client SecretEnt
entertainment agency

brief new website to promote SecretEnt as entertainment agency, specialising in Latin Dance

link secretent.com

launch website

the brief

Create a glamorous site to promote SecretEnt as the specialist agency for booking entertainment. The concept was to create a strong visual impact which would reflect the glitz and glamor of the dance shows so popular with audiences everywhere. Strong in colour and design – the site presents various bands, dance shows and freelancers as well as promoting related dance workshops and classes.

the final setup

• clean and simple three column layout using a bold and vibrant colour palette
• setup of WordPress for easy updates
• setup of comments feature to allow user interaction
• embedded dynamic content (Flickr, youTube)

Prisca – design and implementation in WordPress
Brooke – content writing and editing

personal comments (written by prisca)

Glitz and glamour were the key phrases I was given for the site design – I really enjoyed working with such an amazing range of colourful images. Very different in design style – this site was tremendous fun to create and we wish Marco and Liliana all the very best with their new venture :)

client Two Gents Productions
theatre production company of three

brief design and build a promotional site, easy to keep up to date

link twogentsproductions.com

launch website

the brief

Create a vibrant website to promote Two Gents shows, as well as provide site visitors with up to date information on projects and performances. The company members have strong personalities and wanted a site as dramatic as they are ;) They also needed the flexibility a blog set up would allow for each of them to add news and performance dates as needed. For visitor/audience feedback, a comments feature was also required. Finally, the site was to start simple, with a potential for growth, so flexibility towards expansion was also a consideration to work with.

the final setup

• clean and simple three column layout using a bold and vibrant colour palette
• setup of WordPress for easy updates
• setup of comments feature to allow user interaction
• embedded dynamic content (Flickr, youTube)

Brooke – basic design, implementation + browser optimisation
Prisca – rescue implementation!

personal comments (written by brooke)

I’m very proud of this sweet little site. There are quite a few ideas the client wants implemented for the future, so I am still excited about it and looking forward to more work on it. Thanks to Prisca’s rescue (after the deadline was brought forward suddenly), we were able to get the site live just in time for an international tour of their debut work as a company together. And once again, getting a little further into wordpress customising was a joy… it’s starting to click!

For now – here are our inspirations – from Brooke and Prisca.

• Molly Holzschlag — web standards evangelista
  one of the most inspiring women in our industry – open about all – pushing boundaries and keeping standards in the limelight.
  → visit molly.com
• Ann McMeekin — freelance web, design and accessibility consultant
  loving Ann’s no-bullshit attitude – always to the point and without excuses. Hearing Ann speak about accessibility brings home how vital and important these issues are.
  → visit pixeldiva.co.uk
• Veerle Pieters — graphic and web designer
  amazing work and an unsurpassed sharing of knowledge via her blog
  → visit veerle.duoh.com

Obviously there are many well known women in web and design whom I admire and have learned from. But I would like to say a word or two for a couple of other ladies I know a little better – my friends, co-workers, teachers, mentors and inspirators…

• Prisca is an artist and great designer. I love her style and the way she works (her efficiency is blinding!) She remains an inspiring teacher to me, always encouraging, positive, strong… a great mentor.
  → view portfolio: graphiceyedea
• And Zara is on some transcendent creative wavelength. She can create anything! Her capabilities never cease to amaze me. And her animation is beautiful.
  → view portfolio: GhostCogs
• Laura takes gorgeous photos. And she’s a fine web designer too. She cycles everywhere and is extremely environmentally friendly. Laura is always doing a million things at once (and yet stays cool and unflappable) – her energy is really inspiring to me.
  → view photography portfolio

There are so many others, but I am gushing aren’t I?! I just have great respect and admiration for people I actually know who are making a difference doing positive, creative things. And they set examples for me to learn from. They have more of an impact on my aspirations than well-known characters whose work and being are not as tangible… or maybe it’s just coz they’re all so loveable..!

