New Client Work: Christine Meintjes Photography
I don’t normally blog about specific client work, but this is the first big client project that I have finished since going back to freelancing at the beginning of March. The website in question is that of a brilliant photographer called Christine Meintjes. She specializes in wedding photography (she’ll also be my wedding photographer later this year) and the website design tried to capture the sophistication and profesionalism of her work.
One of the main reasons for posting about this year, is the fact that my portfolio is not being published at the moment, since I feel that it is badly outdated (due to two months in the corporate world) and doesn’t showcase my current design / development skills. So whilst I finish up on the first round of custom client projects and then launch my new company website (with a design portfolio), I will periodcally post about finished designs here.
WordPress as a CMS & Creating a portfolio
The whole site was built on WordPress (and the data was exported so easily from her previous Blogger account) and I feel that the design is a testament as to what can be accomplished with WordPress (I’ve never said that WordPress is as good at doing CMS as ExpressionEngine, but they’re definitely going that way). Christine’s blog has been tucked away into the inner pages of the website, whilst her galleries and info pages has been pushed to the fore.
One of the features of the site that I’m extremely proud of, is her custom-coded galleries. Not to pat myself on the back, but I really think that the finished product is amazing; and all it took was an additional image, a WordPress custom field and a custom-coded archives page (to work with the specific gallery categories). If you know your way around WordPress, you’d know that what I’m talking about is not rocket-science, even though the effect looks like a million bucks.
I’m also quite happy with the single gallery pages, where we used the SimpleViewer plugin for WordPress to create a slick-looking flash slideshow for all the galleries. I’m not normally a big fan of anything flash, but in this case Christine was already using SimpleViewer independently and the easiest way to migrate the old data was to continue using the same system, but just jack it into WordPress instead. But I’m sure that you’d agree that the effect is breathtaking, right!?
Love at first sight?
I know that Christine is very happy with her new website and I have to admit that I’m very pleased with the end-result as well. Maybe it’s just a case of looking at all the wedding photos (and getting all nostalgic and excited about my own wedding later this year) whilst developing the site, but I really think that the site manages to balance sophistication vs art, text vs visual content and usability vs design.
That said though, the website has just launched today and we’d love to get your input on anything that is out of place or that seems odd to you… New website designs should never be seen as an open-and-shut matter - so fire away with your comments!
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New Client Work: Christine Meintjes Photography
I don’t normally blog about specific client work, but this is the first big client project that I have finished since going back to freelancing at the beginning of March. The website in question is that of a brilliant photographer called Christine Meintjes. She specializes in wedding photography (she’ll also be my wedding photographer later this year) and the website design tried to capture the sophistication and profesionalism of her work.
One of the main reasons for posting about this year, is the fact that my portfolio is not being published at the moment, since I feel that it is badly outdated (due to two months in the corporate world) and doesn’t showcase my current design / development skills. So whilst I finish up on the first round of custom client projects and then launch my new company website (with a design portfolio), I will periodcally post about finished designs here.
WordPress as a CMS & Creating a portfolio
The whole site was built on WordPress (and the data was exported so easily from her previous Blogger account) and I feel that the design is a testament as to what can be accomplished with WordPress (I’ve never said that WordPress is as good at doing CMS as ExpressionEngine, but they’re definitely going that way). Christine’s blog has been tucked away into the inner pages of the website, whilst her galleries and info pages has been pushed to the fore.
One of the features of the site that I’m extremely proud of, is her custom-coded galleries. Not to pat myself on the back, but I really think that the finished product is amazing; and all it took was an additional image, a WordPress custom field and a custom-coded archives page (to work with the specific gallery categories). If you know your way around WordPress, you’d know that what I’m talking about is not rocket-science, even though the effect looks like a million bucks.
I’m also quite happy with the single gallery pages, where we used the SimpleViewer plugin for WordPress to create a slick-looking flash slideshow for all the galleries. I’m not normally a big fan of anything flash, but in this case Christine was already using SimpleViewer independently and the easiest way to migrate the old data was to continue using the same system, but just jack it into WordPress instead. But I’m sure that you’d agree that the effect is breathtaking, right!?
Love at first sight?
I know that Christine is very happy with her new website and I have to admit that I’m very pleased with the end-result as well. Maybe it’s just a case of looking at all the wedding photos (and getting all nostalgic and excited about my own wedding later this year) whilst developing the site, but I really think that the site manages to balance sophistication vs art, text vs visual content and usability vs design.
That said though, the website has just launched today and we’d love to get your input on anything that is out of place or that seems odd to you… New website designs should never be seen as an open-and-shut matter - so fire away with your comments!
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Icons & Icon Designers: Where art thou?
I have to admit that I’ve got a bit of a semi-fetish about web icons… The beauty of the minor details encapsulated into a 16 x 16 pixel artpiece is just incredible and a great icon can be truly inspiring. As a web designer, I use quite a few of different icon sets, depending on what kind of design I’m doing.
Since I’ve never even attempted to design an icon set myself, I use a variety of free & paid icon sets. Here’s some of them:
- WebPro Vector
- WebPro Mini
- iMini
Comments OffOnline Tutorials Done Right
I’ve never been much of a tutorial guy as I’ve always found that most tutorials are either to time-intensive or not very well written. That doesn’t however mean that I could not have used some great design & web tutorials in the past (if I had quality resources available, I could’ve increased my design skills considerably). Luckily though, two new(ish) resources are easily establishing themselves as the auhtoritative tutorial resource in the community…I’ve been following PSDTUTS for a while now and even attempted the odd tutorial myself. The only reason that I haven’t been using it on a daily basis, is due to time constraints on my side; that said though, I’ve been so impressed with the quality and in-depth nature of the tutorials on PSDTuts and I’ve managed to learn some pretty nifty new Photoshop techniques in the process.
I love the fact that all the tutorials on PSDTuts are crowdsourced and they thus manage to get some of the greatest Photoshop rockstars around the world to contribute to the site and ultimately educate the masses (read: wannabe Photoshop rockstars like myself). Offering a subscription option (that gives access to the tutorials’ Photoshop files), it is clear that the creators has spent a great deal of time figuring out the best business model.
Evolution is here
With the announcement of PSDTuts’ new sister site - NETTuts - I think that they’ve just evolved (and perhaps revolutionized) their tutorial offerings! NETTuts will be delivering XHTML, CSS, Flash & jQuery (amonst others) tutorials in the same way that PSDTuts has been delivering Photoshop tutorials.
The thing that however really excites me, is the “combo-tutorials” that will be published between the two different properties. An example of this would be the recent tutorial on how to create a sleek new web presence, where the design aspects were covered here and the coding stuff here. Don’t you just think that is awesome?
Think I’ll need to spend some more time reading (and perhaps writing) tutorials in the coming weeks…
(Image by *Urbaani)
Comments OffFoxinni Evolves
Don’t you just love redesigns? It’s always fun to talk about; whilst comparing the new version the the old one (as everyone always seems disagree about whether the redesign is better or worse; a designer can never please everybody)…
Anyway, my good friend - Foxinni - has just redesigned his website and I must admit that it is classic Fox all over! In my mind, this design doesn’t need any debating, as it is definitely better than the previous design and it shows some growth in where Foxinni is going…
Lucky for me, I’ve got some inside info on what Fox is planning for the next couple of months. I know he is a complete WordPress evangelist and he’s got a bunch of great ideas that will come to fruition pretty soon. In the meantime, you’ll have to admire to work on his latest design.
Keep it coming Fox!
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