The last design had/has (still transitioning as of 6/7) some problems.

First was inconsistency.  Homepage, blog and inside pages all looked different.

Second was my fat mug was getting old, even for me.  My profile pics are adding up and it is time to narrow down, find a new, normal-looking profile pic.  Decided to take the picture during my new pastime; both the picture of my head and the landscape shot are from a bike ride this weekend.

Third, the technical implementation of the buttons wasn’t right.  I figured out a more right way, thanks to cssvault, and look I forward to using this method of mouseovers on all foreseeable projects.  Nice blend of real links, unordered lists, image sprites, and popular CSS.  This was the biggest reward of the project.

Forth, I need to keep pushing towards a “Web 2.0 feeling” site.  Even though some would say Web 3 is upon us, better late than never.  Play with the new navigation.  That’s a big part of this attempt.  There is a big orange drop down when you hover over “web design”.  Somewhat reminiscent of vimeo I guess, or one of these.

Fifth, I need to hone my cross-promotion of superwebguy.com.  There was a definite style divergence on the homepage that I wasn’t happy with.  Now the homepage has its own feel and doesn’t try to feel half like SWG.

What I ended up, while perhaps not as in-your-face and a little text-heavy, is solving the above issues.  Like?

It is a pleasure serving talented people like the Snodgrass’s. They are a wife/husband team who cut and hand paint wood crafts with amazing detail. Their art is tole painting. People decorate their homes with it. I just sit and stare at it. The workmanship is in the detail, as they say.

I designed their site from scratch. It was the first website that I programmed using the ubiquitous PHP and MySQL. Because of the experience I gained on their site with these technologies, I have pulled far ahead of the average web designer. This put me in the league of web programmers. The user interface not only employs my programming, also a custom CMS (content management system) that allows them to update their own site. All built to order for my friends, Bob and Donna Snodgrass.

More in Projects, Web Design

Many years ago I was considering names for my business, and was also practicing with my vector and 3D tools. I came up with “V2″ as the company name and started making a few rendered logos. This did not end up as my company name or logo, but what came out of it was a portfolio piece.