Category: Portfolio

Simple, Gray, pretty much Awesome

That was the extent of Megan’s website requirements laid out in her design brief* when we started the project.

Using her own custom business card as inspiration we came up with a clean and open layout that wouldn’t distract from her artwork, as well as featuring her custom designs for sale on Etsy. All data for the galleries is maintained in XML allowing her to update on her own quickly, and since the store imports its data directly from Etsy any changes made on that site will instantly be reflected here.

As the galleries were all displayed using Flash and SimpleViewer, I created a custom mobile site that would allow quick access to all her contact info, designs, artwork and store without the use of any plug-ins. Useful for when she’s out schmoozing and networking around town. Dynamic PHP and CSS means no second set of data has to be maintained just for this mobile site and version control issues are eliminated.

Portfolio site includes:

  • Custom Design
  • Etsy API Integration
  • SimpleViewer Customization
  • Mobile Versions for Android, iPhone and Blackberry

View Live Site

* By design brief I really just mean the conversation about her future website over sushi :)

Posted on by Joel

IMU Collection Launches

I’m pleased to show off my latest development project, the site for t-shirt brand I Miss You, Inc.

The programming process has been an intense month of work but the results are worth it. The open source content management system Drupal runs the backend with the addition of the Ubercart module running the storefront.

There have been challenges at every turn, primarily bending Drupal and it’s multitude of modules to my will. The design provided by the great and talented Andrew Smith is different than anything we’ve ever worked on together, so every little piece of the site required customization. Not sure what it was about the CSS on this site in particular but I ran into more ridiculous IE7 bugs than I ever have before.

T-shirt storefront includes:

  • Full Drupal Customization
  • E-commerce Storefront
  • Blog and Community Forums
  • Mailing List

View Live Site

One other piece of the project was streaming the launch party live on ustream.tv. Andrew handled the camera duties and I monitored Firefox to make sure it didn’t crash. I can’t say enough good things about ustream. A very easy setup process and straightforward tools helped everything go off smoothly, even though we were cutting it close and had little time for a dry run. The built-in chat was great for getting feedback and joking with the viewers (someone even from Brazil). I’ll definitely be using it for events in the future.

Posted on by Joel

AdTec Launches

Consulting firm site includes:

View Live Site

There was a time back in the day when Andrew would hand over a design like this ready to build when I would just scowl at him. “Drop shadows over a subtle gradient background? Again?” In the age of Internet Explorer 6 getting a design like this pixel perfect was a harrowing experience at best. Luckily we’ve come a long way. When Andrew does the same thing now and wonders if it’ll be a problem I can just laugh and knock out a full build in a matter of hours. The tools, tricks, and numerous times of running into the brick wall of browser bugs I’ve gathered over seven years has taught me a thing or two.

Posted on by Joel

Emily Hoskins’ Portfolio Launched

I’m proud to announce the completion of my friend Emily’s new photography portfolio. I’m really please with the way it turned out. It was a smooth project to work on, the only goals were that it were clean and simple to use, and that it look better than all of her friend’s photgraphy sites ;). Done and done.

The only snag that came up was near the end of the project when I upgraded to the newest version of SlideShowPro. The old param.xml file no longer worked so I had to compare the new version’s attributes to the old and port back all the old styles. A frustrating couple hours for sure.

Simple photography portfolio site includes:

  • Design
  • SlideshowPro Photo Gallery Customization

View Live Site

Posted on by Joel

Matt Cassatta’s Portfolio Launched

Everybody needs a website. Everybody, even best friends/copywriters.

When you have a particular skill set you will find yourself using those skills over and over for friends and family, for free. Such was the case when my buddy Matt decided to get on the Internet and showcase his advertising work.

To keep things ultra simple I went with a one page layout with a dash of jQuery thrown in for some smooth scrolling between the sections. JW Player provides the playback controls for all the multimedia, keeping updates simple to the XML. I think the single page layout is really straightforward and effective for a résumé-type site and it lets his personality shine through.

Simple portfolio site includes:

  • Design
  • jQuery Animation
  • Flash Video Playlists

View Live Site

Posted on by Joel