November 10th, 2009
I've Been Busy Alright?
Whoa. Long time no post eh? Well, I'll try to make up for my lack of entries with a big one.
As you may know, I have been working with Artemis Branding (AKA Artemis PR and Design) for the last six months or so. I must say that it has been an absolute pleasure working with the creative team at Artemis. From design to copy, they really know their stuff - which of course makes my job as a developer a lot easier.
I thought that I might feature a few of the sites that we have launched over the last few months. Just click on one of the images below - I think that you'll like what you see.
- Missing Link School - We had a lot of fun creating this site. Clean, accessible and informative - I think this site really shows off everything that owner Craig Toker has to offer. A couple of interesting features are the gallery and the use of Lightboxes for displaying images and Google's Calendar API. Check back for Phase 2 - the online store.
- Donna Eichel - If you've traveled through the Victoria International Airport recently you will recognize this local Canadian artists work. We put a lot of effort into making sure that Donna's paintings translated well onto the web. As it was important that we get the colours 'just right', we ended up using lossless 24-bit PNG's as opposed to standard JPEG images. Although the file size of a 24-bit PNG tends to be a bit larger, the image quality tends to be a bit better - especially when dealing with sharp transitions.
- Carreiro the Studio - Admittedly, this site proved to be a bit of a challenge but we think the results are stunning. Award winning Victoria stylist John Carreiro wanted something that would really bring his work to the fore. The challenge lay in having the large background and gallery images load as quickly as possible. Through the use of sprites, preloading and optimization, we were able make the page transitions almost seamless. The gallery was custom built using Flash/AS3 and the 'news roll' in Javascript using my favorite library, jQuery.
- SME Victoria - From an SEO perspective, it is important to make sure that search engines can index a site properly. Like all of our sites, Sales and Marketing Executives of Victoria features my favourite image replacement technique - for those instances that an image might be more suitable (or aesthetically pleasing) than your standard browser font. This site also features an RSS feed to the news items and tips as well as an easy to use contact form.
All of these sites are XHTML strict compliant and cross browser compatible. And yes, even IE6 is supported as they still hold quite a large portion of the browser share as you can see for yourself. Additionally, all four sites utilize our custom built content management system - allowing the client to update content through an easy to use administration panel and a built-in text editor.
I'll try to post some of my experiments in the coming while as I'm always playing and learning but for now, I guess it's back to work.
Cheers :)
July 21st, 2009
Special Announcement
I am excited to announce that I have recently signed an exclusive contract with Artemis PR and Design - one of Western Canada's premier full-service agencies.
Kerry Slavens (CEO & Director of Creative Services) and Maggie Kerr-Southin (President & Director of Public Relations) have invited me to join the creative team at Artemis as Lead Developer for all web related services and technologies. I am looking forward to helping maintain the standards of excellence and integrity that have established Artemis PR and Design as one of the preeminent agencies in Western Canada.
May 10th, 2009
United Way of Greater Victoria
I have just completed Phase One of development on the United Way of Victoria's new website for Bone Creative. Jason Dauphinee - a principal and Senior Art Director at Bone Creative - spearheaded this project. I think his skill as a designer really shines through with this well thought out and functional design.
To visit the live site, just click on the image below:
The UWGV was looking for something accessible and easy to use. We went with a nice, simple architecture that degrades gracefully in non-standard and Javascript disabled web browsers. Phase Two involves the retooling of their online donations system and I'm looking forward to the challenge.
As they say at the United Way: Please give generously.