Last night I came across a new post on stuff and nonsense entitled Could you be a dick? in which Andy Clarke challenges the world to come up with a spoof business card for a private investigator.
I was rather amused by this proposition and set to work on my own idea which has now been uploaded to the Hardboiled card flickr group. The nine best entries (as judged by Mr Clarke himself) will go on to feature in the pages of his forthcoming book “Hardboiled web design” to assist in the explanation of CSS3 selectors.
Halo Public Relations is London based PR company with a rapidly growing client base. As a young, start up company I had the exciting challenge of helping Halo to develop a new brand from scratch. The first challenge was to come up with a logo.
For the Halo logo the client was keen to use an actual halo, and the buzzword when we discussed the branding was ‘maverick’. After various ideas and lots of iterations we eventually settled on a concept which used both an angelic halo and some devil horns (the maverick element). Some of the fruits of my labour can be seen below, the final design is the business card mock-up right at the bottom.
For the website design we went with a narrow single column layout and a large decorative background. The background image used combines explosive, meandering vines and radiating beams of light all of which originate from the Halo logo. This image was created in Illustrator CS3 on the mac.
The website was developed using the codeigniter PHP framework and a MySQL database. Particular challenges included the creation of a content management system for Halo to manage the client area of the site and a password protected press area for journalists to download exclusive high resolution promotional photographs.
The site continues to grow and evolve as Halo add more clients and features.
Jamie Raven is a magician who lives and works in London, England. Jamie wanted a website to promote the many services that he offers whilst also cataloging his extensive achievements over the past few years.
When I first met Jamie to talk about his website he had two carrier bags full to the brim with travel tickets, trade show passes, security badges, matchbooks and thank you letters. He went on to explain that my challenge was to incorporate this scrapbook of history into the website. This challenge started with scanning… lots of scanning.
Once I had successfully transferred two bags of “stuff” into one image folder of slightly more manageable “stuff” I began to make custom headers and footers for each of the main pages in Jamie’s website. I used hotel matchbooks, plane tickets and currencies to reflect all the traveling involved in the Clients & Appearances section. On the Consultancy page I used corporate photos and security passes and to decorate the Testimonials page I used thank you letters and cards.
In contrast to this the contact page is filled with empty placeholder programs, badges and photos. The idea here was to illustrate the fact that users of the site, who are presumably planning their own event or special occasion could very well be Jamie’s next appearance.
To accompany the website I also designed Jamie a double-sided business card and a double-sided A5 flyer using the same imagery and branding as the site.
NB - After the site was completed Jamie hired an SEO agency to do some work. The hidden div of spammy keyword content at the bottom of every page is nothing to do with me. :0)
Of all the websites that I have created this remains one of my favourites. It was a refreshing project because for once I had all the content for the site before I actually started designing, a rare luxury in this industry. The main idea behind the site was that all the content would be written on the back of a seaside postcard. I thought that this would give the site a relaxed feeling and provoke site users to make a positive association between the site and their previous holidays.
The illustrations for the site where created using Fireworks CS3 on the mac. To create the gradient colour scheme for the background I used a colour picker to carefully select swatches from a photo of an idyllic desert island beach which i found on flickr. The swirly font used for the site is Giddyup Std and it is implemented using a combination of background images and sifr.
The handwriting style font along, the crimped, stamp-like edges for photos and the homemade Noss Mayo postmark all help to reinforce the postcard themes that I wanted to get across. These same themes where also used to create some double sided postcard layouts for The Wheelhouse to use as oversized business cards/flyers (see below).
Following it’s release the website was featured on numerous CSS galleries and was later included in Vandelay Design’s
25+ Inspiring Designs by Land, Sea & Air blog article and psd.tuts+ Inspiration: Water and Ice blog. It is always nice to find out that your work is appreciated.