An interesting website and a little more!

I was asked to create a website for a photographer, after some conversations (involving some comedically bad English and Italian) I had figured out that he was a bit of a technophobe and wanted to be able to update it 'easily' himself if possible.

I love this approach to the web. I love the challenge of making something that is easily updatable without having to understand what HTML is, or how you log in to a profile...you understand. There are countless platforms out there with some really interesting CMS, but I still wanted to try and integrate the platforms he already used to make the whole thing straightforward.

He had a flickr, and after some googling about flickr slideshows, I found a javascript frame that would pool his flickr feed into a 100% background! Great find, after some noodling with the code, there was a fair amount of unnecessary info in there and a menu that didn't suit what I wanted, I had an animating slideshow background pooled by flickr! Which meant he didn't need to touch the site in terms of photos, it did the work for him!

I had to design the logo and think about a menu next. I decided to keep the menu really simple, but decided to incorporate some web fonts to try and add some SEO value to a very minimal site. The logo was a fairly straightforward excercise as he suggested I do something with a view finder.



The menu had to be very non-invasive, so it didn't interfere with the main content. I had been playing with drop down menus on another project and I decided to do the same on this site. After trying it, I realised it didn't work and my brain made the logical conclusion, "No down....UP!" So a flyout menu instead.











All very straight forward, but very effective.

After another chat, business cards were mentioned, I suggested Moo, as they can print multiple images on the front of their cards, which suits a photographer perfectly! So mini moo business cards!



No sense showing you the front, as they are all different! AND on the site!

Big project, well happy.
Michael

Link
Franco Fontani - Street Photography

There was a time...

...in my life when if I was asked, "Can you make us a website?" Part of me would have shriveled up and died! BUT not anymore! Now I actually seem to enjoy it! What happened to me? I think I caught a strange disease...

After my success with the anti-myspace web site for Mike Borgia, I put the word out that I was on the hunt for anyone else who was interested, Richard from They Walk Among Us got back to me first!



This site was a little simpler as it was mostly reverbnation plug-ins, but still very effective me thinks! I really like the side menu and logo header.

More to come...
Michael

Links
Larger Versions
See it in action

Myspace is dead...

and it has been for a long time. Yet somehow no site has really managed to fill the void it left, there are a few that are coming close, but not quite managing to do the whole nine yards. So when I got into a conversation about what the solution to the lacking of a myspace was, I got my thinking cap on.

After some thinking I found the answer, cross platform integration. Bands in this day and age have several online presences, twitter, facebook, blogs, bandcamp, reverbnation.....the list is endless! So the plan was to make a site that had next to no content stored on servers and was auto updated via some/all of these external sources!

As always I ended up doing something for Mike Borgia. He likes my screwy ideas.



So what you see there is a one page site that incorporates (from top to bottom) video from youtube, mailing list from reverbnation, photos from flickr, music from bandcamp, shows listings from reverbnation, blog rss feed via blogger and a javascript twitter feed!

It's a lot of elements but it does come together nicely.

I also made them a nifty little logo as an added extra to go with the site!



I'm still proud of how well this all came together.
Michael

Links
Larger Versions
See it in action

Website

When I arrived at my new job in Italy I was given the task of rebranding the company. I made a policy decision, within about 30 minutes of realizing how massive an undertaking that was within confines of language barriers and several other major factors, that the best thing to do was to take the branding they had, not do much with it and make a clean and effective website inside a few days to get a presence online.

This idea gave me the chance to go back to basics and work with the branding and site layout from the ground up and really get down to the nitty gritty of the browsing in 2 languages.

This was a fairly straight forward site layout, a few little bits of Javascript (slideshow of work and date/time), but nothing majorly complicated.

The interesting thing is that I had to build a mirror site in Italian and English, which created a few translation issues as good English and good Italian do not translate well. There may be a boring blog of this somewhere somewhen...

The site:













A random bunch of screen caps, nothing to complicated.

I would love to link you to the actual site, but it is down now and has been replaced with the real site!

More to come.
Michael

Link
Larger Versions

Some webby stuff!

