Web Address: www.LuganoRestaurant.com
Company: Lugano Restaurant
Summary: Lugano is a nationally-acclaimed Italian restaurant in Salt Lake City that wins award after award for their awesome food and cool atmosphere. Their website needed an updated look and feel to better match the restaurant.
I used Adobe Photoshop to create the new layout. Lugano wanted to incorporate some amazing tile that they have in their kitchen into the design, so I pulled that into the background of the secondary pages. The site was built on the Drupal CMS framework so most of my HTML/CSS work was spent building a custom Drupal template. I also used the SlideShowPro Flash plugin to create a rotating photo spot for the home page.
Web Address: www.NorthFace1967.com
Company: We Aspired Productions
Summary: North Face, 1967 is an amazing documentary in post-production about what has been called “the impossible rescue” which took place on the north face of the Grand Teton. You can read more about this amazing story here and here. The production team needed a simple site that captured the gritty feeling of the film, told the story and allowed them to gather funding donations via PayPal.
I used Adobe Photoshop and old photos of the rescuers and the Grand itself to create a design as chilling as the story itself. The site was coded in web standards HTML using CSS for layout. I also used the SlideShowPro Flash plugin to create a photo gallery of pictures past and present.
Don’t forget to check out the movie trailer!
December 10, 2009 – 8:08 pm
Being a designer takes thick skin. You can’t grow so close to your work that you get offended or upset when a design or idea is turned down. I’ve had numerous experiences throughout my career where I thought I had come up with the perfect design, only to be told by the client that for one reason or another the design needed to be changed. I usually find that what I come up with in the end, once I really understand what the client is looking for, is much better than my initial concept.
I’m currently working on some branding and web design for a docmentary about an amazing rescue that took place on the north face of the Grand Teton. The film is titled “North Face 1967″, and I am so excited to be a part of the project.
When we initially started talking about the logo, the client mentioned a concept that I really liked. She thought it would be interesting to see if we could incorporate the mountain peak itself and the path taken by the rescuers, into the logo design. I immediately started sketching up ideas and a day or two later, I had the concept flushed out. Everyone (including me) loved the design.
However, as the client started thinking about the tone of the film it was decided that something more simple would fit better. I had to agree. While I love the original logo I came up with, it looks more like a clothing brand or ski shop logo, and doesn’t really fit with a documentary film. Instead, we’re going to go with a simple typeface logo and let the pictures and trailer tell the story. I back that decision up 100% and am glad we made it. Even though I like the original logo I did, the client knows the story she is trying to tell and the logo needs to embody that.
Since this logo will never see the light of day, I thought I’d post it here as a reminder that situations like these can teach us to be better designers. Sometimes it’s frustrating to have to start over, but if we internalize everything that we learn, we’ll end up better than when we started and more prepared for the next adventure.
I’m excited to see what we come up with for the logo and website design and I’ll of course be posting that here as soon as it’s online
September 3, 2009 – 10:28 pm
Web Address: www.RussosontheBay.com
Company: Russo’s on the Bay
Summary: It was time for Russo’s to update their wedding reception/event center website and they wanted something that better captured the look and ambiance of their location. Telestory Pictures was contracted by Russo’s on the Bay to develop and build their website and media materials. TeleStory Pictures hired me as a freelance web designer for the project.
Using Adobe Photoshop I combined elements from interior photos taken of their building to create the design. The home page was created in Flash and it changes from a day photo to a nighttime photo if you visit in in the evening. The site is programmed in ColdFusion using an open source CMS (Content Management System) called Mura. This gives the Russo’s access to edit all of their content (no HTML required) and add new content as necessary. Telestory Pictures also created some awesome videos and virtual tours that you can see in the media section of the site.
August 22, 2009 – 12:40 pm
Web Address: www.crestviewpta.com
Company: Crestview Elementary PTA
Summary: The Crestview Elementary PTA needed a website where parents could come to find out about upcoming events, volunteer opportunities and also register for classes offered by the PTA. I used Adobe Photoshop to design the site. The site is programmed in ColdFusion using an open source CMS (Content Management System) called Mura. This gives the PTA access to edit all of their content (no HTML required) and add new content as necessary. It also handles user registration so that the information on the site can be password protected.
The PTA was very pleased at how the site turned out and how easy both the front end and back end are to use.
I recently designed my first ever fiction book cover. It’s for a religious apocalyptic fictional thriller called “Ere His Floods of Anger Flow”. I didn’t realize there was such a big market for religious fictions but apparently it’s a very popular category of books. Here is an excerpt from the book’s sumary:
Without warning and with no time left to prepare, the world experienced the floods of anger of a God and Father who had been as tolerant and long-suffering as divine mercy would allow. Now divine justice was to exact its toll. The technological advances that the world had extolled as making “the good life” a reality suddenly collapsed. Mankind’s feeble creations were no match for the powers of an offended heaven, and the new millennium’s promised great leap forward collapsed in ruin.
