Halley Consulting Group Brand Identity and Web Redesign

Halley Consulting

Web Address: www.halleyconsulting.com

Company: Halley Consulting Group

Summary: Halley Consulting Group is a physician practice management and consulting firm specializing in the strategic development and performance turnaround of both hospital-owned practice networks and independent medical offices. Multiple acquisitions and management shifts had left their brand a little outdated and unclear.

I worked with Harding and Associates, a local consulting firm owned by my uncle, to help Halley reinvent their look. This included a redesigned website, brochure, folder, letterhead, envelopes, business cards and more.

I used Photoshop to create the design concepts and ColdFusion and XHTML/CSS to do the web layout. I used Sava, a ColdFusion CMS, to allow the client to update all their site content quickly and easily. The home page also has an interactive Flash feature. All the data for the Flash is pulled from XML so they can be easily updated. I used Adobe Illustrator and InDesign to create the various print pieces. I also created a Microsoft Publisher version of the brochure that allows Halley Consulting to update the PDF version quickly and easily.

Cuningham Group Search Engine Optimization Campaign

Cuningham Group is an architecture firm with offices in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Biloxi, Bakersfield, Madrid and Seoul. They specialize in everything from theme park and casino design, to church, restaurant, and retail architecture.

Cuningham Group already has a beautifully designed Flash web site, but noticed that they weren’t getting a lot of search engine traffic. I worked with the team at MondoDesigner.com to research the best keywords for Cuningham to target and created a custom SEO report with suggestions on how to optimize each of their pages. The Cuningham team then used the very cool tools provided by Mondo to recreate their Flash page as search engine targeted html pages.

My Entries in the Core 77 & Braun "Shoot Your Inspiration" Contest

Core 77 Design Magazine and Braun are hosting an international photo contest called “Shoot Your Inspiration”. The basic idea is as follows:

What inspires you? What thought, object, vista, event or person has moved you more than any other? To celebrate the launch of the international BraunPrize 2009, Braun and Core 77 invite you to share your most inspiring images and stories with the world by entering a special photo competition.

Find out more here.

I’ve got 7 entries in the contest, so check them out and give me a vote if you like my work.

Here are the links to my photos:

Best Music of 2008

Each year I create a CD with some of my favorite artists/songs of the year. Here are the songs on my “Best of 2008″ CD. Also - check out my “Best Music of 2007” list.

Name Artist
Turn Tail The Young Knives
What Would Wolves Do? Les Savy Fav
Resistance St. What Made Milwaukee Famous
Campus Vampire Weekend
Good Arms v. Bad Arms Frightened Rabbit
Nursery, Academy Tokyo Police Club
Tonight I Have To Leave It Shout Out Louds
Each Year Ra Ra Riot
Now Mates Of State
Wrestlers Hot Chip
A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under Why?
Hummer Foals
The Band Marches On Ghostland Observatory
Death to Los Campesinos! Los Campesinos!
Untrust Us Crystal Castles
Lost! Coldplay
Dancing Choose TV On The Radio
Hummingbird Born Ruffians
Journey of the Featherless Cloud Cult
Boneless The Notwist
Gasoline The Airborne Toxic Event

Download Windows XP Service Pack 3

I’ve been super busy on a couple of projects and haven’t had a chance to install my new Adobe Master Collection CS4 Suite. I figured since I have Christmas week off, this would be a great time to get it all installed and start playing around with some of the new features.

As I started the install process, I got a warning message saying that I needed XP Service Pack 3 in order to continue. Now this is interesting because I have XP auto updates turned on, and have since I have owned this computer. I don’t know why the new service pack wasn’t pulled down by the auto updater, but I figured - it would be pretty easy to just grab it online.

Literally 30 minutes later I still could not find the actual link to download the file! Major failage on Microsoft’s part. All the links in the search engines and on Microsoft’s site were linking me to a page that appeared to be the SP3 download page but was actually a download page for 3 different versions of the “Overview” document. LAME!

In order to save anyone else the trouble of having to hunt down the file, here is the link detailing how to obtain SP3:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322389

and here is the link directly to the Service Pack 3 install page .

Retouch Photos using Auto-Align Layers in Adobe Photoshop

Auto Align Layers in Photoshop

I created this quick tutorial that shows you how to use the Auto-Align Layers feature Photoshop (CS3+) to retouch photos.

