Checking out Smashing Magazine today, the company I currently work for, Overstock.com got a nod in terms of usability, intuitiveness, and simplicity. I like to think I had a hand in at least the third item, after all, I did the final design for the homepage and header, and have come up with a number of "swiss-style" improvements across the site.

Smashing said,



There were some negative comments, however, I haven't been involved in the actual product pages or search and navigation pages in terms of design and layout, so I haven't been able to have any influence there. Oh well

Read the entire article by clicking here

Labels: design kudos, project

posted by Tim Avery at 11:36 AM  -  1 Comments ©

Several months ago, we posted about a possible project for the Great Salt Lake Bird Festival. We took a risk and did a pre-mockup hoping to catch them with something spiffy before they even had talked with us. Initially it looked good and we had a verbal go-ahead. Unfortunately, things didn't pan out for several reasons, and we were left scratching our heads. Perhaps the only good to come of the whole ordeal was another client, with a new project, Linking Communites, Wetlands and Migratory Birds. We hopped at the chance to work with the group, and after several months working out the details we have our first mockup ready to go. Take a look:


We went ultra clean, mostly on a grid layout sticking to a simple sans-serif font set. The colors are derived from a sky blue and the rust off the head of a bird called an American Avocet. We even worked out a simple logo. Not sure if they have one at this point, but we like our vision:


We added a light version of grass green, pulling in the 3 colors that best represent the planet, and linking them via a bird silhouette breaking up a simple box.

Hopefully, the client will be pleased with this work, and we can move on to designing the page layouts. We will be using the jquery library for most of the interactive portions of the site, and Coppermine Photo Gallery, along with Blogger for the blog. And of course, we will try to push the use of Twitter for quick updates any time from anywhere. Check back soon to see what other new projects we are working on!

Labels: project

posted by Tim Avery at 12:31 AM  -  0 Comments ©

Check out http://www.citizenblues.com, where you can find killer deals on jeans, one at a time. We designed the User Interface for the site, and Sam Hart developed the ODAT program that is the real brain-work behind the site. The official launch is right about now. So check out the site, maybe pick up a pair of jeans and see what else comes form the guys at Citizen Blues in the future!

Labels: project

posted by Tim Avery at 9:22 PM  -  0 Comments ©

One of our latest projects and one that we have high hopes for, was the design of an ODAT (one deal at a time) site for a new and on the rise company called Citizen Blues. We won't go into the specifics of what they will be selling, although the image below hints at it. We can tell you that the site should officially launch in the 2nd half of February.

After we completed our designs and coding, we handed the templates off to a brilliant developer named Sam Hart to take care of programming the actual inner workings of the site. He has developed his own ODAT programming and will be building it into the wireframes we developed, to bring the site to life. Here is a screen shot of the work we did:


Our initial design was actually blue as opposed to the silver, but the client wanted to go for a slightly different look than we had envisioned for them. Building a brand is all about creating an identity that is unique, memorable and relates clients to your product, or more specifically your brand. We wish Citizen Blues the best in this endeavor and hope they have built a brand that will last and be very successful.

Labels: project

posted by Tim Avery at 10:21 AM  -  0 Comments ©

Our intern from last semester and transitioning project manager Sam, wanted to start a blog about politics. We couldn't bear letting her use one of the horrendous templates out there, so over the weekend we whipped together a template that fit her personality and threw it out on the web for her at http://stateofthesam.blogspot.com/.

Here is snapshot of the blog (click for larger version)...


This design is definitely not our typical style. We have been taking a more liberal and simple route lately to conform to what is "hot" in design, but felt that this would definitely stand out and wasn't to outrageous!

Do you need a a blog designed? Comment here or contact us using the contact tab and we can throw something together for you!

Labels: blog, project

posted by Tim Avery at 11:58 PM  -  0 Comments ©