Cowen Hayden
Cowen Hayden is a site I have been working on, on and off for almost a year, so am very happy to see it finally go-live.
As well as the website, I have been required to develop the whole business identity. I was after something professional, calm & soft yet confident. The logo with the two circles came together quite quickly. The Official Cowen Hayden logo has a lighter reddish brown outer circle and a darker brown inside, But I have been keen not to stick too rigidly to this and allowing the logo to be used in other colours and overlaid with an image means it can be used more often - in situations where using the official colours just wouldn't be right. So ultimately I think flexibility around the logo adds to brand strength rather than weakening it.
I searched for many hours for the right font. The final choice isn't the cheapest font out there, but it's absolutely the right choice: Chalet from House Industries.
Cowen Hayden website is targeted at businesses. The colour scheme and feel of the site is subtle, erring towards warm, organic tones and hopefully has just enough twists in the layout to stop it becoming boring. The choice of images really play up to this, many of them are a very refreshing move away from plain corporate graphics.
City Runs
I’m very happy to announce the launch of City Runs. A website dedicated to running routes in cities around the UK. City Runs is has been launched with the support of Brooks who are organinsing a series of training runs in the featured cities early 2007.
The connection with Brooks has given a certain urgency to ensure the site is absolutely spot-on before launching as it will be getting included in the various magazine and other advertising Brooks are running to promote their City Runs program. And while this hasn’t been an issue, typically one of the features of the site has caused endless problems on one particular web browser (IE6 - typically!).
When building a website I always focus on accesability. A good looking site is crucial to provide visitors with a nice environment to use, but the design must never compromise the usability of the site. City Runs uses a few Java Script functions to add some nice dynamic functions to the pages. This includes the slide show at the top of some of the pages, the expanding content elements on the Cities pages the Google Maps, also on the Cities pages and the simple Search tool on the Events page. The crucial thing when using Java Script is remembering that not all users will be using it on their computers, and will the site still work if it’s disabled? So on the City Runs site, the Java Script gives some useful functionality to make navigating the content easier, but if a visitor doesn’t have it, the content is still completely available. Albeit missing a few whistles and bells.
Overall I’m very happy with the City Runs site. Both in its design and functionality. It’s a great free resource and I very much hope it will generate enough public interest to allow more Cities to be added and to feature more articles and references for runners through the UK
Cartwheel
Cartwheel is a business representing countryside and farm holidays in South West England. Their site is a hub for holidaymakers to visit to find information about the area and to get information on the number of members Cartwheel have with self catering, country cottages and farmhouse B&Bs available for booking.
The site is broke down between Counties in the South West, with areas dedicated to Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset. Each county has a unique colour theme for its area of the website for enhanced navigation and usability.
To continue doing their best to represent their members and to convert more visitors into bookings through the site, Cartwheel asked me to develop some designs to improve the look and usability of the web site. Consitency was an issue, so the changes were subtle. The colour pallete for each county has been toned down to be a more restrained, chalky tone of the original. Columns and other areas of text have been pulled together with use of background colours to give each page a warmer, more contained appearance.
The Advert Pages have had the accomodation details updated, so the information is presented at the very top of the page in a clearly contained area, so relevant information will be found more easily.
Since completing the design proofs for the new areas of the site, I have also created a number of other pages for Cartwheel’s new Green Tourism area.
The MakeOuts
Just launched is a very distinctive web site for punk band, The MakeOuts. I wrote about the process of creating the artwork for the web site’s header graphic, and I made the statement:
The challenge now is to design a site around this graphic - I think a single strong element linke this artwork will really help to create a striking a complimentary design, but I’ll have to wait and see how that stage of the proces goes…
And, that process turned out to be a lot more challenging than I expected.
So, I had a distinctive and visuallry rich grapic ready for The MakeOuts web site, and early on in the design process I had an idea for an animation effect on the home page, where you could hover over an image of each band member to activate a kind of credit sequence - and I thought that was the design largely sorted out. But what I needed to do was find a way of linking this graphic with the main content below. And it really did take a lot of re-designs before I finally had the idea of using the floral elements as a border. I’m really happy with the results, it’s a great mixture of structure and organic form. This very ornate type of framing means the main body content is left with very simple styling, so is very clear and accessible, but is flows directly from the much more ornate border.