View the tutorial

Ignite Salt Lake Videos

The presentations from Ignite Salt Lake are now available here:

http://www.ignitesaltlake.com/ignite/index.cfm/watch-presentations/

You can check out my intro presentation on “What is Ignite?” or one of the many other (probably more entertaining) presentations as well.

Salt Lake City Adobe User Group Meeting

I’ll be speaking tomorrow night at the local Adobe User Group about how to create a Flash video web site using Adobe Encore. You can get more details here:

http://www.slcadobeug.com/

Ignite Salt Lake

Looking for something to do in November? Well on Thursday November 13th you could be a part of the first ever Ignite Salt Lake event. What’s Ignite? Visit http://ignite.oreilly.com to check it out but the basic idea is:

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?

The event is free and will be held at the old downtown library (now The Leonardo Science Center).

For more info visit:
http://www.ignitesaltlake.com

Design a Photoshop Book Cover for Wiley Press

Wiley Press which publishes a ton of the design books you probably have already have on your shelf is giving you the chance to create the cover for their next Photoshop book which is titled, “Photoshop for Right Brainers”.

This is a super cool contest in my opinion and I would enter it except for one tiny problem. I’m a judge. I’m totally looking forward to seeing all the awesome ideas that all the folks out there come up with though and getting together with the other judges to pick the winner. There are already some great entries in the gallery which you can check out here.

The contest ends October 31st, so get going and submit your design! You can view the details on how to enter here.

Good luck!

Gear Live Logos

Web Address: www.gearlive.com
Company: Gear Live

Summary: I recently created the following series of logos for web tech magazine Gear Live. These logos were all created using Photoshop.

Gear Live

Gear Live

Gear Live

Gear Live

Gear Live

Gear Live

Gear Live

iPD - integrated Project Development Logo

Company: integrated Project Development

Summary: I used Photoshop and Illustrator to create this logo for a firm called integrated Project Development. iPD has a suite of applications that helps contractors manage all aspects of their projects.

To-Do Lists with Toodledo

To-Do lists with Toodledo

Recently I started looking for an online to-do list app that I could use to manage my freelance work. Just days after I started looking, AppScout reviewed an app called Toodledo. Now I have to say, I almost didn’t take the time to check it out because the name is so lame. Maybe it’s another language or something. I like my app names descriptive and Toodledo makes no sense at all. HOWEVER, I quickly got over myself and checked it out.

I am so glad I did.

Toodledo is one of those apps that has completely changed the way I work. I have a full time job and also do a lot of freelance projects at night. It’s easy to get overwhelmed or forget when I owe a certain project to a client. Toodledo helps me keep an eye on all of that and schedule out my work in advance so that I don’t double book.

Toodledo is very simple to use and let’s me create a separate folder for each of my projects. I can then add tasks to the project with start dates, due dates and priority levels, etc. I can look at my entire list of tasks or see the tasks for just a particular project (folder).

Right now I am mainly using Toodledo’s to-do list, but they have a lot of other tools available like notebooks and goals plus the ability to share task lists and more. There is also a pay version that allows you to upload files, get more SMS reminders, store completed tasks for longer periods of time and more.

Toodledo has done a good job of integrating with some of the other apps out there. They have a very handy FireFox add-on and also allow you to add tasks via twitter. You can integrate your tasks into Google Calendar, your iPhone or a host of other apps.

For me Toodledo was a life saver and I highly recommend it.

Scrum project management with Scrumy.com

Scrumy is a very simple web app that enables you to easily track projects using the Scrum development model. For those new to Scrum development, Scrum basically consists of creating “stories” which are a simple sentence or two about the project. An example of a story might be “Make a way for a user to search by first name.” Tasks are then assigned to the story which detail the actual work that will need to be done to accomplish the story. Each task is assigned to a member of your dev team. Scrum also utilizes (usually daily) standup meetings where the status of stories and tasks is reviewed.

There are many tracking tools out there that development teams use to track their Scrum. The company I work for uses JIRA. I was excited to check out Scrumy to see what the “web 2.0″ field had to offer in Scrum tracking.

Innovative

The first thing you’ll notice about scrumy is their innovative form-less approach to account creation. Creating an account is as easy as typing your project name into the address bar. I’ll talk later about a couple problems with this, but overall I really liked this technique. I haven’t seen anyone use this method of account creation and appreciate the new idea.

If you aren’t feeling creative you can click “I’m feeling scrumy” which will create a project for you with a random name. You can also click “generate random project name” which will show you various random project names on the home page before actually creating one.

