BeingJamieBaker.com
BeingJamieBaker.com
What was needed:
The client asked for a very simple site to promote a book for young adults, “Being Jamie Baker“. They needed a friendly, easy-to-navigate design without any bells and whistles that allowed the user to get interested in the book (including an excerpt, synopsis, and cool trailer they created for it), find out where out to purchase, and learn more about the author.
What we did:
We took the colors and general feel from the book itself – the target audience of which is young women in their early to mid-teens – pink, burgundy and white. The newsfeed made a WordPress theme the best choice, but we knew we’d need to find a theme without a lot of fancy effects to keep it as simple as the client wanted.
The final product was this – simple, sleek and very easy to update.
MusicMakesTheDifference.com
MusicMakesTheDifference.com
What was needed:
This client came to us to redesign his older and somewhat outdated site. He is a DJ and a Music Supervisor who plays gigs, makes videos and licenses music for commercials, TV, film and live events. He wanted to have music players built into the site that would allow him to give certain clients rights to download music files, but allow other users only to listen to them without the ability to download. He also wanted to promote events, feature his videos, allow users to download mixes – and all within a layout that is modern, easy on the eye and simple to navigate.
What we did:
To accommodate both his needs AND his budget, we had the client collect all of the assets that he wanted on the site – images, specific copy for pages, music files, etc. – while we tested out several themes, music players and plugins that would satisfy his needs.
The package we finally assembled included a music player that did not allow downloading, but then included a password protected page with downloadable links to all the licensable music so that our client could give the password to his potential clients. He can even change the password whenever he feels it’s necessary. We also created post category buttons on the navigation bar for events and videos which auto-populate with all the most recent posts that the client gives those particular categories.
Over-all, we provided an economical, full-featured site that the client is proud of and for which he’s apparently been getting a ton of excellent feedback.
ho-jung.com
Ho-Jung.com
What was needed:
This client came to us needing a site that would showcase her career as a professional actress, be easy to navigate for filmmakers interested in casting, and reflect elements of her personality for fans of her work.
What we did:
In a world of overly-flashy, complicated sites for people in the film industry, Ho-Jung was looking for something very minimalist. Focused almost entirely in black and white with an accent or two of color, she wanted her site to be all about simplicity and quality content.
We put ourselves in the heads of casting directors and thought about what they would need to find most quickly- headshots, a reel and interesting clips of her work. We also worked with her on the resume page- providing certain resume entries to be clickable, popping open a sleek video player with embedded video code that features that particular clip, in a high resolution that still loads quickly.
Mo’olelo Aloha ‘Aina
moolelo.manainfo.com
What was needed:
This client came to us with an amazing project. They’d found as many Hawaiian land activists as they could and sat them down for interviews to discuss their experiences in planning grassroots protests and fighting for the land that is so integral to Hawaiian culture and people. Now, they wanted to post these interviews on a searchable site that would be easy to navigate, in the hopes that younger generations will watch and be inspired to keep up with the cause.
What we did:
When they came to us, we knew that as a nonprofit organization costs would have to stay down, and their site would have to be simple and clean to stay focused on driving home the purpose. We searched far and wide and found a great WordPress theme that features video embeds as blog posts so they could use Vimeo to host their videos, but still feature them in a way that looked beautiful and loaded quickly. It took some customization to make the posts searchable in the manner that they are (by time period, land area, and activist), but we devised a plan using categories and tags to make the site as automated as possible.
As Hawaiians and artists it’s not often we get to work on web projects so connected with our roots, but this is no doubt one of our most rewarding sites to date.
PhonoCosmic.com
PhonoCosmic.com
What was needed:
This client came to us to create a website that they could use as a resource to promote a co-op of musical artists and provide music licensing. They provided a pretty clear idea of how they wanted their home page to look and what pages they wanted on their navigation bar.
As with all of our clients they wanted a site that best represented how they saw themselves as a business and a navigation process that made it easy for the user to get what they wanted out of the site.
What we did:
The benefit of working with WordPress is that it’s system allows for multiple logins and therefore the work can be shared. For instance, these clients had a smaller budget than the effort would normally allow. We saw their budget and amount of work and, as we do with many of our clients, we created a list of very simple – but time-consuming – tasks that they could manage themselves. More specifically we had them create a database of all of the music that they had available with tags that described each song. We then had them load images into a Picasa account and then gather all the other assets they wanted on the site. (logo, video links, etc.)
As they were gathering their assets and creating the database, we developed a process that would allow the user – particularly targeting potential music licensing producers – to easily search through the song library using words that describe the tone of their project.
Once the visual design was sketched out and the music players and search options were tested, the client had an attractive, easy to manage and highly functional website that met more than their expectations and the database that they created was essential to that functionality. The best part is that adding more songs, blog entries, etc. is something the client can do on their own with complete ease and comfort.
