the semester were so inspiring, and I felt that I needed to pay it forward and engage in the discourse of sharing.
My frustrations with this project surrounded some of my photos, which refused to translate from my computer to an active web link. In the end, I was forced to sacrifice or substitute some of my favorite pictures (including the featured image of this blog post), which was a sad but necessary change to make my website look better. Those blank rectangles where the pictures should’ve been just wouldn’t do.
I’ll end on with my favorite removed picture, so at least you all can enjoy it here.
Arielle
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