Tutorial

Once you create a new project, Scrumy gives you a very detailed walk through tutorial of how it works. I loved this part of the app. It only takes a minute or 2 to get a good grasp of how the app works.

Simplicity

Scrumy is extremely intuitive and simple to use. You create stories, add tasks to those stories, and simply drag those tasks into the different status boxes as the they progress. It’s timeline based with tasks progressing to the right towards completion. This makes it very easy to see where a task is in the development process.

The whole Srumy layout is very clean and easy to read which makes it perfect for looking over during Scrum meetings or reviewing quickly before meeting with a client.

Color-coding

One very cool feature of scrumy is task color-coding. As you assign tasks to a member of your team, Scrumy color codes that task. Any other tasks assigned to the same team member automatically receive the same color coding. This makes it very easy to see all your personal tasks at a glance.

Password Protection

This is the only downside to the simple account creation model that Scrumy has created and really the only downside to the app in general that I can see. Password protection is not included in the free version of Scrumy. Thus if you create an account , and someone else tries to create an account with the same name they will instead be directed to your account where they are free to make changes or wreak havoc. The chances of this could be somewhat lessened by creating a less common account name (i.e. adding some numbers to the end etc.). You can also shell out some cash for a “Pro” account that comes with password protection.

Upgrading

Upgrading to Scrumy Pro costs $7 per month or $60 per year and adds password protection, project history, future projects, sprint goal charts, and ability to change the name of your project.

Conclusion

All in all I was very impressed with Scrumy.com and may start to use it for some of my side projects. I was a little disappointed that password protection only came in the pay version of the product since there are other project management apps online (basecamp etc.) which include that in their free version. I can’t fault Scrumy for trying to make some cash off their product though and they have definitely created a top grade simple-to-use app that will make managing your scrum (or any) team projects easier.

Menu animations with jQuery

I just read a really great piece on snook.ca about using jQuery to create menu hover animations. I’m a big fan of jQuery so I figured I would check it out. I was pretty impressed. Take a look at these demos!

Here are the instructions on how to accomplish this effect:

http://snook.ca/archives/javascript/jquery-bg-image-animations/

Diagram for proper use of “oh snap!”

Adobe Wins - NBC drops Silverlight. M$ FAIL!

If you are one of the many who was forced to install MS Silverlight in order to take advantage of NBC’s online Olympic coverage, then you might be happy to know that NBC has gone back to Adobe Flash for their streaming of NFL games.

Being an Adobe fan I welcome this change for a couple of reasons: Flash player has a much larger exisiting user base. This means less people have to install another plugin.

Second, is it me or did the Silverlight stuff just seem clunky? I know that might have had more to do with the coding than the platform but considering that Microsoft sponsored the site (which is the reason NBC used Silverlight) I would presume that the Silverlight apps we saw there were the cream of the crop. A lot of the stuff I interacted with just didn’t seem to work right.

Cheers Adobe!

You can read more about NBC dropping Silverlight here.

UPDATE 9/8/08: Thanks to @synergist for sending a link about how the NBC NFL Adobe deal really went down. Nothing like twitter to keep you honest ;-)

Turns out the NFL selected Flash, so it was not directly an NBC choice. As you can probably tell from my post, I think they made the right choice because I feel that at this point, all things (including user base) considered, Flash is the superior platform. I’m biased though and it will be interesting to see how the Flash/Flex/Silverlight game plays out.

Dilly Dally Website Design

Dilly Dally

Web Address: www.dillydallychic.com

Company: Dilly Dally Designs

Summary: This site was designed for a company called Dilly Dally Designs that creates designer bibs/smocks for babies and children.

I used Photoshop to create the design concept and ColdFusion and XHTML/CSS to do the layout. I also created some JavaScript interactivity and a Flash slideshow on the home page that cycles through the product photos. The site also has an interactive Flash photo gallery. All the data for these Flash movies is pulled from XML so that I can update them easily for the client.

Apex Management Redesign

Apex Management

Web Address: www.apexmanagement.net

Company: Apex Management

Summary: I redesigned this site for a real estate company called Apex Management.

I used Photoshop to create the design concept and ColdFusion and XHTML/CSS to do the layout. The Flash left nav interacts with ColdFusion to grab the correct page and show it as active. The Current and Past Projects pages are completely xml driven with CF doing the XML parsing. This makes updating and changing out properties quick and simple.

