Although I have been a professional web-designer since 1995, the past year and a half has been pretty barren when it comes to the web as I have been working more in a video/audio/multimedia profession. Having said that, I do miss working exclusively for the web. A year or so ago, I was pleased to be working on new disciplines but now, I do miss web design.
I do get to dabble with it every now and then on limited freelance gigs. A site I didn’t get to fully work on a couple of years ago was erotic photographer Justice Howard’s website. Justice is one of the most amazing photographers out there. I wish she had a Flickr page so that everyone here could experience the sheer quality of her work. She manages to capture colors that are so rich and vibrant. You can view her work on her website here.
I found the time to work on a new splash page for her. The above design was completed very quickly and sent as a rough concept to Justice for her approval or disapproval. She was stoked with the result, which can be viewed clearer here and will be the new entrance page to her wesbite in the next few days.
I’ve been doing some work for LA band Gods & Monsters. Frankly, I don’t know how I found the time as I haven’t touched any freelance projects for close to a year. Anyway, check out this simple (preliminary) design we’re working on. More coming real soon…
Needing to get this project back on schedule, I spent some time last night working on the Hellfire logo. Conscious of the fact the band are after a “hellish” type of theme with aspects of fire/burning in the look. This is a little challenging as I can point you to some awfully cliched looking ‘fire’ logos which I am desperately trying to steer clear of. With this design, I am trying to illustrate ‘evil’ and ‘burning’. I’m pretty pleased with this one - I think it would look mighty nice on a tee but ultimately, the decision will be the band’s.
Continue reading ‘Developing the Hellfire Website Part IV’
version II
Some early pre-production work on the forthcoming Deathriders website. At this point, we aren’t sure of the band photo that we will be using. The band might be going in for another shoot to more complement this ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ look & feel we are trying to capture.
Continue reading ‘Developing the Deathriders Website Pt. I’
Work still goes on the forthcoming Justice Howard website. On today’s mock-up I tried the design with an alternate photo from Justice’s same shoot. I always preferred the first photo as the colors were a little duller and that splash of purple in the top-right window is to die for - but for the sake of experimentation, I tried a different shot to see how it would flow throughout the design. I’m preferring this version as it is setting clearer boundaries by seperating imagery and content. Also, Justice requested that the news/blog page of the site be a little less grungy so as to not frighten off some of her more corporate clientele and potential Hollywood headshot aspirants. We have decided to make the news page a blog which will contain elements of the design but more stripped back and cleaner.
Also on Justice’s request, I removed some of the tattoo-brushes I had on the model’s stomach as according to Justice “she has such the most beautiful stomach it should be seen dont you think?” Agreed! Agreed! Actually, I was thinking the very same thing when I was roughing out that first mock-up so in this design, I’ve tried to let the photo do most of the talking.
Version 2: With alternate shot. Sharper, cleaner and more stark. Clear defined lineage and seperation of content and imagery
Version 1: Original shot. Duller color. Messy layout.
More on the development of the Justice Howard website:
Things are ridiculously busy right now (which is a good thing, trust me - I am not complaining) - but I am finding there are not enough hours in the day to complete all that I want to do. At this very minute, here are the projects that I am working on: Justice Howard (website), Neil Turbin (website), Hellfire (logo & website), Zeitgeist (cd slick & website to follow), Accomplice Promotions (website), Visceral Industry (re-design) and today I secured the Charley Weaver contract as can be seen by the imagery above.
I’m pretty excited to be working on the Charley Weaver project. The store features one of the most delisciously evil and so damn cool store windows. I always make it a habit to take some snaps of the store when I walk past it - especially at night, it looks positively macarbre (and gorgeous!) So a week or so ago, I noticed that the store-window had been given a make-over and spent some time clicking away with the camera. I decided to check out the store’s website to see if it could match the beauty of the amazing store-window display. Unfortunately, the site left a lot to be desired so I took a shot in the dark and contacted the proprietor with an offer to re-design the site. Surely such an amazing looking store, deserves the Visceral Industry touch dontcha think?
After the obligatory too-ing and fro-ing, we’ve come to a mutual agreement and the re-design of the site is now on. Really looking forward to this as I have some cool ideas for it all. As per the norm, keep an eye on this blog as we document it all.
Continue reading ‘Batten Down the Hatches!’
Yeah I know what you’re thinking, I’m a glutton for punishment. I get that design bug bite down hard and there’s no stopping me. So I spent some time today doing a redesign for the Visceral Industry. To be perfectly honest - I got bored of the previous design (this happens alot!) and wanted a look that would tie in more with this blog. I wanted blog and company to be unified - and I wanted to change the logo. I’m just riffing at this stage and tomorrow I may have a change of mind, but when inspiration hits - go with the flow. I spent a lot of time with the typography and for right now, this is what is causing me the main heartache. I really believe the type can make or break a final design so I looked over a ton of movie sites to see how the movie guys sell the design.
So, here’s a rough concept - let’s see this baby evolve over the next few days.
Made some time today to do some further work on the Justice Howard website. The basic premise at this stage of the development is to use the Wordpress backend to allow Justice to do her own news updates in the future. The news page will also act as a blog for all her current and upcoming projects. Incorporating the Wordpress backend may be a little tricky but as I have no PHP dev skills, it will be easier (and cheaper) going this route rather than outsourcing for a custom back-end to be built.
The background image still requires work. I am waiting on a higher-res image to work with which Justice should email shortly. No menu has been designed yet and Justice’s logo is still in the rough stage.
More on the development of the Justice Howard website:
In the process of developing the website for UK band Hellfire, the band have requested that I spend some time on the logo first. They want something that looks a little like this - so I have spent some time doing some designs along those lines. With that in mind, I also trying to create a logo that will fit in with the rest of the website so the two don’t look out of place.
Continue reading ‘Developing the Hellfire Website Pt. III’
Some slight modifications from version 1, and some ‘roughing up’ as the band requested. My personal view is that I like the way the whitespace works to the left of the design seeing as there is a lot happening on the right. It creates a nice balance. Personally, I think the design would work better with less of the ‘roughing up’ - I preferred the cleaner look. Logo still needs work and is only a temporary design for now. I will spend more time on the logo for the next draft. Until then…
Continue reading ‘Developing the Hellfire Website Pt. II’
UK Metal band Hellfire were recently featured in the premiere Metal magazine - Metal Hammer. A few emails were exchanged. A brief of “make it evil” was obtained and I was pretty much left to my own devices to come up with some concepts to present to the band. Along with a website, the guys are also after a logo and some t-shirt designs.
Pictured above is a rough draft I prepared today. I wanted something with minimal colors so I chose 3 (red, white & black) and went to town. I didn’t have much in the way of source materials but this particular photo of the band struck a chord with me so I decided to use that as the basis for this early mock-up. You can see the original photo below and the extent of the manipulation it went through is evident in the mock-up.
I wanted the site to have that somewhat “evil” look the guys were after but also a more stylish and urban flavour to it which I believe it achieves with the colors and layout.
The menu still needs some work and the logo is not finalized as yet as at this early stage I am not sure that will be the logo. On doing a Hellfire search in google, I stumbled upon this totally unrelated site which has the same colors and simillar font to what I used. My jaw dropped to the floor as the similarities are uncanny. “Holy Fuck!” were the words I believe I uttered! The makers of whatever that site is would rightfully have a case against me that I ripped them off but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Continue reading ‘Developing the Hellfire Website’
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