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

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 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

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

Sketch Sound System

This was a poster created for a friend’s sound system to promote an independent night of electronic music. The poster was created using a combination of techniques and software. The initial design was hand-drawn, scanned in and then lived traced in Adobe Illustrator and shaded using a selection of pallets. The artwork was then imported into Indesign and the typography was added.

Two versions were created for a single side print and also a double sided flyer print, the poster was optimised for CMYK printing and also an RGB digital format for online advertising.

SketchSounds

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

Skype Graphics

I undertook various projects for TD&D  an Oxford based multimedia company.   on a freelance basis. One project was for a Skype viral campaign and my involvement was the motion graphics aspect. I was given a comprehensive branding toolkit as vector graphics, which I implemented in Adobes After Effects.

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/