Photoshop or Fireworks?

I recently read a really good article/interview about the ongoing debate on which tool is better for web design; Photoshop or Fireworks.

Personally I am a Photoshop guy and have been for over 10 years.  I haven’t really ever given FireWorks a try simply because I can get everything I need done in Photoshop. Still the question remains, what would I gain from switching over to FW?

The main bullets I gathered from the Digital Web Mag article are that Photoshop is probably still better at creating beautiful rich designs, but maybe lacks in speed and image optimization. FireWorks, being specifically tailored to web design has a lot of tools and options that PS does not, and can (possibly) crank out a web site faster.

All in all the article confirmed my belief that Photoshop is the program for me. I consider myself and artist first and web designer second and try to convey that through my designs (when the client allows). FireWorks seems more suited to speed and optimization than art (no offense to artists who like FW).

Take a look at the article and see what you think

photoshop versus fireworks

Wireless electricity may become a reality

3 or 4 years ago my brother and I were in one of our inventive chat moods. We sent messages back and forth about the coolest inventions we could think of and then whether it would be at all possible to actually create them.  At one point one of us sent the message “wireless electricity…”. The next hour was filled with posts about how cool that would be and all the many uses. Of course neither of us thought we’d ever see the day that wireless electricity would actually be feasible.

That day has come folks. Intel just demoed a wireless electricty model that enabled them to wirelessly power a lamp on a stage. The best part is that since they are sending the power over the magnetic wave rather than the electrical wave (i.e. lightning bolts) there is no harm done to object (or people) in the path of the wave.

One analyst said by 2050 we might be able to “cut the last chord”. Can you imagine the infrustructural changes that would be needed to actually do that? 2050 sounds a long ways off but if he is talking about the world moving exclusively to wireless electricity by then, that is actually pretty fast.

The real question is, when will this be brought to the consumer level? And when will it be affordable? And when will we have to wear those old Intel dancing guy radioactive suits to use it?

Here’s the article.

Versa Shore Redesign

Versa Shore

Web Address: www.versashore.com

Company: Versa Shore

Summary: This site was designed for a consulting firm called Versa Shore.

I used Photoshop to create the design concept and XHTML/CSS to do the layout. This site has a Flash tabbed app on the home page that cycles through the tabs or lets you select a tab. It also has a rotating client logo Flash. All the data for these Flash movies is pulled from XML so the client can update them easily.

McCain or McCain’t?

Here is a great web site that is trying to keep Ye Grand Ol’ Party honest. I want one of those shirts!

http://www.mccaint2008.com

Candeo Web Site Design and Flash work

Candeo

Web Address: www.candeocan.com

Company: Candeo

Summary: This site was designed for a company that produces online content to help people overcome addictions.

I used Photoshop to create the design concept. The XHTML/CSS layout was done by Russ Williams, another member of the team. The bulk of this project was Flash. I used Flash to create two powerful marketing pieces available from the home page (the second is linked to from within the first Flash). I also used Flash to create hours of video training modules where users can view “one-on-one” sessions with doctors to help them overcome their porn or other addictions. I used cues in Flash to sync up animation and effects with the flv videos of the doctors.

Google Image Labeler

Google Image LabelerRecently while doing an image search for pictures of french toast I noticed a link in the top corner that said New! Google Image Labeler. I thought this sounded interesting so I gave it a click.

I was surprised for two reasons:

  1. Google had apparently acquired this fun image labeling game I had once played 2 or 3 years ago.
  2. I had just mentioned this game to my brother 2 days ago when he was talking about a collective consciousness experiment. Talk about collective consciousness!

The game goes like this:

First you are paired up with an online partner who also wants to play. Next you are shown an image and asked to label it. There is a list of off-limits labels that you are not allowed to use. The goal here is to type the same label as your partner so that you can move on to the next image. In the process you end up typing many different labels per image in hopes of typing a match. You are also able to pass on hard to label images.

You have a 2 minute time limit and score points each time you and your partner match labels. The points earn you nothing but bragging rights, and perhaps a spot in the top scorers area.

At the end of the game you are able to see a list of the words your partner used to describe each of the images. It’s very interesting to see how differently someone can see the same image.

Every once in a while you’ll get paired with someone who amazingly seems to think the exact same way you do, and that’s when it really gets fun.

