Archive for the ‘Case Studies’ Category
New Belgium Brewery
During an outing this week to free myself from the work grind, my girlfriend and I went to take a tour of the New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado. As major fans of the brew, we were very surprised and impressed to learn about their enviable business practices and cohesive brand.
In addition to brewing some of the tastiest adult beverages in North America, the New Belgium brewery is built on a strong standard of sustainability and fun. After certain yearly intervals, employees of all rank gain stock in the company, ability to travel to Belgium and numerous other perks. The facility itself utilizes its own recycled water (processed at its own plant) for 15% of its energy consumption and even more via photovoltaic solar panels.
Finally, all new product receives its own custom label hand-crafted by local artists. The facility itself boasted numerous multi-media art displays bringing even further aesthetic appeal.
Plus, free beer!
Man! where do I sign up?
Dominate the GMAT
Contracted through my associates Mindflint Media, Dominate the GMAT caters custom-made training videos for folks attempting to take the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT).
This project features the complete package: a custom branded logo set, website design and development and a simple PayPal E-Commerce solution that facilitates a gated member class signup area. View more details under my Interactive Section.
Check them out as a great online resource if you’re looking to take the GMAT!
House Jacks
A-Capella champions the House Jacks contacted me to create a brand new website custom tailored to match new artwork produced for their latest album, LEVEL.
This website features a fancy splash page (based around the new album), easy-to-update content, a custom photo slideshow, a community forum, and a press/blog section.
Check out more details under my Interactive Section.
A great collaboration brought to me by associate Troy Horne- thanks Troy!
Mobile Devices
Due to their growing popularity, mobile devices have become increasingly important to consider when designing for web.
Over the last 3-5 years, mobile devices have grown exponentially in their ability to work like a true computer. Heck, a modern Android or iPhone device has the same processing power as the computer I had when I first started this business. These devices now have real browsers instead of the paired-down versions of the past and as a result, standards are being created for mobile design.
VectorDefector has recently added design services for mobile devices – in fact, check out the site on your mobile device for a simplified version tailored to fit.
Want to find out how to get a site that is easy to manage and looks great on any screen? Contact me today!
XBOX 360 Elite
Recently, my XBOX 360 faced the dreaded red ring of death error and was rendered useless; much to my dismay on a bitter cold and low-work week.
After weighing my options, I decided to just replace my existing XBOX with an older, yet slightly upgraded Elite model since stock of their new cheaper model was supposedly sold out until March.
I have to say, transferring my data from the old XBOX to the new one was an absolute breeze. The original style hard-drives hot-swapped like a charm (just press a button to pop it out) and were easy to back up settings on a USB stick drive. Navigating through the menus to restore my settings, both user and Netflix, was equally easy.
Now if they could only get Windows working as smooth…
Net Privacy
G4Tv’s tech show, Attack of the Show, spurred an interesting discussion regarding the Dept. of Justice’s recent initiative to determine if ISPs should require data-retention.
What could that mean for us citizens? Essentially if this bill passes, your service provider (such as Comcast), would be required to keep a log of which IP numbers are associated with subscribers. If the Dept. of Justice happens to think you’re up to something malicious, they’d be able to utilize your ISP to link your web activity to your physical address to find out who you are.
As a developer who constantly fights with spammers drowning my customers’ blogs, I definitely see a plus side to this from a security standpoint. I’d love to nail a spammer or two to their activities, but this seems like a huge amount of resources that could be better used elsewhere. In my opinion, as a whole, the government has bigger and badder things to do than to track where my IP shows up.
BlueBird Strategies
Advanced marketing and lead generation firm BlueBird Strategies and VectorDefector have joined forces to establish some new marketing initiatives for a variety of clients! First up is BlueBird Strategies themselves with a brand new site.
With both design and development completed by me, this site focuses on highlighting BlueBird Strategies’ unique approach to assisting clients in developing new marketing plans and establishing new clientele through leads. Built on the WordPress platform, this site features a new unique slideshow written in jQuery and a variety of easy-to-update options for keeping content fresh.
Lookin’ sharp guys – cheers to new business!
Windhaven Medical Imaging
Another fine collaboration with my associates at Mindflint Media yielded a brand new site for the good folks at Windhaven Medical Imaging. Focusing on top-of-the-line, high tech medical imaging and radiology, Windhaven sought out a simple yet clean data-driven site to encompass their brand and messaging.
This custom site built on the WordPress platform features SEO friendly data driven content, and some added features for physicians and visitors alike.
Another nice turnout!
Wordpress 3.0
This week, the good folks at WordPress.org released the 13th iteration of their amazing open-source content management software entitled version 3.0: Thelonious.
Named after jazz legend Thelonious Monk, this version of WordPress comes with a number of neat new features beneficial to both overall organization and to customizable development.
A brief list of features I’m really excited about:
- New User Customizable Menu items (still needs work, but a great idea)
- Ability to associate an image thumbnail with a post or page (previously I had to write a hack in the theme to get this to work right). Users can even use existing images in their library.
- Ability to define background and header images so users can pick from a library of possibilities
- Developers now have the ability to create custom content types apart from the standard “page” or “post” common to existing WordPress versions. (Ex: I have a radio client who has content for their own business and separate content for radio shows. Now they can manage those entries in independent sections.)
In addition to the new features are the 1200+ updates and big fixes they’ve included in this update.
With great new features for both users and developers, WordPress continues to be my favourite framework for building classy, extensible websites that are mega-easy to use and update!
World Orphans
Another great collaboration with my associates, Mindflint Media, yielded a fantastic success for our client World Orphans: a non-profit specializing in fully-transparent donations to countries in need, typically for the purpose of aiding orphans.
Working in tandem with World Orphan’s development team, the Mindflint team and VectorDefector put our heads together to establish a new brand, website theme, blog, donation method and simple e-commerce store-front.
Utilizing our new shop and donation system, visitors to World Orphans can pick the exact project, country or effort to put their money towards or involve their friends to create their own trackable donation campaigns.
Another great cause and great results!