Stocktips.com design

Before venturing off to travel around the United States recently, I was asked to create a website for Stocktips.com – a group of young industry professionals looking to provide a fresh prospective on investing in stocks.

Stocktips were looking for a clean, professional and engaging WordPress driven blog with an emphasis on utilising social media to get their information out there and shared with the world.

The website uses responsive web design techniques to allow the website content to fit comfortably into any browser size (and mobile devices) as well as many of WordPress latest features to allow for StockTips to concentrate on their content and have the website take as much of the legwork out of content update as possible.

You can view the development version of the website by clicking here.

MoreVibrant Homes

The website I have designed and developed for MoreVibrant Homes has now left the safety of the dock and is sailing out valiantly into the internety-sea.

The website has been in development on and off for a few months while the client finalised copy, sourced photography and generally sorted everything out to get their eCommerce store up and running and will no doubt be tweaked and improved as time goes on.

MoreVibrant specialise in designing and producing fresh, zesty (and vibrant) product to liven up your home and are keen to push the social edge as much as possible, creating an online community for home lovers, rather that simply an online outlet.

Techniques such CSS3, jQuery and @font-face (a technique for using non-traditional fonts on the web) were used heavily to give the website a modern feel.

You can have a browse around the website by clicking here.

Qwota

Recently I decided I would free up some time to work on a little experimental website I’d been thinking of called Qwota.

The concept behind Qwota is to provide a method of collecting and displaying people’s favourite and most inspiring ‘one-liners’, whether that be a lyric from a song, a line from a film, a snippet from a newspaper or just… anything that excites.

Each quote comes with further information about who said it, when they said it, and hopefully a interesting link to where people can find out more information on the text. Also, as a finder’s fee, contributors can include their own name and website address to each quote they add. If people like and decide to vote for their contributed quote, then they and their quote can sit pretty at the top of either the Popular Quotes or Top Contributors leaderboard.

Qwota was made using HTML5 Boilerplate, CSS3, jQuery UI,Modernizr, Quicksand plugin,WordPress, and with help from the kindly Stackoverflow community.

You can view the Qwota website by clicking here.

Recently I was lucky enough to be contacted by .Net Magazine and asked to redesign one of their reader’s websites for their Makeover feature…

I chose to redesign the website for a small independent record label based in San Francisco called D-Fault Records, and wrote about why I made the design and development choices I did.

To give you a flavour of what I did, I was quoted thus:

D-Fault Records needed a clean, simple and elegant way of promoting itself, and a well thought-out CMS

Also, in the same issue, Ghost Horses was featured in the Gallery section, showing some of most interesting CSS based websites from that month.

If you’re interested to see what I came up with for the .Net Makeover feature, you can view it by clicking here.

The images above are taken from the May 2011 issue (214) of .Net magazine, available at all good outlets!

Threepenny Editor

After recently completing the design and build work for The Threepenny Editor, I’ve now put the website live on the internets.

The Threepenny Editor specializes in editing fiction and literary nonfiction. We provide copyediting, manuscript critiques, developmental editing, and mentorship. If you plan to self-publish, explore the site to learn about our many design services. Best of all, we offer free sample edits, and without exception, great editing.

The client wanted to keep the typewriter theme from their previous website design as well as exude a retro and boutique feel, staying approachable whilst looking back the golden age of print.

Techniques such CSS3, jQuery and @font-face (a technique for using non-traditional fonts on the web) were used heavily to give the website a more modern feel.

Paperhouse Lettings.co.uk

Today, I’ve put the website I designed and built for Paperhouse Lettings live for the interweb’s perusal.

Paperhouse Lettings is an online letting agency that uses its website to reach potential landlords and tenants and PayPal to recover service fees, so if you’re looking to let your property, Paperhouse Lettings can make it easy!

Paperhouse Lettings were looking a simplisitic, yet professional looking website that would gain the trust of potential clients.

Techniques such CSS3 and @font-face (a technique for using non-traditional fonts on the web) were used heavily to give the website a more modern feel.

Visit Paperhouse Lettings

Word of Mouth promo

It’s probably quite strange, what with my huge jabbering face pasted all over it… but it seems to be getting some pretty positive responses out in the twittersphere.

If you’d like to visit the page and maybe waggle my big ol’ chin, please visit the follow link here:

Have a look at thathurtabit.com

Ghosthorses.co.uk, if you’re just joining us, is a very lovely and very talented mini web design and development agency based in Manchester who are looking for new projects to work on in 2011.

Projects can be anything from a 3 page micro-site to promote your latest product, or an all-singing, all-dancing full website design and build to help bring your online presence to the… present.

If you have a project in mind that you would like to discuss, or have something you would like us to quote for you, then please get in touch here. We don’t bite all that much.

