With less than a month remaining before the November 2010 general election, I was approached about redesigning a web site site for John Monds, a candidate for Georgia Governor. The tight turnaround was a challenge, but a workable one because it forced a focus on priorities rather than minutia – something that would no doubt be helpful even with less time-critical projects.
video walk-through: Donovan for Senate campaign site
8 November 2010 By Leave a Comment
video walk-through: Cox Enterprises annual
22 October 2010 By Leave a Comment
I’ve recently started building a video portfolio of my web work. I think the medium allows a better look than the alternatives into the hows and whys of the sites I build, and will take you through each site in five minutes or less. Up until now, I’ve used screen grabs and links to live sites to showcase my work.
Screen grabs from a few pages in an example site can’t show the interactivity or explain choices that were made without including a lot of explanatory copy. Referring visitors to the live site is only as good as their willingness to explore, and may not be reflective of the actual site built if a client has maintained it.
Here is my first portfolio video – I welcome any questions or comments:
be re-inspired
3 July 2010 By Leave a Comment
The recently-launched Re-Inspiration Store web site was a fun project for one of the most unique businesses I’ve worked with in quite a while. Store owners Brooke and Julie have created and gathered hundreds of pieces of art and artsy-but-functional items in their West Midtown Atlanta store. Everything was once something else, and the creativity with which their pieces are re-purposed is quite amazing.
As with most start-ups, resources – time as well as money – were tight. The pair needs to maintain the site themselves, and the hand-crafted origins of their merchandise mean constant changes – to the store as well as the web site.
We started with a funky design, but a relatively simple layout. When it came to creating content and maintaining the site, I put Brooke and Julie in the driver’s seat with the installation of WordPress as a Content Management System, as well as SlideShowPro and SlideShowPro Director for their image gallery. These tools enable them to quickly and easily add store events to the calendar page or photos of new pieces to the online gallery, keeping it fresh.
I built the entire Re-Inspiration Store site to utilize WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS). WordPress is a powerful open source platform with a solid track record and incredibly broad capabilities. It’s ideally suited for small businesses who need to maintain their web sites themselves, but have limited resources.
In case it’s not clear by looking at the Re-Inspiration site, there’s no need to settle for a company web site that looks like a blog, or vice-versa. Virtually any site can be a WordPress site.
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- Fun, funky, colorful – words that describe the Re-Inspiration Store as well as its web site
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- Making it easy for web site visitors to be store visitors with complete contact info, custom map and link to grab directions on Google Maps
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- There’s always something new in the store – and in the online gallery – thanks to an easily updatable photo management system.
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- This informational page continues the funky theme, but with a more streamlined look
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