Archive for the ‘Graphic Design’ Category
Earlier last week, I completed and launched Smile-Radio, a marketing site developed for my associates at CustomChannels to pitch their new product: streaming radio targeted at dentists.
SmileRadio.com
Dubbed “Music for the Modern Dental Practice”, Smile Radio is a very “Web 2.0″ looking custom-themed CSS site running off the WordPress platform (along with a few strategically placed custom plug-ins) and will soon have an automated ordering and tracking system for e-commerce payment traction.
In addition to the layout and tracking system, I also developed the accompanying Flash streaming media player and hand-crafted the branding. Lookin’ sharp! CustomChannels and I will be doing more work in the future including a new Flash radio player with unique statistical tracking. Look out, web!
My client, Mortgage Training Institute recently launched our latest collaboration: a new pure CSS site marketing their new product LivePresenter, a top-of-line yet inexpensive product that streamlines online video presentations.
MTI: LivePresenter
Designed and developed by yours truly, the LivePresenter site was built for marketing and search engine efficiency. Along with creating a series of hand-crafted logos and icons, I also developed a media player in Silverlight 2.0 to showcase customer testimonials. I also designed layouts for their nifty back-end toolset that allows users to manage their online presentations.
Great product + great collaboration = great results! Congrats, guys.
I’ve been very pleased to say I’ve been bidding and contracting for more and more jobs that involve both design and development this year. When I re-established my business, it was one of my goals to be the most well-rounded creative professional I could be and admittedly had some rusty spots- design being one of them as it wasn’t a huge part of my last job and practice makes perfect.
I proud to say a lot of my designs and logo illustrations are really coming around. I’ve always thought my metaphor for design was painting on a large blank canvas and the idea is to get one great idea; whereas in development its more like putting a big puzzle together- the painting is already there, you just have to figure out the most efficient order in which to put the pieces together.
It all seems to be relating together well this month. Three cheers for covering all bases: design, development, search optimization and streaming media! Case studies to follow soon.
I’m admittedly a late one to getting the most recent software, but today I finished upgrading all my Adobe software to the latest version (CS4), and have been pretty pleased with the results so far.
It seemed to me like CS3 was still a little clunky with leftover pieces from old Macromedia software and ran a bit slow on Vista; not nearly as bad a CS2 however. The newest versions run noticeably faster on my machine and have a number of neat new innate features that make each application more compatible with its associates.
I’d recommend upgrading to the new version. While I hate the fact that the new model for software is to force an upgrade every year, I agree that this upgrade was worth it. Check it out for yourself by going to Adobe.com and downloading the free trial, or click the link on the bottom right of my blog- I believe you get a discount.
A few weeks ago I did some icon sets for a customer of mine, Mortgage Training Institute, for their new video conferencing product LivePresenter. I drew them from scratch in Illustrator.
LivePresenter Icons
I love jumping back and forth between development and design- they’re totally different thought processes. I always think of design more like painting a blank canvas and the real challenge is to come up with that one big idea, whereas development is more like assembling a puzzle- the artwork is complete, but I have to come up with the most efficient way to put the pieces in order.
Overall I’m pleased with the icon set and I think the MTI guys were as well- however I’d prefer it if they chose my “robo professor” (even though it doesn’t really fit their audience). Check out a better pic of them in my portfolio under illustration.
I also designed and developed a site, a simple Silverlight player and a series of layouts for their toolsets. More info on that later.
I launched the site for Development Foundation International a few weeks ago and must say both the client and I are pretty satisfied with the results. DFI is an international organization that helps people in underpriveledged countries get eye care. Nothing’s better than doing a project for client who has a really cool cause!
DFI Site
DFI ended up being a custom WordPress site. I designed a custom skin based on imagery provided from them on their last mission to Lebanon and developed several plugins to ensure the site was exactly the way they liked it.
Finally, I’m pleased to announce they’re doing fairly well on search engine indexing (at least on google). You’d be surprised how much competition the words “international, development, foundation” get. Cheers guys!