I can’t believe I have created quite such a pink web site. I had almost total creative contol over the web site’s design and structure, and when left to my own devices this isn’t a direction I would usually take. But most web sites I have previously worked on have been business orientated, The MakeOuts web site however is really just there for fans of the band - so can have a more entertainment based function, and I think I just really allowed myself to run with this idea. I haven’t held back too much from adding another embellishment or splash of pink.
At the time of writing only the home page is up and running for The MakeOuts, but hopefully more content will be added in the coming months.
Anna Hamlyn Interiors
From the makers of Paynes Farm
A new business and a new web site…
As a new business that, at the time of making this web site, hasn’t developed its own identity - the decision was to keep the design simple. This means that as the Interior Design business develops, the web site can be easily developed in tandem.
Clients of an interior designer will inevitably be design concious and expect high standards of presentation. So there was a temptation to develop a very stylish and strongly themed web site with a much more complex layout. But this means a much greater initial investment, for something that might prove to be inappropriate and not actually representative of the direction of the business a few months later.
Anna Hamlyn also runs the Paynes Farm holiday accomodation that Mekonta recently designed the web site for. So for the Anna Hamlyn Interiors web site, we decided to re-use the basic template from the Paynes Farm site but give it a unique colour scheme and to add a photo gallery page. The whole site is cleanly marked up, so it can be easily updated by the site owner herself. Visit annahamlyninteriors.co.uk.
Paynes Farm
My latest project to go out into the wild and fend for itself: Paynes Farm holiday cottage website.
The web site already existed before I was approached, but had been built using a template from their web hosts. The owners didn’t have much web design experience and had found that even with these automated templates, they hadn’t been able to make the site look quite as attractive as it could.
It’s a simple layout and design, and while most pages still follow the same layout, there is more flexibility built into the site that will accomodate other requirements should they ever be needed in the future.
One of the owners of Paynes Farm also works as an Interior Designer (see: Anna Hamlyn Interiors - coming soon!). So not only do the holiday cottages have fantastic decor, they had also been recently photographed by a professional photographer. The photographs really make the site. Visit the site.
Calendar Club
The corporate web site for Calendar Club Ltd, the UK’s leading calendar retailer.
A primary aim for Calendar Club’s corporate web site was to reinforce the updated company branding. This had involved a move from the original black-background logo to the new white-background logo. To reflect this the design is itself kept simple and open, colour in the site is restricted to the red and light purple from the logo to really emphasise the companies branding. Visit Calendarclubuk.com.
Sky Gardens
I’m very happy to announce the launch of the re-designed Sky Gardens website.
It’s a site that has come a long way since my first designs that were very open, quiet and contemplative in style. For various reasons, the final compostion and colour scheme is much more punchy and solid. Early in the project I wouldn’t have imagined such a look would have worked for a garden design company - but I have been surprised and delighted with the development of the design.
Sky Gardens is a relatively new company, with plans for growth. Expectations of which have been built into the site.
The site owner wanted to be able to add to the content themselves. In particular on the Projects page which needs to be kept up-to-date with Sky Gardens recent projects. The design was never restricted by this requirement and although the finished project pages have quite an advanced layout with a dynamically updating picture gallery, the site owner has been able to update the Projects pages herself with no difficulty. Visit Sky Gardens.
Pickle
A 50’s themed design that will soon be used on the web site of a new band, (when they eventually decide on a name!).
Confidential Counselling
A web site with a quiet, accessible design for an Exeter based counselling service.
Key elements in the design for this web site have been: organic, reflective, reserved and accessible. This web site is, intentionally simple in its design. But a few key elements such as the leaves for bullet points and organic looking background on the heading give the site plenty of character and makes a strong impression with visitors. Visit the site.
Family Photo Album
A collection of old family photographs that I put together in an online gallery for my Dad.
A couple years ago my Dad found a collection of old family photographs, dating back to, I would guess, the late 1930s/early 1940s. He spent a fair bit of time scanning each photograph, but they were scanned onto my computer, so when I moved out they went with me and got forgotten about. A few months ago I found the files and thought I really should do something with them so that they actually can be viewable.
Of course most computers now come with some sort of picture viewer which could be used, or I could have uploaded the photographs to Flickr. But, on purely aesthetic grounds, I wanted to design a gallery that would be more complimentary to the look of these old photographs. Visit the gallery.
