Crystal's Adventures in Webdev Land » Sites I’ve done

Site Redesign Part 3

Crys — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 06:04:50 +0000

Site Redesign Part 3

I was really happy with the watercolor and the basic idea of the design I was working on but it really didn’t feel like _me_. So out comes the Wacom. I think I like this direction better. The watercolor with paper is the base, with some knotwork and hand-drawn accents to really make it MY site instead of “generic artist-style site number 392″. Now the trick will be adding enough drawing to be balanced and personalized without adding so much (or making it so heavy) that that it detracts from the content.

Site Redesign Part 2

Crys — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 05:59:30 +0000

Site Redesign Part 2

alright here’s where I leave it for tonight. I’m thinking my site really needs a layout overhaul and that includes a nice big “featured” article section at the top of the index. Not sure whether to make it a featured slideshow with “non-featured” articles under it or just put the three most recent articles (minus the top feature of course) under it in their own columns with just the one most recent feature article in the big photo area. Thinking three columns, which means individual article pages and the blog page will have more or less the same layout as now but with slightly different widths to comply with the columns. The main paper background is 980px wide which, once you remove the decoration and balance it so the left and right white space is the same, leaves a width of about 860px for the content…not sure if that’s too wide… most of my target audience are likely to be on higher end monitors, but I want to keep mobile in mind…

Site Redesign Part 1

Crys — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 05:46:00 +0000

Mockup 1, Crysodenkirk.com

Websites are hard. It’s about time to redesign my site again and this time clear out all the old code that’s hiding under the hood. Moving up to html5 and css3 but damn, the design’s the hard part. Here’s how far I’ve gotten this evening on a mockup. Long way to go before I can start putting it together in code. The background watercolor though is going to be a series of transparent layers aligned differently so each page has its own slightly different background based on how long the page is. I love the basic colors on my current site but I feel like I need something lighter and a hell of a lot more modern. The current color scheme pulls the focus away from the content because it’s so saturated, and the current layout is pretty dated too.

Resume – Paul Lathrop

Crys — Wed, 05 May 2010 19:28:11 +0000

Visit Site: Paul’s Resume

Protected: design

Crys — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:02:39 +0000

No related posts.

Laughing Buddha Acupuncture

Crys — Fri, 15 May 2009 02:12:53 +0000

My friend Aly Condon has opened her own acupuncture clinic. If you’re considering it, I definitely recommend her!

Visit site: Laughing Buddha Acupuncture – Acupuncture and East Asian Medicine clinic in Oakland, California

Laughing Buddha Acupuncture

And here’s a link to the illustrator who did her logo:
Jake Mix: Illustrator for Hire

Keyclothes

Crys — Wed, 13 May 2009 03:29:19 +0000

This is a design I did a couple years ago but couldn’t post because there’d been a delay in the site itself. Now it looks like they’ve finally got the site up and running, though some of the design implementation is different (notably in the left navigation treatment).

However, 99% of the design elements are retained and I’m really happy with how it turned out. I also did the two main logos; I did not do the banner ads on this site, unlike most of the other sites I’ve posted/will post.

Keyclothes.com by Workhorse Outfitters — Outerwear for Work or Sport

Here’s a screenshot I took of my prototype:

Keepers of Stromgarde

Crys — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:11:18 +0000

This one is dear to my heart. I designed and maintain the website for my World of Warcraft guild:

the Keepers of Stromgarde

It’s gone through two iterations of design now, marked mainly by the difference in the tools that were available to me for personal use. The old one was done entirely with gimp, the new after I bought my own copy of Photoshop.

Old Keepers of Stromgarde site

New Keepers of Stromgarde Site as of July 2009

Schroeder Bros. Construction, Inc.

Crys — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:06:17 +0000

This one might just be the best design I’ve ever done. It’s certainly one of the top ones. And they made it really easy to make the site for them. They do amazing work and gave me excellent photos to work from. If I was building a house, I’d want them to do it. And I’m not just saying that because they were clients. Go take a look at some of the gorgeous woodwork in the gallery.

Website: Custom Homes and Condos – Schroeder Bros. Construction, Inc of Pewaukee, WI

Details: Fixed width site with repeating background. All of the textures used in the site are sampled from client-supplied photos from their homes, including the background /bracketing texture. Summer of ’2007.

Banners:

Precision Screw Thread Corp.

Crys — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 18:18:34 +0000

I’ve done a lot of industrial and manufacturing sites. Most of them are very cut and dried, get it done as fast as you can, we want it to look as plain as you can and still get our information across. That’s not a value judgment, just a constraint that you usually have to work under with certain industries.

Precision Screw Thread stands out from their industry for their recognition that “functional” does not have to equal “ugly”. I had a lot of fun putting this one together.

Precision Screw Thread, Inc.

The initial landing page for the site was conceived as an abstracted display panel from one of the threading machines and evolved into what you see on the page now. We wanted to showcase the short movie but avoid the typical “trash splash” intro that trips up a lot of sites. This display panel instead brings together the site’s navigation and news from the company blog to make it easy for users to get where they want to go on the site (I was outvoted on making the movie start playing immediately. Sorry visitors, you’ll have to hit stop instead of start).

The internal pages carry through the theme and the navigation from the intro page. We wanted to add a little motion so I animated the starburst behind the logo in the upper left so that it glows and rotates on mouseover.