client Connector Media
‘keeping women connected’

brief create a website to promote the work of this social enterprise

link connectormedia.co.uk

launch website

the brief

Having designed the logo with an inclusive feel, the next step was the website. Keely, the editor, wanted the site to project a friendly, open and approachable image of the company. With a lot on the go, they needed a place to bring together all their work as well as keep visitors and potential clients up to date with their various projects. We also needed to allow for video presentation, film being one of their areas of work.

the final setup

• clean and simple visual design with a friendly feel using colour palette inspired by the logo
• setup of WordPress for easy updates
• setup of comments feature to allow user interaction
• embedded dynamic content (Flickr, Vimeo)

Prisca – design + implementation
Brooke – browser optimisation + content editing

personal comments (written by brooke)

There were many ups and downs in this project. And I got to delve a little further into dealings with server-side snoredom! But once all those technical hitches were out of the way and we were safely transferred to easily hosting (they really are wonderful!) the project picked up momentum and came together pretty darn quickly, and just in time to make the deadline. It was a really tight deadline from the word go, but as we all know, these clouds can have silver linings. Prisca was amazing! She did all the heavy lifting and I can’t believe how fast she got it all together. I am going to make her a crown!

<head> conference, London

Most recently was the <head> conference, which I attended with Prisca and Laura. You can see photos of our ‘attendance’ on Laura’s flickr.

Being a virtual conference, it had the freedom to ‘take place’ anywhere so most awesome was being able to watch local time, from localhome, as it were, speakers presenting from their own corners of the world, including Molly Holzschlag at some early hour in her morning, talking about ‘The Web as It Was Meant to Be’. Other highlights for us were Ann McMeekin on ‘Making Web Accessibility Sexy’ with some inspiring examples of people incorporating accessibility into beautiful design. Also Simon Wardley’s ‘Why open matters from innovation to commoditisation’ was interesting insight into cloud computing, not least due to Simon’s wonderful knack for fast-paced slide presentations!

And there were many more great speakers…

The first evening of <head> in London, we got to see live presentations in the generally not-open-to-the-public Centre for The Magic Arts, a great venue. We heard Jeremy Keith waxing philosophical about The Long Web; illuminating thoughts on issues of identity on the web from Gavin Bell; terrifying tales in Simon Willison’s Web security horror stories, plus a few others. The evening was finished off with the intriguingly cool Tim O’Reilly in conversation.

It was great for us to be three of the many international attendees at the world’s first virtual web conference :)

An Event Apart, Chicago

It was an amazing opportunity for me to visit this beautiful city to attend my first conference. I’d never been to Chicago so that in itself was pretty exciting. But getting to see speakers like Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman was oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-it exciting!

It was a little nerve-wracking too at first. I still feel so new to this, and going to a conference at this stage in my skill-development seemed slightly premature. But the US is a pretty diverse melting pot and after meeting all kinds of people my first morning, I was a lot more comfortable. And most delightful was that none of it was waaay over my head, as I worried it might be. (I obviously had a great teacher ; )

I found all the speakers’ presentations interesting, inspiring, educational, illuminating, a pleasure, fun, exciting… but I did have a few personal favourites. Andy Clarke’s ‘Underpants Over My Trousers’ was a fun approach to design using comic book styles and traditions as inspiration for the design process. I also loved Rob Weychert’s approach in his ‘Design Lessons in Chess’. The analogy was an interesting perspective, applied to users and designers as chess players on the same board. It’s not that the user is an opponent exactly, but a ‘player’ whose moves we are trying to manipulate/guide as a designer – and the basic solution is limiting moves/options. Interesting isn’t it?

Curt Cloninger’s ‘What Would William Do?’ used William Morris’ art and design philosophies as a theme for his presentation. William once said: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” I really liked that quote… With the gorgeous backdrop of William’s designs, and a focus on craftsmanship, Cloninger gave us a glimpse of design in the context of a bigger picture – because designers: craftsmen, engineers, architects etc – ‘we make the world; homes, cities and online’ and that’s a great responsibility, one which we can use to make the world a greener, more usable and better place :)

I was also really drawn to the presentations with more of a focus on web-app design. Jeff Veen took us back in time to 1854 and the first use of infographics, (John Snow and the cholera outbreak,) which has arguably influenced the way we present data today. An enjoyable talk with a couple of interesting development anecdotes from Jeff’s Google days.