The brilliant thing about the Google Image Labeler is that Google has created a quite fun game, that is actually getting work done on the back end. You see, Google uses the matched labels as possible labels for those particular images in their image search. Thus they are actually creating a more accurate human labeled image search under the guise of a “game”.

To me this falls along the same line of genius as the self checkout lines at grocery stores. People complaining about checkers being too slow? Let’s let them do it themselves and at the same time, be able to hire less checkers. Win Win! (Lose for people wanting checker jobs)

I expect we’ll see more innovations like this in the coming years. Perhaps a “flip the burger” game at McDonalds or a “help Mr. Drain chug the old oil” game at Jiffy Lube. If these games are fun like the Google Image Labeler, you’ll soon be dry cleaning your own clothes without even realizing it!

This is my place

Last Thursday I got up a little early and headed up to Colorow Drive near Red Butte Gardens to meet local photographer Mike Calanan. Mike and I were hiking up to the Living Room so that he could take some pictures of me for his “This is Their Place” blog project. It’s a very cool project he’s working on where he interviews locals about their favorite place in Salt Lake City, Utah and photographs them in “their place”.

We had a great time getting to know each other although chatting became harder as we started gaining elevation and getting out of breath. Despite starting rather early, I was still a sweaty mess when we got to the top (as documented by the sweaty back in this photo).

This was my first time being professionally photographed, and it was a little weird. I need to get more comfortable in front of the camera if my male modeling career is ever going to take off.

The Living Room was awesome as always. Great views even with the slight haze over the valley. After being up there for a few minutes a cool little family came trekking up and we talked to them for a while. Turns out the woman was the Editor in Chief for a local magazine called Wasatch Woman. Her name is Pamela Baumeister. Mike and Pam chatted for a bit and exchanged info. I’m hoping he gets some photo work from it because then I would get the assist points. :-)

Once the photos were done, it was time to head back down and back to reality (work). Normally I like to jog down the trail because it makes for a great trail run. This time I had my laptop with me for a few photos that bordered on cheesy, but I think turned out good.

It was very cool to participate in this project and I was glad I got to meet Mike. I’ve gotten lots of good feedback so far on the photos and had a bunch of people ask me to take them up to the Living Room which I am always glad to do.

Be sure to check out the whole blog post here:
http://thisistheirplace.calanan.com/2008/07/jesse-harding.html

Mary’s Bringing it On

Ok - so it’s not Monday, but I just got this collab music piece back from a friend who was doing the final mixing. The tune is called “Mary’s Bringing it On” (no idea how we came up with that name) and it features me on keys and Luke Stoddard on everything else.

Check it out:

You need Flash to listen to this

Weezer - Pork and Beans

Some people had been telling me to check out the new Weezer “Pork and Beans” video and I finally got around to doing it.

I’m speechless. I laughed out loud the whole time. It’s brilliant and reminds me why I’ve loved Weezer ever since the Blue album.

I just… don’t even have words to describe how happy that video made me.

WATCH IT!

The incredible searchable swf

That’s right. Adobe announced today that it is working with Search Engine companies (namely Google and soon Yahoo) to increase the indexability of swf files.

As a Flash designer I am very happy about this. In the past the best option you had in optimizing a swf was to put your text content in a hidden div. That was always somewhat sketchy on the S.E. rules.

Thus this is great news. If I understand right Adobe is working with Google to develop a Flash plugin for the spiders that would reside on Google’s side. The idea being that when the spider hit a swf file it would now understand what to do with it rather than just skipping over it.

With Adobe’s push towards Flash dominance, Flash Video and RIAs, I think this is a very smart move and will end up benefiting designer and end-user alike… oh and Adobe too :-)

Read the full press release >>

Free Rickroll by phone

I guess this is *kind of* a web app so I’ll put it in the Web App Review section.

I just discovered a site that lets you Rickroll someone by phone. Joy!

Here’s the link

I was soo tempted to Rickroll that link but you my faithful readers mean more to me than a simple joke.

Basically you enter in your friend or enemy’s phone number and go. The calls I have done usually take around 15 minutes to go through. If you want priority processing you can buy a token (45 cents on paypal) that will push your call in front of the free calls. There is also a monthly membership that makes the call look like it is coming from your number (rather than unlisted)

For the free calls you are limited to one call per half hour. Still that is a lot of freakin’ Rickrolls man!!!!

They also have Chocolate Rain and Numa Numa so you can officially make the friends you still have hate you like everyone else does.