I’m thrilled to announce that a site I programmed for Richmond author Karen A. Chase has won a gold eLit award for Best Author Website. This site was designed by Karen, and programmed by me and Christina Reeser at io studio.
Karen’s e-book, BonJour 40, also pulled in two eLit silver awards for Best Non-fiction Travel/Essay e-book and Best Book Trailer. Congratulations, Karen!
← Read Karen’s blog post about the awards
← Read my post about Karen’s site
So I was supposed to take this week off. I wanted to make some improvements to my website, which has been irritating me for a while now because it’s looking kinda shabby. But I didn’t get to spend much time on my site at all, because a bunch of other things needed attention. Fortunately, I had marked up the redesign as a static site in HTML5 a while back, so I just had to bring my database down locally, migrate the static site to WordPress, then push up the new theme.
I still want to refine my blog homepage, the single posts page and comments. I also have to add my print work – logos and marketing materials. I’m considering putting those in a lightbox. What do you guys think?
Please let me know what you think of the design geek[ess] refresh; and definitely holla if you see any bugs!
This site was just fun.
A week or so before Christmas, I got a call from a guy who wanted a site for his wife as a Christmas present. He tells me she’s funny and a good writer, and I think, suuuuuuure she is. But I say I’ll try to bust this site out in record time, because he’s nice, it’s an imaginative gift idea, and it’s cute that he thinks his wife is funny.
Turns out, she IS funny. Belly laugh funny. But don’t take my word for it, read her Christmas newsletters. Once you’re hooked, consider subscribing to her blog.
I think this could become one of my favorite blogs. Check it out at http://living-with-lucy.com
It was such a treat to create this site for Brett LaGue, and I’ve been looking forward to blogging about it. Brett, a prolific artist, needed an updated site that would allow him to easily showcase his art. Brett’s homepage has all his main content right there, I kept the excerpts short and included lots of pictures. This site was a little bit tricky to organize because Brett has three distinct styles of art – landscape, abstract and pop! to promote, and he wants to spend his time creating more art, not creating a zillion little thumbnails. Thankfully WordPress has built-in solutions for those problems. I used post thumbnails to size the images, categories to sort the content and custom fields to add details such as media, size and price.
Brett especially likes the way the lightbox plugin automatically generates thumbnails, so all he has to do with his new art is upload the image to the appropriate gallery page, type the name and caption, and then he can get back to doing what he really enjoys – painting!
For this project, I returned to my print design roots to create a logo for Amy Lucas, a computer technician and social media guru. Amy’s the person you call when your computer dies and you have that terrible sick feeling that you just lost everything. To me, computer techs are like superheroes – so that was my inspiration when creating this logo.
In addition to home and small business IT setup and support, Amy is also a social networking expert and web developer. So, she can be your wireless-networking, RAM-installing, virus-eradicating all-around hero!
The project was to create a custom theme in WordPress for a local church. I wanted the design to be simple and unassuming and I wanted the website to be updated easily. The church required several different post types, and they needed to dynamically populate various areas on the site. A robust events calendar was also needed because this church is a busy place and there’s always something fun going on!
This project was such a pleasure. I got to expand my WordPress skills by adding multiple dynamically populated areas and a print media query. I also had an opportunity to get to know the wonderful staff of Pleasant Hill Baptist. They were all so kind, patient and excited about their new site. I hope they are as pleased with the end result as I am.
The Franklin Street Press website was a super-quick project which lasted about a month from start to finish. Michael Lydon, an author and musician based in Manhattan, needed a simple e-commerce site for his books, about 20 in all. He wanted the site to have a cozy bookstore feel. It needed to be easy to navigate, and he was basically happy with the default WordPress theme – aside from some very specific styling needs such as indented paragraphs. So, I used a photo taken by his wife, Ellen, as the main image, then just wrote a theme based on twentyten. Michael picked up editing in WordPress amazingly fast, and he went right to work editing his pages and adding keywords to improve SEO. Michael was so nice to work with – toward the end of the project he surprised me with a cd of his music! How cool is that?
Visit Franklin Street Press | Visit Michael Lydon’s music site
This month’s new work was design and programming for a custom WordPress theme. The website was for Shelly Slapshak, a personal trainer. She needed a site to showcase her services, her new studio and a blog area to list recent news, fitness tips and advice on healthy eating. This project was great because Shelly had a ton of great photographs, and after talking to her I knew just how I wanted her site to look. During the project, it became obvious to me how Shelly keeps her clients motivated – she maintained an upbeat, you-can-do-it! attitude throughout.
Thank you to Karen Chase at 224 design for the referral, and thank you to Shelly at JustFit for being a terrific client!
I recently did an update for a client of mine. She’s an author, life coach, motivational speaker and overall really cool lady. We wanted to migrate her static HTML site to WordPress, add a blog and a better e-commerce area. Thanks to the wonderful WordPress plugin community, it was easy to add e-commerce to Linda’s site. There are a few bells and whistles we plan to add to her store, namely dressing up the products a bit, and making them easier for Linda to add herself by using a custom post type. But for now, we’re pleased with the result of this redesign – we’ve come a long way with this site and I’ve loved every minute of it!
Please check it out at: http://lindajferguson.com.
I announced my new website and have gotten a lot of good reviews on it. People say it looks professional and polished. One woman found it and sent a nice email saying she found my blog posts exactly what she needed to read this week.
~ Linda J. Ferguson, Ph.D.
I recently helped a friend out with a WordPress site. She’s a designer I’ve known for years, but also a writer (and photographer) and she has a new book coming out in October. The turnaround on this project was fast (2 weeks) and the design she created was beautiful, but challenging.
My favorite parts of the project:
When Karen told me to make the font smaller. It’s a nerdy graphic design insider joke that we want everything smaller and clients want everything bigger. It can be a challenge to find the right balance between aethetics and readability.
When we were getting tight on time Karen said to push it back a few days because she wanted it to be right. That was such a luxury, since design often suffers when the project has a tight turnaround like this one did.
A really nice project for a lovely woman. Please check it out at karenachase.com.
And a huge thank you to Christina Reeser at iostudio for helping me out when I got stuck! I could not have turned the site around in time without her help.
simply thoughtful design