Design for the web is a little bit special.

It really is, when you think about it. Good graphic design must always be fairly user-friendly, but in the case of web design, ease-of-use is even more vital, and is even slightly more important than the graphics. A site exists on the internet to provide useful function toward the user - if it can't do that, it shouldn't even exist. The trick, therefore, is to make an attractive site that can still work just the way you want it to. Check out the sites below to see my interpretation of how that's done.

Kelley Frame Company

Completed: 18 April 2008
Creating the first-generation site for Kelley Frame Company of Oak Park, Illinois. This site is another based as a "tableless" design, and built to be maintained using a converted Wordpress installation. This site has yet to launch.
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Peartree Weddings

Completed: 1 January 2008
Web portal for the Peartree Weddings stationery/web design company. Site is now live and accepting new clients.
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Coco-Bon Gourmet

Completed: 31 October 2006
I designed and developed the site based on the Zen Cart e-commerce framework, and the whole thing is XHTML 1 Transitional and CSS2 valid. It's also my first site with standalone SSL. Check out "Your Assortments" -> "Assort-It Tool" for a fun new way to shop using Javascript.
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Southern Illinois Spine and Joint Center

Completed: 15 August 2006
Having been handed a zip of logos, fonts, and print design done by my talented friend Corey, I set out to create a simple but attractive website to accompany the overall look and feel. I used the highly-interesting shape of the spine from the logo to create a bold navigational area, and worked from there to output the rest of the site. The result was an attractive site that is not too technology-forward for the target audience, and is still easy to update using the Wordpress backend.
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Friends of Yonkers Animal Shelter

Completed: 15 February 2006
This site went up near the beginning of 2006 for a volunteer group supporting a local animal shelter in New York. The client was not web-savvy, so the goal was to minimize glitz and just reorganize the IA of the site so it was actually usable and not a series of dead-end links. The site was built on a Wordpress platform, converted to CMS functionality, so that the blogging tools could be used to maintain the site content all via browser. The design is completely CSS. The logo illustrated here is of a previous designer's hand. My original concept utilized a new logo.
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peter&beth

Completed: 1 April 2005
This design was for my friend Beth, who married a fantastic guy on 28 May 2005. She was very happy with this design, and so was I, and I hope to slowly do more work in the wedding realm over the coming years.
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NYLANA.org Site Redesign

Completed: 1 July 2004
The previous version of the NYLANA site was not easy to use or maintain. The site had no standardized templates, leading to a mess of broken images and links throughout. I redesigned the front end of the site, using PHP and mySQL to build a fully dynamic site, from the presentation of the content to the navigation (and switcher from English to Spanish). The resulting site is many times easier to use either as a content owner or as a visitor.
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Click the Vote "Box" Site Design

Completed: 14 November 2003
Along with the logos designed for the Click the Vote design study, I put together mockups for several website designs. None of these designs were ever coded into a markup language. This design uses bolder fonts and colors to provide a modern image to the site. All the while, this site would remain clean and easy to use.
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Click the Vote "Mosaic" Site Design

Completed: 14 November 2003
Along with the logos designed for the Click the Vote design study, I put together mockups for several website designs. None of these designs were ever coded into a markup language. This site was designed to be a stylish version of a modern theme. The pixelated mosaic is representative of the digital media involved with CtV.
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Click the Vote "Putty" Site Design

Completed: 14 November 2003
Along with the logos designed for the Click the Vote design study, I put together mockups for several website designs. None of these designs were ever coded into a markup language. This site design was meant to be a significantly more subtle tone than the other studies. After seeing the bright and bold colors of my other designs, I made a conscious decision to create a more sophisticated design through the use of color.
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Caves of Narshe Version 5

Completed: 31 July 2002
The latest version of the venerable Caves of Narshe website, redesigned to commemorate the site's fifth anniversary. This site, along with being far better designed than the previous version, also displays the latest in PHP/mySQL interactivity with randomized layouts and ultra-fast data accessability. The redesigned site has increased traffic fivefold over the previous design - no mean feat considering that the games currently covered by the site are no fewer than five years old.
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Alvies-Birnbaum Wedding Website

Completed: 1 June 2002
As a compliment to the mailed wedding invitations, I created a website for my wedding. The purpose of the site was to display detailed information about the wedding to potential guests - highlights include a custom-scripted RSVP form and a custom-scripted frontend to MapQuest so users could get directions to the church and reception from anywhere in America. Note also the use of the same celtic knot pattern in this site as used on the printed wedding materials.
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Illinois Greendoor

Completed: 30 August 2001
The task in this exercise was to redesign the State of Illinois website for environmental education called Illinois Greendoor. The previous version was quite basic, with a design conceived and created around 1998, and needed an overhaul with updated graphics and the ability to easily be connected to an Access database in the future. This site is the result of a month-long contract.
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Proposed DaimlerChrysler Corporate Site

Completed: 15 April 2001
As the interactive chair of the University of Illinois National Student Advertising Competition team, I was responsible for the design and creation of a redesigned DaimlerChrysler corporate homepage. My intent with this design was to maintain the ease-of-use of the original site while updating the image and making it more visually appealing. Judges' comments on the design make it apparent that both goals were met.
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alvies.org Version 2

Completed: 1 February 2001
This version of alvies.org maintained the same data structure as the original, but improved the design by using a complex table structure to "float" blocks of color and content over a background image. This site became the basis for the "mosaic" skin of Alvies.org version 3.
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Caves of Narshe Version 4

Completed: 1 January 2001
The fourth version of the Caves of Narshe site was the iteration that finally put the site into the upper echelon of the genre. A casual observer would be surprised to know that the Final Fantasy fansite is an area rife with competition for the viewers' time, and the enhanced design and usability of this version helped CoN to stand out in the crowded market.
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BGCC/Netbuilders

Completed: 5 August 2000
As the major part of my internship at Quantum Leap Communications (later Leapnet, now sadly defunct), I was responsible for the bulk of HTML and Javascript coding for this site. In addition, I assisted in the design and copywriting for the site as a whole.

This site won an "Outstanding Website Award 2000" from the Web Marketing Association.
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