Fun with Suffusion

Mar 282011
 

I attended my first WordPress Meetup tonight and it was an amazing experience. Just to realize that other people out there have had clients who erase a lovingly customized embedded Google map (“Html view? What’s that?”) made me feel that much less alone in the universe.

Not only was I going to my first meetup but I had been invited to be one of the presenters which was a really nerve-wracking fun experience. The theme was a WordPress BakeOff between Thesis, Headway and Suffusion. Each participant was assigned a framework and then given a design to re-create using their theme. As the Suffusion contestant, I found that it really helped to have an outline of all the features so you can see that here.

On a side note, this is where I am going to be working on a new look for my own site, so bookmark this if you want to follow the progress of my own Suffusion-powered site renovation!

New Site: DeathWishpiano.com

Mar 282011
 

dwp-home

Once DeathWish Piano Movers owner Greg Keane stepped in front of the cameras for the Travel Channel’s new show, DeathWish Movers, he realized that his company would need to update their website to a more dynamic version that would also function as their online storefront. Since hoisting Black Sabbath-worthy mixing consoles and antique Steinways out of Boston loft spaces and brownstones can be a little time-consuming, Continue reading »

Dickeklund.com Update

Feb 282011
 

No Christian, Thank You! I was completely caught off-guard on Oscar night when my friend who had asked me to work on Dickeklund.com, sent me a text message that the site had been mentioned at the Oscars. I thought it was probably something along the lines of Christian Bale sporting a Dickeklund.com cummerbund or something. So this morning I got curious and googled “Christian Bale Oscar Speech” and got this.

Dickeklund.com

Dec 112010
 

“The Fighter” has been getting a lot of great reviews and press lately and if you look closely, you can see Christian Bale, who portrays Lowell boxing legend Dick Eklund in the film, sporting a shirt that says Dickeklund.com.
chrisbale
By a stroke of luck, a client of mine also worked as a grip on The Fighter and since he’s a local boxer as well, he and Dicky really hit it off and he offered to find Dicky some help with getting a web site together for his training business. One thing that became apparent right away was the need to showcase all the testimonials that Dicky’s students had about his training method. The JQuery Featured Content Gallery plugin was a great solution for putting as much content as possible on the page without taking up a lot of real estate. Out of curiosity’s sake, I went with the default “Twenty Ten” theme and styled it into the page below.
dickeklundhome
The header contains the JQuery Featured Content rotating banner images which rotate to show the various testimonials along with a photo of the person quoted.
dickeklund-banner
It’s a great plugin to work with. The instructions are easy and fairly self-evident. There’s an option to link each banner to a different page and the styling and sizing are a breeze. Warning, it’s so easy to use, I have to restrain myself from using it everywhere.
When I first took the project on, it mainly because I had actually worked a couple of days on the film and I thought it would be fun to do a site that connected to another area of my life. I totally didn’t expect Christian Bale to throw his weight behind it and start wearing Dickeklund.com swag everywhere! He was fascinating to work around. I don’t think he ever “broke” character and he’s hugely supportive of Dicky. At one point, when the courtroom scene was being filmed, a production assistant accidentally dropped a clipboard that fell onto Bale as he was waiting for his cue. Everyone froze, probably thinking he would go off on another Youtube rant sensation but instead he turned to the quaking kid and said “Hey buddy, ya trying put a hit on me?” in a flawless Lowell accent. The site’s doing really well thanks to his support and I hope it brings Dicky some new fighters to train!

New Site Launched: PatsyAnn.net

Apr 072010
 
PatsyAnn.net: Welcome Page

PatsyAnn.net: Welcome Page

Jenn Mears Web Design has just launched a site for Patsy Ann doll enthusiasts that was designed for Marblehead resident, Debbie Essig. After collecting Patsy Ann dolls, furniture and ephemera for many years, Debbie decided to combine her love of this unique doll of the Depression Era with her gift for creating vintage design doll clothing into a site that would showcase her extensive knowledge of Patsy Ann as well as providing a way to sell her unique hand-made outfits online.

PatsyAnn.net's navigation bar

PatsyAnn.net's navigation bar

Debbie wanted to emulate the style of Effanbee’s 1930s advertising flyers, so I needed to incorporate vintage Depression Era graphic elements into the overall design. I found the Fairfax Station font to be a good choice for the main header as well as the side navigation and the page headers.

patsyanns-story

Patsy Ann with vintage clothing and accessories

I built the page template based on the Silver Dreams theme (available at WordPress.org), and it was a highly adaptable, lightweight theme that provided a solid foundation to bring Debbie’s vision online.

New Site Launched: EOyourlife.com

Mar 092010
 

eo_home

Last year Carrie Stack of the Say Yes Institute and a certified Life Coach, asked me about helping her to launch a s site for her new project entitled EO.  EO stands for Emotional Orgasm which is a term she and her business partner Michele Lazcano came up with to describe a moment when you connect with another person and the both of you realize that the connection has moved both of you forward to living your life fully.

