Here are a few recent examples of "insite" websites — please visit and have a look around!
visit The Astor Home For Children
Project details:
The Astor Home for Children
Description: New website for a large social services agency.
Requirements and features:
- · Depict the authority, scope and history of a venerable organization;
- · Work with executives to help them define the identify of the organization and the goals of their web presence;
- · Represent their desired public image: avoid the appearance of bureaucracy; professional yet personal and approachable; authoritative yet with modesty befitting a not-for-profit reliant on donor funding — i.e., not too slick;
- · Provide informative and engaging content for a diverse range of visitors: clients, staff, donors, outside professionals, and many others;
- · Present a preferred narrative structure while allowing easy navigation to specific information. A user-friendly site was a primary goal;
- · Organize and present information in a hierarchical, as-much-as-you-want fashion;
- · Faces are used as a recurring design element to help humanize the organization. Extensive use of archival, modern, and stock photography, as well as children's artwork, to enliven the site. Extensive 'digital darkroom' Photoshop services provided;
- · Extensive graphic embellishments as well as features like the 'Astor Photo Album' are employed to provide an enjoyable user experience, and to appeal to donors;
- · Meet the needs and gain the approval of a large and diverse group of executives; incorporate the input of dozens of individuals and work collegially within the personnel structure of the organization;
- · Incorporate user-editable content areas, as in for example, the News and Events sections;
- · Secure contact form routes messages to different individuals and locations, and presents differently when accessed from different parts of the site;
- · Extensive original copy writing as well as editing all written material to maintain a uniform voice. This required an extensive immersion in the workings of the organization and an ability to work well with many individuals.
Astor is an organization which is deservedly proud of what they do. The website development project has helped their fund-raising, helped them to define their self image, and allowed them to present themselves with pride and authority befitting the quality and level of services which they provide. ^^^
visit Bosson Designs — Art For Licensing
Project details:
Bosson Designs — Art For Licensing
URL:
http://www.bossondesigns.com
Description: New website for an illustrator specializing in art for the Licensing industry (artwork for use on products).
Requirements and features:
- · Primarily a 'professional' website to serve as a portfolio of images for art buyers (art editors and creative directors);
- · Desired image was lean and professional yet playful and light-hearted as appropriate for the children's products market which is her specialty;
- · Professional presentation on a tight budget;
- · Incorporate information about her past experience as a book illustrator, as well as provide for direct sales of prints, without eclipsing the site's primary licensing portfolio function;
- · Central feature of the site is a custom-designed image viewer, designed to allow easy access to a lot of images, quickly and without a lot of clicking;
- · Coding for the viewer is 'portable' and re-used extensively throughout the site to keep the project cost low; images presented with and without captions;
- · Image viewing without scrolling even on low-resolution monitors;
- · Images and titles can be easily changed by the site-owner, without reliance on a (costly to implement) CMS;
- · Work collaboratively to maintain site-owner's exacting design vision and artistic style;
- · Personal instruction provided to the artist in how to prepare and optimize images for the web. The artist was then able to provide most artwork within the specifications established for the site layout;
- · Help client define content needs; provide copy editing;
- · Email address strongly protected from spam-bots without the expense of a form.
The illustrator required a now-mandatory website as demanded by her clients. This project required, above all, extensive teaching and non-technical explanations of website development issues. Without any prior technical knowledge, my client desired and was ultimately able to understand all of the options available to her, as well as many of the details of "how things worked". She was thus able to intelligently prioritize which features to include on a modest budget, resulting in a lean and effective website. ^^^
visit Lisa Thiesing Children's Books
Project details:
Lisa Thiesing Children's Books
URL:
http://www.lisathiesing.com
Description: Rich-featured website for an author/illustrator of books for children.
Requirements and features:
- · Full-featured professional children's book website;
- · Content and features for children, parents, teachers, librarians, editors, art directors and more;
- · Site required content to satisfy the needs of diverse visitors;
- · Animations, bright and lively design, and a style suited to her (mostly very young) readers;
- · Extensive information about her books, as well as a professional portfolio;
- · Custom-designed games and activities for kids;
- · Biographical information suitable for all age ranges and visitors;
- · Extensive use and integral incorporation of the artist's illustrations throughout the site.
Designed for both professional development and direct promotion, this site contains the wide range of features which are characteristic of the websites of successful children's book authors (and which are necessary to promote that image). This site successfully projects the illustrator's personal style, is fun to visit, and brings results. ^^^
I also provide specialized web development services in collaboration with others, including site analysis and Drupal theming and development.
Game Face Web Design
URL:
http://www.gamefacewebdesign.com
Position: Independent contractor for Kingston-based web design firm specializing in Drupal CMS websites.
Contributions:
- · Site analysis services to evaluate clients' old sites, the sites of their competitors, and new sites under development, especially regarding image and message presentation (intended and unintended) and user-friendliness;
- · Drupal themeing;
- · Css coding for layout and typography;
- · Drupal site content development.
See my bio on the Game Face website, and some clients' sites which I've worked on. ^^^
