Web Design & Dev
Nicorette Youtube Competition
This site launched mid-may 2010 and is a promotional and competition Youtube channel for Nicorrettes smober up campaing. The channel follows several people in thier efforts to quit smoking and ’smober up’, you can view the channel here for yourself youtube.com/smoberup. My involvement in the project was the development of the custom gadget and which is placed into the youtube channel page. The gadget is dynamically driven by a database to make adding videos nice and simple as new videos are added weekly.
BlackBerry Mobile Blog
As contracted work for Spookmedia at Edelman PR, I was responsible for creating mobile versions of the BlackBerry Blog. The site is intended for BlackBerry owners, enthusiasts and developers to read about innovations and updates to their favourite smart phone. My job was to ensure that every version of BlackBerry was catered for, being a BlackBerry site, these viewers were paramount. That’s not to say I didn’t cater for all the Iphone users out there as well.
To tackle this problem a fair bit of research was required, noting all the various models of BlackBerry on the market, the screen dimensions and the stylesheet properties supported by each version of browser. Once I had collected all the necessary data I interrogated the HTTP_USER_AGENT request and from there loaded up the appropriate stylesheet, which caters for that specific device screen width. To test my development I used DeviceAnywhereStudio, a very useful remote testing facility, which I would recommend to anyone needing to test on various handheld devices
So now if you visit http://blogs.blackberry.com/ on a mobile device, it should appear with a mobile theme with the appropriate stylesheet attached (Please note that I have only developed this for Iphone and BlackBerry users at the point of writing this and I will post a tutorial shortly on my development site)
You can view the site here http://blogs.blackberry.com/
BlackBerry Testing
7 Up – Front End Development
7up Competition
When contracting at Spookmedia at Edelman I created the front end for a promotional 7Up competition web site. Given the designs early afternoon on Sunday I had to turn them around for first thing Monday morning. The design represented a few problems in that it was very unconventional in terms of layout and alignments. Taken from a Photoshop PSD design I sliced the layers up, optimised the export and constructed the design into HTML and CSS in Dreamweaver.
I had to arrange the content by absolute position containers with relative elements within them. The angled navigation represented a few problems but with some cunning CSS skills, I was able to overcome the difficult alignment and also the hit area for the buttons. Finally I corrected styles sheets and images for cross browser compatibility from Internet Explorer 6 to Google Chrome.
You can view the site here http://www.ru7up4it.ie/
The Vu Group
The Vu Group B2B Site
Another project at Transact Ltd was the creation of a B2B site for attracting potential investors and partners for an IPTV or Over-The-Top-TV project. The site specification was to create a slick, interactive site that reflected the cutting edge technology of the product, to tie in with the product design and advertise several main areas of the site directly from the homepage.
The site was designed in Adobes Photoshop and Illustrator, constructed in Microsoft Visual Studio and the .NET framework, the code behind was programmed in C#, and the interactivity was implemented using the JQuery library.
Vu Group B2B alternate design
Coinz.net
Coinz .net
During my last contract position, one of the sites I was responsible for was coinz.net, working as part of a small team in the development of the system my role was as front end developer and particularly interface design and user experience. As part of a business development team, we were responsible for the entirety of the site and system.
This is a new micro-billing solution from the creators of Netbanks, one of the first online transactions systems. Coinz.net and Charge2.net are the revolutionary new solutions to an emerging problem facing many industries in the digital market. Publishing companies are particularly struggling as customers are increasingly turning towards free online content. Coinz.net aims to provide an online transaction system charging small amounts for content hidden behind protected URLs.
The main point of this particular site and system was learning a completely new custom code base for which there was no documentation. The project was constructed in Microsoft’s .NET environment, involving XHTML, CSS, ASP, JavaScript and JQuery.
You can view the Coinz website here www.coinz.net
Message Me Up Directory
Message MeUp Directory
Working as an Interface Designer for Transact Ltd, one of the projects we had in the Business Development department was the Message Me Up Directory. The concept cannot be fully explained due to contract clauses, but basically involved creating an interface for a system similar to that of the Yellow Pages and tying in premium rate messaging services such as shout boxes, web cams and SMS messaging. Usability and User Experience was key to the products success and were my responsibility.