I have to say I had a few EO’s of my own with this project.  In collaborating with Katharine Navins of Tallow Studio for the visual aspects of the site, I came to realize that the “splash page”, long considered a no-no among designers, can actually be a very effective tool in focusing the user’s attention on the site’s various sections before they dive right into the content.  Katharine’s use of the gentle blue and white gradient tile in the background and the clean look of the EO logo makes for a very soothing inital impression and prepares the viewer for a relaxing enjoyable time spent reading about Carrie and Michele’s vision of how we can all connect with each other and live our lives more fully.

eo_blog

One thing that was a fun challenge in developing the site was finding a way to display the beautiful navigational buttons Katharine designed without having to resort to javascript or tables.  I found that giving the unordered list that contained the navigation its own id and then using relative positioning to place it on the page, then allowed me to style all of the links with some universal styles, such as visibility, borders, margins, padding and line-height (to fool IE into expanding the clickable area to cover the entire button).  Then, giving each list item its own id gave me precise control over where the link was displayed via absolute positioning and also allowed me to display a different background (the various buttons) for each link.

Social networking, by its very nature, is also a big part of EOyourlife’s focus.  In addition to the text links to Twitter and Facebook at the bottom of each page, I also installed the Add-to-Any plugin so users can easily share the site with friends.  Also in use are the plugins; MailChimp/Analytics 360 to help maintain the newsletter email list and monitor site traffic, Cforms, for the site’s contact forms and All-in-One SEO pack to enhance the use of page titles and optimize the site’s content.

Check out EOyourlife.com and share the good vibes!

New Site(s) Launch: Lovejoy Designs.net

Nov 242009
 

When Katharine Navins, Tallow Studio’s owner needed a WordPress developer to bring her site design for Lovejoy Designs to fruition, she came to Jenn Mears Web Design with the page concepts and site architecture wonderfully laid out with a great eye towards color and balance. Utilizing a theme called Silver Dreams, I was able to re-create Tallow’s design and developed some page templates to match the various looks through-out the site. The biggest challenge came with the desire to present the Portfolio and Featured Products sections with an interactive gallery that allowed the user to click on thumbnails to view a full-size image on the same page. I decided to use Alex Rabe’s NextGen Gallery plugin with some extensive modifications developed by Arafatbd.net and several other members of the WordPress community. After a few late nights and some wp forum stalking, the site finally came together. Love Joy Designs is a Boston-based interior design firm owned by Phoebe Lovejoy Russell, a designer with a great flair for color, form and function. Her throw pillow designs were especially fun ( a great bonus when you are tweaking a gallery of them at 1am!) and her blog, Design Lab, is sure to inspire readers everywhere.

Site Launch: C3 Salon.com

Nov 042009
 

Jenn Mears Web Design is thrilled to announce a new site launch for C3 Salon based in Marblehead, MA. Recently voted Marblehead’s number one salon, C3′s owner, Christine Knight found that she wanted to give her web site an overhaul to match her re-vamped business. Formerly Creative Cuts and Color, the name C3 Salon was available and the new url c3salon.com was chosen.

Christine wanted to emulate the rollover navigation used on a salon’s site that she liked, and it was a fun challenge to create a similar effect using just an HTML list and some a:hover CSS trickery. The home page has four nature images which, when moused over, reveal four main areas of the site.

The site’s main navigation also made use of a drop-down menu that was also styled with CSS to match the color theme of the site.

In addition to information about the salon’s stylists and services, a new contact form was utilized to enable clients to book their appointments online. This was a great experience in working with a client who was full of constructive ideas and feedback and the resulting collaboration will hopefully be a new asset to an already very successful business!

Welcome To The New Site!

Apr 292009
 

Ooh, I am so excited! I wanted to utilize the Sliding Door CSS theme by Wayne and incorporate it with a previous motif on the site which compared developing a site to the changing of the seasons. I’m still “unpacking the boxes” a little, so keep visiting for changes!

Site Launch: Century Portraits

Feb 142009
 


Earlier in the month, Jenn Mears Web Design completed work on Century Portraits, a web site for the portrait photographer Brian Corbett. This was a great site to work on since the images provided by the client were luminous black and white portraits that lent themselves nicely to a design based on the imagery of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Inspired by the classic portraiture style of George Hurrell, Century Portraits’ owner and photographer Brian Corbett has worked for over a decade and a half in the film industry. From working with such cinematographers as John Seale and Darius Khondji, he has combined his experience and love of photography into a studio that creates commissioned portraits in the style of famous Hurrell photographs of such legends as Humphrey Bogart and Jean Harlow.

To view a collection of Century Portraits’ work, go to: Centuryportraits.com/gallery.html

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