I haven’t read it yet but it sounds pretty epic. The scene depicted on the cover has to do with a military helicopter rescuing some people during a torrential storm. I had a great time creating the cover image and am excited to see it in print.
Web Address: www.DiscoveryXA.com
Company: Discovery Expeditions & Adventures
Summary: Discovery Expeditions & Adventures is a travel company that specializes in adventure trips to Israel, Petra, Africa and Peru. They also do custom tours to just about anywhere you want to go. They needed a logo and web design that matched the adventurous feeling of their trips.
The client had scanned an old ink drawing of a camel that he wanted to incorporate into the logo. I used Adobe Illustrator to create an old-style travel sticker for the logo. I then used Adobe Photoshop to design the site. The site is programmed in ColdFusion using standards based html and css. I used Adobe Flash and SlideShowPro to create the photo gallery on the home page and the jQuery Lightbox plugin to create the individual photo galleries on each trip’s page.
I also started a social media campaign for the client including a tumblr blog and Twitter and Facebook accounts. I carried that brand across to these sites as well and gave the client a tutorial on how to best use them to increase business.
It was a very fun project to work on and I am very pleased with how it turned out.
Web Address: www.LongIslandBrideandGroom.com
Company: Long Island Bride and Groom
Summary: Telestory Pictures was contracted by Long Island Bride and Groom to develop and build their website and media materials. TeleStory Pictures hired me as a freelance web designer for the project.
This was a very challenging project that involved redesigning an existing wedding website with hundreds of pages, multiple admin portals and account pages and tons of content. The site was built in ASP and the content pulls from a SQL database. Our job was to take the existing code infrastructure and give it a new look and feel. This not only included the basic site template, but also coming up with more efficient/usable ways to display the content including text, videos, and client images.
The old site design (especially the home page) suffered from content overload and was very busy. One of our goals was to clean up and simplify the design without losing any of the crucial elements. What made this tricky was that we needed to design a site that looked new but operated on the existing backend admin tool and code that the client uses. The before and after picture above is an example of how we accomplished this.
Over the weekend I had a couple of ColdFusion programming techniques I wanted to test out for a side-project I am working on. I figured that rather than just play around with them on my local machine I’d build a simple little site that utilized both of them. The result is the Single Serving Site Generator www.singleserve.me
What’s a single serving site you ask? Ryan Greenberg’s paper on single serving sites (which itself is enveloped in a single serving site) states:
“There is, however, a growing and unusual phenomenon where site authors pursue a different approach. Many people have created sites that span merely a single page and do one thing—or nothing. These sites, which writer Jason Kottke termed “single serving sites” in February 20081, capture visitors’ attention for a fraction of a minute, a tacit acknowledgement of the economy of attention in which they operate.”
You can read Ryan’s full paper here: http://isthisyourpaperonsingleservingsites.com
One of my favorite single serving sites came out as the Large Hadron Collider was about to be activated. Here it is:
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
Seem pointless? Yeah - that’s the point.
So - you want to generate your own single serving site, but you are too lazy or cheap to buy a domain name, set up hosting, etc. etc? Up steps www.singleserve.me to save the day. Just enter the question you’d like to ask (which will be displayed in the web address) and the answer, fill out the fun little reCaptcha (which is one of the ColdFusion tests I was working on) and wala! You have your very own single serving site.
Go ahead - waste a minute creating one and then send the link to your friends to waste a few seconds of theirs. It’s kinda fun.
www.singleserve.me
February 6, 2009 – 3:31 pm
Web Address: www.AssetsABC.com
Company: Asset Strategies
Summary: This is the corporate summary site for Asset Strategies, LC. This site is phase 1 in a larger project I am working on with Asset Strategies which will include a CMS (Content Management System), MySQL database integration, and on-the-fly PDF generation. Phase 2 of this project will be done in the next month or so.
I used Photoshop to create the design concept and XHTML/CSS to do the layout. I used the Coda Slider Javascript for the jQuery framework to create the cool sliding content window.
February 5, 2009 – 5:23 pm
Each year I do a t-shirt illustration for a fly-fishing cancer fund raiser that takes place in Cody Wyoming. It’s usually based on an inside joke that I know nothing about. This year’s shirt features Ricky Bobby, a Lucha Libre wrestler and a ram. Not sure what the connection is but it was fun to draw. Here is this year’s design:
You can see last year’s design here
And 2007’s here
January 3, 2009 – 4:34 pm
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.