This was a particularly difficult project as the specification was minimal and constantly changing. However this gave me valuable experience in creating layouts that were easily adapted and reconfigured to show project managers a range of possible solutions.
Message Me Up Results Layout
Wiley-Blackwell Publishing
Blackwell Publishing
Wiley and Blackwell merged in 2007 creating one of the worlds largest publishing firms. I joined them on a contracted basis during the summer of 2007 to aid with the rebranding and updating of Blackwell’s somewhat outdated sites. I was responsible for creating various new supporting micro sites for the upcoming release of a range of books and also the rebranding of the Author Services section of the site.
The work was heavily based in XHTML, CSS, ASP, XML and JavaScript and the Adobe Web Suite was the standard weapon of attack on most projects (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash and Fireworks
You can view the Wiley Blackwell site here http://eu.wiley.com/
Oxford Brookes University
Oxford Brookes University
I studied Computer Science at Oxford Brookes University and later transferred courses to Multimedia Design. Part of the course involved taking a year’s industrial placement and I was fortunate enough to be selected as one of two students hired by the department to work as in-house designers and developers for the University.
I created interactive, online and multimedia marketing material, producing CD-ROM prospectuses and maintaining the Technology department’s website. Responsibilities included overseeing and managing projects, meeting and coordinating with department heads to produce content and information for University prospectus guides. Liaising with publishers and printers to ensure the delivered product was to specification. Other projects included creating promotional posters for departments, organising an archival DVD for a theatrical company, which included documents, photos, audio and video.
I used a wide range of software including Final Cut and After Effects for video work, Dreamweaver and Flash for web based work and Director for interactive CD-ROMs and presentation.
Accario – At A Glance
Accario
After graduating, I worked for Accario, a small IT solutions company in Oxford, an umbrella company of Dilgenter who I also contracted for as a designer. Formed in 2007 Accario incorporates two distinct and established technologies, AccessStick and EPAFactory, under a single parent brand, I worked in the capacity of an assistant marketer initially, before moving to a freelance Graphics & Design capacity. I produced a range of material from company letterhead designs to click tracking in flash banners, to producing graphics for antivirus software. My work varied significantly and was a great introduction to the diversity of multimedia design in industry rather then education.
For my work at Accario I used Photoshop and Illustrator extensively, as well as Dreamweaver and Flash.
Avant Garden Festival
Avant Garden
This site was built for a small local festival and required that all information was kept hidden until users registered to find out details such as ticket info and location. This website was my first exploration of PHP, and I created a custom login class to keep anonymous and registered users separate and to display differing content depending on the access level granted to the user. I created the site using XHTML, CSS, JavaScript (JQuery) and PHP. To sell the tickets I created a paypal account rather then create an ecommerce system as time did not permit.
Cross Properties Norwich
Cross Property
I produced this site for my parents to advertise rental properties. As the site only needed updating once a year it was not necessary to implement a CMS. I used an AJAX interface to allow for easier user interaction and used Google maps to display the property locations. Keeping all the content on one page with the map as a footer meant the user experience allowed for easy navigation without diversions. This was one of my first web sites that I build and involved XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript, developed in Dreamweaver and the graphics were produced using Illustrator and Photoshop.
You can view the site here http://www.norwichstudentproperties.com/
Emily Bevan Actress Portfolio
Emily Bevan Portfolio
This was my first adventure into the wondrous world of flash. This was a simple site created for portfolio purposes for a friend who needed an online presence to support her acting CV. Created in the days of timeline animation and key frame tweening, before I had even considered Object Orientated Actionscript 3.
You can view the site here http://crossmultimedia.com/emilybevan/
Sam Coad Art Portfolio
I created this for a friend’s stencil portfolio, I stitched together several photos and used flash to be able to scroll around the scene and click on images to view them. I created the site using photoshop, and flash (as2). You can view the site here http://crossmultimedia.com/samsportfolio/
Sam Coad Artwork
Queo Design
This was a site developed for a small graphic design company in Oxford. The project presented certain difficulties as I had to reverse engineer an existing menu that the client wanted including on the site. The site was built using Actionscript 2 and the Fuse Tweeting Library. The site’s content was fed by a single XML document and used AJAX to load XHTML pages into the Stage. The project included AS2, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and XML.