Jason Fried’s talk surprisingly captured my heart. I suppose it was the most enlightening for my position as User Interface Developer in my current full-time employment. Fried got down to some serious nitty gritty of user interface. It was called ‘Designing the Details’ and I really dig the details, because it’s those little things that make the user-experience more than just straightforward, but a really easy breeze that actually puts a smile on your face. Who needs to set user preferences when the application remembers them for you?

And I like that Fried isn’t telling 37signals users about every single user-enhancing action – they’re so intuitive, the chances are the user will discover them eventually, and when they do, they’ll love the little detail! And if they don’t find it, they aren’t really missing anything crucial. Some great ideas to tinker with when an application is fully functioning and just needs some super-fine refining for user treats :) And the great thing for us non-javascript-writers is that a lot of them can be done with javascript libraries, and a little cookies research (I think – yet to get stuck into some serious DHTML…!)

I didn’t take a camera to Chicago (I hear the *gasps*!) but I did make a friend who had a camera. And there are a few photos at my flickr of me meeting Eric, Andy and Robert at the first night’s social.

Looking forward to the next conference…. whenever or wherever that may be :)

Last weekend was the first <head> conference, organized by Aral Balkan, a web conference over three days and a new way to ‘attend’ conferences: from the comfort of your own sofa. :)

The sessions covered a wide range of timely topics including web standards, accessibility, web application development, flash, and scalability.

One of the great things about this conference is that is was green: an environmentally-friendly web conference as the speakers and attendees interacted with the conference locally – no aeroplane or train travel carbon footprint for attendees of <head> :)

The first day of the conference, Prisca, Brooke and myself attended the London Hub, held at The Magic Circle – a members-only magicians club in the centre of London. The magic was in the air, and apart from a few technical glitches, the conference was great and the speakers that day were fabulous.

To name but a few there were talks from Jeremy Keith, Ann McMeekin, Simon Willison, Gavin Starks, Chris Heilmann, Simon Wardley and Tim O’Reilly . Aral Balkan was a great host and made sure the first day of the conference kickstarted the event with a friendly and energetic atmosphere. The remaining 2 days, Saturday and Sunday, were held online with the speakers talking from their homes or work spaces.

Our team decided to watch the conference together so I moved to Prisca’s flat for the weekend, and Brooke came along as well. It was great to sit there in the comfort of Prisca’s house and watch the conference from the sofa.

It was quite hard to digest all the inspiring talks we watched, and there were more talks to catch up on that were going on in different rooms. On Sunday, I managed to return to my place in time to watch the two last talks and I have to say it was a brilliant end. Simon Wardley’s talk was great and the end of the conference with all <head> conference team members pulling their faces onto our screens was a funny and sweet moment.

Now, I will try to find some time to watch more videos from the conference and gain as much knowledge as possible.

I don’t want to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. I only want you to stop for a moment and think about other people, just for today. And if it’s not too much to ask, more more than today if you can.

Consider our lifestyles and see how lucky we are, while other people in different parts of the world don’t have the same: running water, electricity, a roof over our heads. These are basic necessities for us. These are luxuries for other people. We need to be more conscious about the small things we take for granted in order for us to prevent the unnecessary waste of resources, precious and limited.

We can change the fact that developed countries (just 20% of the world’s population) are using 80% of the earth’s resources.

Let us learn to share, to be more generous with others and to think of the disadvantaged. With small gestures, we could change a lot and put a smile on a face.

So I ask you only for today, to think not just of yourself and your immediate life, but think globally. And think of the consequences of each action. The smallest gesture could have an effect on the other side of the world. You could turn off a light or use a tap more economically. These conscious choices and actions are the ones that will help make this world better for everyone.