Ace Things: Lost Worlds' Fair

To celebrate – if that’s the right word, hopefully it will be – the beta release of IE9…

One of my favourite web designers, Brooklyn’s Jason Santa Maria put together a pretty little thing called Lost Worlds’ Fairs, celebrating the latest web-design technologies and giving us all a whiff of WOFF.

Jason Santa Maria worked with other super-talented folk such as Frank Chimero, Naz Hamid, Trent Walton and Dave Rupert in bringing together 3 designs based around typography, as well as the latest in CSS3, JavaScript and HTML5.

In his own words:

We decided to make designs around a grand series of events, the World’s Fairs. We initially started playing with ideas for the cities we all lived in, but ended up going with locales and fairs that never were. We wanted to feel unrestricted by the design and history that already existed from specific fairs and instead find ways to key in on design aspects of a particular time period.

Despite the design and development clearly being orientated for Mac viewers (not their fault, type rendering on Macs is usually 100% better than on PC browsers) the results are some of the most impressive non-Flash, non-Javascript heavy few pages I’ve ever seen on the web. Super ace stuff.

Check it out here:

http://lostworldsfairs.com/

AlbinoMosquito is alive.

The website I’ve designed and built for AlbinoMosquito is now live and ready to great you with a big smiley face.

AlbinoMosquito™ are a leading force in providing creative visual solutions to everything from music videos to gigs to corporate events.

Their background:
Albino Mosquito is a visual arts collective which was started in Manchester (UK) 2002. Founders Richard Ramchurn (painter), Rachel Livingstone (sculptor) and Jonathon McGrath (playwright) set up AlbinoMosquito as a series of exhibitions to showcase Manchester artists. People moved on, followed their own career path. Richard kept the name alive by VJing, directing music videos and running an electronica night. In early 2010 Mauro Camal joined forces to relaunch AlbinoMosquito as a fully fledged production company.

You can visit their website and stuff here: AlbinoMosquito.com

Your Opinion, Sir? v.1.5

Hello all. I’ve been on something of a nostalgia trip of late and at the weekend I decided that it was time…

for my music / film / tv reviewing-ness website Your Opinion, Sir? to get a fresh lick of xhtml / css / wordpress-y paint.

So, in short, I’ve taken all my old reviews I wrote (and some that others wrote) from my 2005/6 website named eatmycheeseplease.co.uk and I’ve placed them (actually – not all, as yet) on Your Opinion, Sir? for your viewing reading pleasure… should you have time to read 100+ reviews written about music and film from a few years ago.

The website now makes use of the WordPress the_excerpt tag, so there’s several reviews per page now, with the option to read more and comment.

Go check it out! Your Opinion, Sir? Version 1.5

Ace Things: Cypher13.

Sex sells. Even veraciously homoerotic tongue in-cheek-cheek sex. This post is a quick love letter to Cypher13, a design team who aren’t afraid to let it all hang out.

As a web designer chap, I spend as much time as I can find looking around the internet eating up all the coolizt things the internet can muster. Today, the web-gods have blessed mine eyes with Cypher13; a design-agency team based in Colorado, USA.

They say:

We recognize the opportunity for communication that we’ve created and with it the inherent responsibility. From this responsibility stems a commitment to enrich culture through the creation and execution of our work.

What’s interesting about Cypher13 is their originality. For me, the ‘agencies’ – if they wouldn’t be insulted by being called that – that are truly great aren’t the ones who are falling over themselves to be what they think the client wants them to be, they’re the guys who strip down to their matching y-fronts and hold hands. Perhaps throwing in a suggestive lip-lick.

So, Cypher13 I salute you, your design work, and your rather fetching monochromatic homoeroticism.

AlbinoMosquito

Hello one and all. I’m currently knee-deep in design-ness whilst working on a website design and build for a AlbinoMosquito.

AlbinoMosquito are a collective which provide creative visual solutions in the Manchester area.

The website will include the WordPress CMS which will allow for the client to update their website with the latest news, projects and videos.

Once the website is live, you will be able to browse the thing here: www.albinomosquito.com.

Working on... Alicehorton.com

I’m currently working with an Manchester based Illustrator named Alice Horton designing and building her online portfolio. As we’ve got lots of other things to do currently, I’ve no idea when it will be finished.

As mentioned, Alice is a Manchester based freelance Illustrator who demonstrates a variety of different styles and is experienced in a range of commissions; including Amnesty International, various Art magazines and promotional work for Manchester bands. Her work is also quite ace.

But anyroad, as I’m a fan of Alice’s style and level of perfectionism, I’ll work with her until we’re both happy with the website. On a geeky note, the site will feature a nice gallery section making use of the nice WordPress custom fields / metadata functions.

Note: I’m pretty sure the logo and the background image will be changed at some point.

As a special treat, you can see the website in progress here: www.alicehorton.com.