Recently I had to do a task for an interview, didn't get the job (bummer), but still had a chance to flex my more corporate web design muscles which haven't been used in a while! It has also lead to a nice idea which should (fingers crossed) be rather tasty!

Anyway, the layout(s)! I got asked to re-design their current site, this was my offering:



Yes I have rather lazily removed their logo from it, but I would rather not make this a potential slander campaign! They didn't hire me, no biggy, move on!

I wasn't sure as to what I had done was quite right, so I ended up doing 2 more layouts, no major difference from the layout I had done, just little visual tweaks that gave them options, as I thought that was a good thing.

Take 2:



and take 3:



Which is actually my personal favourite of the bunch, for a stupid reason that I won't share, as it will stop me smiling!

Not much more to say on this, as it got me nowhere!
Michael

Link
Larger Version

Custom bandcamp

Now this a truly interesting challenge! I don't know if you know, but bandcamp is one of the best platforms for bands these days (or atleast in my opinion) currently available. Since the um...changing over at myspace HQ, there is little reason to be behind that platform.

The challenge with bandcamp, you only have 2 totally customisable elements, the background (which you can't control the position of) and the header (which is only 975x180), so you have to be concise about what you are doing, make it bold and beautiful! As you saw in my previous post, I like the logo/sticker I've just designed, so that was my basis!



I think it looks good for a first attempt, I will try and do another one soon, so I can try and up the standard of what I can design with the platform!

If it makes you feel better, you can get a free download of our EP there as well!

Link
The Modern Farewell on Bandcamp

A coding job I tells ya!

This is the first time I have ever been charged with the job of just coding, well, not just coding, but of designing, but not much.

Ladies and Gentlemen let me introduce to Richey Beckett's myspace layout...

















This job was a mammoth undertaking as this is still a myspace layout, but it has been dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up to suit Mr. B's needs, there are text scroll boxes, additional spaces, its a real gold mine of interest to anyone who is interested in this sort of thing!

It was a real pleasure to work with Richey again, after the success of the Captain Accident artwork, however in this case, I just gave him a PSD with some guides, told him to go nuts and then I had to move a few things round and make a random background.

Strong piece for him and a good exercise for me.

Sweet, some day I'll get this coding malarky...
Michael

Link
Richey Beckett's Myspace

Something for my band...

After nearly a year of trying to get our shit together, my band have finally got into the recording studio! It was an exciting weekend spent with good friends, doing something we love.

As much as times are changing for social networking, facebook has over taken myspace, twitter is getting more popular...blah blah blah...one of the best places for a band to present their music, photos, calendar, blogs...is still myspace. So I was charged with making a myspace and a logo for us.

This is what I did.











I really like the logo, end of.

One thing I really like about the myspace is the photo that is being used as the profile image, as I may have mentioned in the past my MA dissertation was on documentary photography and the honesty of the genre (that's a potentially long and boring story), the point being I took the photo on my point and click camera about 5 minutes before we were about to play probably my favourite gig we have played so far. It makes me smile seeing it in there.

Looking forward to doing the artwork, which has to be a re-adaption of this. I'll post a larger version of the logo then.

Oh yeah, the myspace is optimized for firefox, safari, chrome, opera...and everything but internet explorer. So if you are still using internet explorer, get a clue!

Few more posts then bed.

Link
The Modern Farewell Myspace

Space in yo face!

A myspace design, this is a very important layout for me, mainly because if I had made a mess of it my girlfriend would have killed me!

This is the layout for her myspace, she is a very talented designer in her own rite (mainly product design), and she needed a portfolio site, and once again myspace is an excellent solution in a hurry, as the coding is simple and effective.

This was another destroy and rebuild layout, lots of text areas and the like, nice CSS learning curve.



This was an attempt to be clean and concise, yet very cool looking, I tried my best, personally I love the green and brown balance.

I've included a link, I am however not sure if she has updated all the details yet...

Night
Michael

Links
Larger Version
Claire Andrews Designs

Full Design part one!

They Walk Among Us are a Cardiff band who have been around for a while, seen some action, toured the US (got a few mental stories about a one armed double bass player), done SXSW...

Safe to say these guys aren't amateurs.

So working with them has been a really cool process, they have had ideas, but are willing to listen to mine, its been a nice collaboration.

