ZENTS

Purveyors of luxurious, natural, sustainable spa products and toiletries ZENTS partnered with VectorDefector and Margaret McCullough of Corvus Design Studio to enhance their brand and overall web presence.

With a brand new clean and modern design, the new ZENTS reflects their values and organic brand. This data-driven website features easy to update content and blogs and a state of the art e-commerce system.

Quincy Center

A collaboration with associates Epiphany Graphics and a fabulous brochure design by Gold Dog Communications rendered a smart new website for the new Quincy Center in Quincy, Massachusetts. This website features a history of Quincy, featured modern development plans for both business and entertainment, and details for a $1 billion worth of development to give the city center a “much needed breath of fresh air”.

Custom-developed animated features, easy to update content, and a clean custom design make this website a one-of-a-kind representation as unique as Quincy itself.

A great example of what comes out of collaboration- well done all!

Conscious Alliance

This week, my awesome long term client and non-profit Conscious Alliance launched a suite of new updates to their site to improve their web presence and participation.

Included in these updates were: greater selection of purchasable products and payments via PayPal, the ability to donate to a specific project and see where your donation money went, and the ability to participants to create their own campaigns to involve their friends in Conscious Alliance’s cause.

All donations are put toward communities in desperate need of food and other hunger-related measures. Check ‘em out and give ‘em a few bucks!

Now a freelancer like myself, Doug plans to focus on clean graphic design for web and jaw-droppingly cool motion graphics and video. Check out Doug’s website and contact him if you’re looking for design, photography or awesome video! Also check out his new short film, Signal To Noise posted below:

I wholeheartedly agree that online piracy and copyright infringement is an issue that needs to be handled, but policing the entire web and treating us all as if we were criminals is a step too far. I recommend anyone who agrees to check out this list of companies who support SOPA and discontinue your business with them.

Density Co-working

Last year, in order to get a change of scenery at work, I joined Creative Density – a co-working community here in Denver. Co-working environments are spaces where freelancers can gather to gain a more professional workspace and collaboration among other professionals.

Recenty Creative Density owner Craig Baute and I sat down to discuss what VectorDefector does along with the current state of the web in a section he’s called the Member Minute.

Check out the article here: http://densitycoworking.com/member-minute-tom-benway/ or watch the video right here:

Overall co-working has been a great experience! I have a new space to utilize for professional development and a wealth of new creative folks to bounce ideas with. I’d highly recommend it.

Wordpress 3.3

In their typical yearly fashion, the good folks at WordPress.org released a new version of their brilliant, free to license software yesterday.

Their latest version, 3.3 “Sonny” named after yet another jazz legend, includes a couple new features worth taking a look at: a new interface that’s more geared toward fluid layout for a range of different devices (good news for folks who edit their site on their phone or ‘pad), a new media library that is simpler to use, more thorough in-system help screens, and a small addition for developers that should help me build more flexible sites.

All and all, another great reason to continue using the best open-source content management system!

Conscious Alliance

Excellent customers and fantastic non-profit Conscious Alliance recently partnered with me again to expand their online store. A latest venture in the name of donations for the hungry, the new wing of the store will be geared toward selling a range of clothing and apparel styled to match Conscious Alliance’s “Art that Feeds” motto.

I’m ‘sportin’ the Louie Gong T-shirt! Great gear for a great cause!

ModernChristmasTrees.com

Based on a design created by his grandfather, Modern Christmas Trees founder Matthew Bliss partnered with me and friend/partner Douglas Koke to create a site geared toward promoting his truly unique and modern Christmas tree designs.

Modern Christmas Trees.com features a custom logo and design, an easy to update content management system, and a simple PayPal-based e-commerce shopping cart for orders. Fabulous video and photography work provided by Doug.

10% of sales are donated to Alzheimer’s research, making this a great cause as well!

Spotify

Recently, I downloaded and joined Spotify – a streaming music service previously only available in the U.K. A cross between iTunes and Pandora, Spotify: manages your music, allows you to share music either via Facebook or by contacting other users within the community, and gives you instant access to pretty much any streaming music you want.

A slick interface and scaled pricing plans, from free to premium, make Spotify an awesome choice for anyone looking to increase or digitize their music collection. While iTunes may still remain my player of choice for my own vast collection of tunes, Spotify will definitely be along for the ride to provide me with new choices and more variety.

Check ‘em out and get in line for a free account (though it comes with banner ads and minor in-stream audio ads).