January 2, 2009 – 7:41 pm
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.
October 1, 2008 – 1:40 am
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.
September 30, 2008 – 1:43 pm
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.
September 3, 2008 – 6:45 pm
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.
September 3, 2008 – 3:32 pm
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.
August 18, 2008 – 8:08 am
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.
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.
Web Address: www.caregiversupport.org
Company: Caregiver Support
Summary: This site and logo were designed for a non-profit organization called Caregiver Support that helps people who care for older family members or friends.
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. All the data for this Flash is pulled from XML so the client can update easily. It also pulls in and parses an rss feed. The backend coding was done by Chris Tarabochia
Web Address: www.lifestyleprops.com
Company: Lifestyle Properties
Summary: Lifestyle Properties is a local real estate company that specializes in high-end canyon condo sales. They needed a site that would look as professional as the company itself. It was also very important that all the content be search engine optimized so that they could be found in the very competitive market they do business in.
I used Photoshop to create the design concepts and ColdFusion and XHTML/CSS to do the web layout. I created an xml rotating Flash section on the home page and also photographed and created some virtual tours of the area and condos that you can see here. We integrated information from their local MLS listing page into the site so that all the listings they add to the MLS would immediately show on their website as well. Through the SEO work I did Lifestyles Properties has been able to maintain (at the time of this post) the number one spot in Google for “Solitude Real Estate”, “Solitude Homes” and many other important search terms.
Each year I do a t-shirt illustration for a fly-fishing cancer fund raiser that takes place in Cody Wyoming. Here is this year’s design:
You can see last year’s design here
February 23, 2008 – 12:41 am
Web Address: www.ridgecondominiums.com
Company: Ridge Condominiums
Summary: This site was built for a new condominium project in Sandy, Utah
I used Photoshop to create the design concept and XHTML/CSS to do the layout. This site also has a Flash home page, photo gallery and interactive floor plans.
January 9, 2008 – 3:49 pm
Web Address: www.emc.com
Company: EMC
Summary: I designed this Flash piece for the EMC Sales and Partner Kickoff in 2005 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
Click here to watch the Flash
December 15, 2007 – 6:17 pm
Web Address: www.508SouthTemple.com
Company: Apex Management
Summary: This site was built for one of Apex Management’s real estate projects. The purpose of the site is to attract investors who might be interested in developing a building in down town Salt Lake.
I used Photoshop to create the design concept and XHTML/CSS to do the layout. ColdFusion was used for the templates. This site also has a Flash home page movie and photo gallery and a custom Google Map.
December 15, 2007 – 5:27 pm
Web Address: www.kassingandrews.com/christmas/index.html
Company: Kassing Andrews Advertising
Summary: This is a Flash Christmas card I did for Kassing Andrews Advertising Firm.
November 30, 2007 – 3:38 pm
Web Address: www.innatnhp.com
Company: The Inn at New Hyde Park
Summary: Telestory Pictures was contracted by The Inn at New Hyde Park to develop and build their website and media materials. TeleStory Pictures hired me as a freelance web designer for the project.
The Inn is a classy wedding reception and event center in New York. Their slogan is “Celebrating One Fairy-Tale at a Time” and they wanted a Fairy-Tale site to match.
The concept is an interactive book with separate pages for each section of the site. I created the design in Photoshop and then took it into Flash to animate the book. The videos and the photos were shot by Telestory Pictures, and I used Flash to display them gallery style.
November 25, 2007 – 1:34 am
Web Address: www.soldieralarmsystems.com
Company: Soldier Alarm Systems
Summary: This website was created for a home security company called Soldier Alarm Systems.
I used Photoshop, XHTML/CSS and Flash to create this piece.
November 16, 2007 – 8:35 am
Web Address: www.TornadoStream.com
Company: TornadoStream, LLC.
Summary:TornadoStream is a side project I’ve been working on with Dan Smith for a few years. Our products are a blog music player and our new blog video chat room app. The music player has become very popular and we expect the ivdeo chat room to do the same.
I used XHTML/CSS for layout, ColdFusion for the back end and a MYSQL database. I used RSS feeds to do some major Search Engine Optimization work. Dan Smith built both apps using Flash and XML. We use Flash Media Server to stream our music and video.
October 10, 2007 – 1:05 am
Web Address: www.bookwise.com
Company: BookWise
Summary: The Flash was the intro piece shown at the 2007 BookWise convention. The theme was “A New Chapter” and the piece needed to reflect that tone.
I used Photoshop, and Flash to create this piece.