First off I did them a logo, they like the SWPK big type, so they have something similar.



Univers for you type nerds.

Then a myspace!



The reason I say part one, there is CD artwork to come, as well as a few other bits and bobs, but they deserve a photo when it is all completed! Trust me its rather special!

Thanks
Michael

Links
Larger Version
They Walk Among US Myspace

Everybody needs a tattooist...

Ok, maybe not everyone, but I certainly do! My tattooist is starting a fresh in a new location and as we are more than just customer/client, we are actually friends(!!!), he ask me to sort him out with a myspace for his new shop.

He told me to, "keep it clean and just get it live, we can worry about an all singing and dancing one, once the shop is up and running." So here we have my response to that very limited brief.



I think that fits the brief. The Kids in Glass Houses video is going to be changed in a few days with a walkthrough vid of the shop, they are still painting at the moment.

Few more things to do...
Michael

Links
Larger Version
End Of The Line Tattoo Studio

Recording studios are great places

So I was in a band a while back and we were lucky enough to get to record with Todd Campbell, great guy does awesome work and is an all round great guy.

This was a challenge as he wanted it to be 'clean, but messy', nice challenge me thinks.



To keep it clean I tried to avoid to much flashy detailing, like some of my other work and focus on simple, but grimey.

I had to design everything from scratch, layout, logo and details. It was a challenge getting the balance right.

I hope this suits him and does him some justice (and maybe gets him some more business).

Still watching Rocky, ADRIAN...
Michael

Links
Larger Version
Skwad HQ Myspace

Myspace time again....

So August must have seemed incredibly quiet, on the contrary! August was busy as sin, I've just been waiting for loads of things to get finalised and get live, on top of the fact that I have a job that I have started that involved signing a confidentiality agreement, a non-disclosure agreement and some other form I can't remember the name of that I had to sign! Also I have recently (anyone who has followed my twitter for the last week will know that) been working on making powerpoint presentation. Harder than it sounds, well actually it's easy to make a rubbish one, we've all seen them, but it is difficult to make sweet looking one that works. Rant over, plot.

I was in a band, and we developed a fan, she was great, came to most of our shows, supported us loads and then after a year or so ago, she started her own band! Her name is Sam, she is awesome.

To have the opportunity to do something cool for someone who always supported me, has left me with a big ole smile on my face!

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Cowboy and the Corpse.



There is a massive list of photographers I should link, but I find their info right now, so I will add it later.

Peace out
Michael

Links
Larger Version
Cowboy and the Corpse Myspace

Myspace myspace myspace

This was a sick little project! Having had a conversation with the guitarist, Dan, he told me to go nuts and do whatever I wanted! AND he meant it, placed complete trust in me and safe to say it was a brief but happy client designer relationship!























I was really happy with 2 things on this, the profile image overlay was cool as beans and worked really well, and I locked the background image to the bottom of the screen, this was a cool little style quirk!

I also made a logo...



that is on their bigcartel, and hopefully is going to be a shirt design in the near future!

Credit for the skull logo and background scribbles has to go to Daniel Lanzenby and photo credit it (once again) Mei Lewis @ Mission Photographic!

Safes!
Michael

Links
Circa Regna Tonat Myspace
Circa Regna Tonat Big Cartel
Daniel Lazenby
Mission Photographic

Myspace for some old friends!

I have been working on this little beast for a while, it has been cool as I was given plenty of freedom by the guys! Always welcome...



Well this is a nice one for me personally as I go way back with the Haddonfield boys and this is an important moment in giving them a fresh start with their new drummer, I am really glad I could be part of it! I am honestly wishing them the best of luck, bring on the new tunes and tour!

Peace out
Michael

Links
Haddonfield Myspace
Larger Version

Myspace Layout

So I have been working on a project with Zenyth for a while now, doing a press release, artwork for their CD and a new new myspace to match.

And the myspace is ready and has gone live. Woo!



Thats how it looks, I quite like it because it brings in elements of their old myspace layout, combined with elements of the CD artwork.

More to come, just needs to be signed off....

Peace out
Michael

Links
Zenyth Myspace
Larger Version