Online Features
Website design is not my focus, but I do it from time to time. Mostly it’s not my focus because my own preference in website design is for clean, simple, straightforward sites that are not hugely graphics- or interface-dependent: I want a website to make information readily available to me, not to give me an “experience,” in most cases anyway, so I’ve not attempted to master cutting-edge techniques. I do build some website elements in Flash, but otherwise I’m rather “old school”—I use Dreamweaver only to speed up some parts of website construction, often simply typing raw HTML code myself because I’m so used to doing it (my first website design was circa 1996). As with the other sub-pages of my portfolio, these are not all of my web/online designs…just the ones I felt were of specific interest here.
The temporal relevance of websites being what it is, most of these sites are no longer “live;” therefore some examples aren’t actively linked anymore.
July 2011 | client: Colleen McHugh
My friend Tom Carpenter at AFTRA had been handling webmaster duties for his friend Colleen, a cabaret singer in New York City, for some years and, upon seeing what I did for ELM (below), he raised the possibility of me taking over the project from him, as he was not at all a website designer. I looked Colleen’s website over in May and decided that, until a full redesign could be discussed and implemented, the least I could do would be to tighten up Tom’s layout so it would look more professional, especially as Colleen is getting more press coverage now (including The New York Times, complete with appearing in a video on their website!). So I unified styles, rearranged certain elements for better visual balance, improved the readability of the text, added pull-quotes from the reviews…that sort of thing. The site is still Tom’s design, but it’s stronger now. We’ll tackle an overall redesign later this year, as Colleen’s intensifying performance schedule permits.
The “Calendar Girl” theme (again, not my design) refers to Colleen’s once-a-month cabaret shows, usually at The Duplex, which have a different theme each month.
May 2011 | client: ELM
I was asked by my former Jones & Jones colleague Chris Overdorf to create a new website for the Jacksonville-based company he was joining as they expanded their presence to include a Seattle office as well as a network of consultants (myself included) in other cities. Although I hadn’t designed a full website since that of Jones & Jones’s own 2008 makeover, I was happy to take on the project. And it was fascinating to produce this entirely remotely, working with people in both Jacksonville and Seattle via telephone, email, and web conferencing. The rollout date was moved up by a couple of weeks in order to allow them to start marketing their new identity right away, so there are still a couple of elements being built in the background for later implementation, but it’s a good start.
One aspect of the site design and construction that we didn’t fully resolve is the plethora of website-viewing devices currently in use, and how to optimize the site for any of them…a challenge I’m not convinced can be resolved. One reason I don’t market myself as a web designer (whether of sites or merely graphic elements) is that I don’t use those devices—iPas, tablets, cellphone interfaces, etc.—and have no wish to do so; it’s just not my world. There are plenty of people out there who do care about such things and can design for them; I’m “older-school” and I know it.
Similarly, Chris asked me to create a placeholder page while we readied the rest of the site, so he could begin emailing people from the new domain name and have something in the website’s future home. He and a couple of the Jacksonville guys submitted a few ideas to me, and I took one—that of an outline of the U.S., with ELM’s logo’s red square indicating the locations of Seattle and Jacksonville—and ran with it, resulting in a 10-second Flash animation which first conveys an impression and then ends with information. (Check it out—not bad for someone who’d only done one other Flash animation in 6 years!)
ASLA Award Commemoration
December 2003 | client: Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architects, Ltd
This was something I first produced as an in-house poster on a whim to commemorate Jones & Jones receiving the American Society of Landscape Architects’ first annual ASLA Firm Award, November 2003. One of the Principals had given me some passable-quality photographs taken at the event and said “see if you can use these for anything;” the resulting poster was quite well-received, and later I was asked to adapt the design for both an online announcement of the award on the company’s website and a 5.25" x 4" hard-copy photograph for inclusion in the company’s holiday greeting card. I like the fact that I could make it work at all three scales and in all three contexts.
Balboa Park Land Use, Circulation, and Parking Study
October 2003 | client: City of San Diego Park & Recreation Department (for Jones & Jones)
The elements I established for the Study included reports, meeting-announcement flyers and postcards, presentation boards, and a public informational website.
Tropical America
July 2003 | client: Miami Metrozoo (for Jones & Jones)
After a major 160-page design report was delivered to the client, I produced a website version of it, although many elements of it were later removed for general public viewing and it was transformed into a resource page to show the client Jones & Jones’s current project status and products; the website retains the navigation scheme of the original document.
Living Cultures website feature
April 2003 | client: Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architects, Ltd
This was a low-key Flash animation leading to a standard project feature page on the Jones & Jones website.
Brownfields into Green Infrastructures
March 2003 | client: Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architects, Ltd
This design collaboration with landscape architect Nate Cormier began as a brochure in March of 2003 and was adapted for web use in November, finally appearing as a Flash animation leading to a standard project feature page on the Jones & Jones website.
Minidoka Internment National Monument: General Management Plan
October 2002 | client: National Park Service (for Jones & Jones)
I was keen to give this important NPS project a sharp and clean website. Some of its style was adapted from the NPS style guides, but for the most part I was tasked with building something easy to navigate and read, and I think I succeeded.
Living Places website feature
November 2002 | client: Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architects, Ltd
This Flash animation is a technically simple but conceptually elegant lead-in to a standard project feature page on the Jones & Jones website. This was originally designed as a new presentation style for the website, but the company’s Principals eventually rejected any change to the 5-year-old design of the website and reduced the feature to its brief but pleasant introduction.
www.morbidtendencies.com
2002 | client: Acataphasia Grey
The website of Morbid Tendencies and the International Society of Animal Recyclers (ISOAR) was designed and built while the artist was in Florida and I was in Washington; we created the design via email discussions.
www.kinshan.com
2002 | client: KinShan, artist
I created this tasteful little site as a favor for friend-of-Chateau-Marmosette Kinshan, who is such a lovely person that I had to make sure her art’s website reflected her own magical touch. Unfortunately sometime since I delivered the built website to her someone’s revised the titling for readability, and I can’t say it conveys the same impression now that it did as I designed it…also, the site as designed was centered onscreen, not upper-left-anchored as it is now. Oh well.
Ice Age Floods Alternatives Study
March 1999 | client: National Park Service (for Jones & Jones)
Once it was decided that the Ice Age Floods study, facilitated by Jones & Jones, should have a sort of “corporate identity” of its own to help catch the public’s attention for what might otherwise seem an academic or specialized project, I designed the logo and set the color palette and titling font which all defined the project’s public look all the way through to the final report which was delivered to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior in September of 2001. I also created the Study’s initial-phase website, which at the conclusion of the Study was replaced with a site presenting the Final Report in webpage form (which I also built). As Graphic Designer I was one of the recipients of the ASLA Honor Award for Communications the project team was given in 2001.
www.redslap.co.uk
1998 | client: Red Slap Creatives
In exchange for her letting me stay in a spare room of her Edinburgh flat for a couple of months, I worked with Karen Newis (now MacNeil) to produce this simple showcasing website.
I’m pleased to note (in 2009) that Karen and I are finally giving this website a makeover! When it’s finalized I’ll include the new version on this page with appropriate design notes.
Comments © 2009–2011 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to source imagery noted.