Web Design
The School for Field Studies
Website Conceptual Design
The School for Field Studies (SFS) is the USA's oldest and largest undergraduate environmental study abroad program. When they came to my company looking for a new website, they wanted to give their users an inspiring and immersive look at the program. Unfortunately, a change in management caused the project to stall, and the redesign eventually went to another firm. A few months passed, and just as I was cleaning up my design to include in my portfolio, I took a look at what finally went live. When I saw their new site, I realized what they had wanted all along. So I took that as a challenge to push my design even further, incorporating all the best elements from every iteration. What you see here is the end result.
Project initially via Boston Interactive.
Thredd Outfitters
Website Conceptual Design
Thredd Outfitters is a clothing brand specializing in surfing and winter sports. That's the basic premise I ran with on this one. Thredd is part of a series of designs I created to add new flavor to otherwise dry concepts I had previously created. This particular design began as a mock-up for a financial advising company. They opted to go in another direction, so I evolved the basic design and turned it into something a lot more fun.
NextGen Games
Website Conceptual Design
NextGen Games, Inc. is an American developer, marketer, publisher, and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 2002, the company has quickly become a contender in the home computer games industry. …Nah, I’m pulling yer leg. I made up NextGen games just so I could design a gaming website. Pretty sweet, huh? It’s a dramatic revamp of one of my older projects, a forgotten gem passed over by a tiny software company in the northeast. The main appeal of the design was the wrap-around messaging area. I had fun with this one, for sure. I remember once telling a client, the easiest way to make a website look cool is to make it black. And there you have it.
Melted Crash
Website Conceptual Design
Melted Crash is an alt rock band from Berkeley, California. Or they could be. But they’re not. Yep, this one of my "imaginary" designs, a remix of an older project. The main goal with this one was to create a homepage that didn’t consist of a main image and three or four buckets below it. So I used the main image as the focal point, with content serving as an accent. This was also a good excuse to throw around a bunch of grungy/indie fonts, which I almost never get to use in my day job (scratch “almost”).
Imaginary Comics
Website Conceptual Design
The design for Imaginary Comics started out as an unsolicited redesign of Spawn.com. Go ahead and pop over there right now. I’ve been a huge fan of McFarlane Productions for years, and thought it’d be fun to give their site a refresh without actually changing any content. However, the idea of an unsolicited redesign is a somewhat dangerous one. It’s easy to overstep your bounds, and make decisions that aren’t necessarily in line with the company’s overall vision. I didn’t want to seem presumptuous, so I genericized the content, and created an imaginary brand. I like to think of Imaginary Comics as being something akin to Dark Horse, or a kind of a gritty offshoot of one of the bigger companies out there. Imagine that.
IDG
Website Conceptual Design
International Data Group (IDG) is a technology media, research, event management, and venture capital organization. What you see here is one of the three compositions we showed to the client. I felt like this design really captured the professionalism and scope of their organization, with clean and minimal design elements and an expansive main messaging area. Classy. Real classy.
Project via Boston Interactive.
Apex Films
Website Conceptual Design
Apex Films LLC (formerly Apex Films LP) is an independent film studio headquartered in Santa Monica, California with international offices in London. Just kidding. This site is actually part of my remix editions, but it's not too far from where it began. The initial design was for a film production company owned by a pretty substantial Catholic organization. The content was a little dull, so I reimagined the site as if it were for a company that likes solid action and high drama as much as I do. I kept the basic design elements the same as before, but changed the imagery and sharpened up details here and there. It's amazing what dramatic imagery can do to a design.
BI Ping Pong
Tablet Web App Design
Sometime in early 2011, my boss decided to buy a ping pong table for the office. Some of the developers would stay late and work on their game. By the time the summer rolled around, my curiosity got the better of me, and I posted the top ten players on a bulletin board next to the table, based on a consensus of the regular players. Suddenly, half the office got involved, trying to move up in the ranking. My CTO took it to a whole other level, and developed an iPad app which gave everyone a power score to determine their rank. This is the design I came up with for the app. So now, the iPad sits perched on its charger right next to the ping pong table, waiting for the newest scores.
So why am I not on the list? I'm a pool player.
Project for Boston Interactive.
Aero Automotive
Website Conceptual Design
The design for Aero Automotive, a fictitious car company, is the evolution of a project I began for another client. In my day job, I created a design for a life insurance company by the name of Financial Architect Partners. The design had a clean, elegant look to it, and I wanted to see how it would hold up when applied to another industry entirely. Choosing a high-end car manufacturer, I replaced the imagery and copy as appropriate, and refined the layout to what you see here. The simple design brings the dynamic imagery to the fore, and the entire piece is given a sense of depth and movement with the large shapes wrapping behind the main image.
Boston Interactive
Mobile Website Design
This project was a bit of a fire drill, as another designer and I were tasked with creating a mobile version of the BI website in a few hours. The result was elegant and clean, melding the iPhone design with our own corporate identity.
Project for Boston Interactive.
Unidine
Website Conceptual Design
Unidine is a dining and food management company that was in need of a new look. Their website was a little on the retro side, and they wanted something a little more modern and professional. Thankfully, they had some great images to choose from, and the design came together effortlessly.
Project via Boston Interactive.
Affinnova
Website Conceptual Design
Affinnova is a market research company that makes use of an innovative process to narrow a broad range of concepts to the best possible. Naturally, this is an all-inclusive concept, one with countless applications across several markets. As such, the key messaging in the compositions I created were highly symbolic. In this instance, I used light to symbolize an idea, with various beams converging into the single brightest idea of all. In keeping with the client’s direction, the rest of the design is light and airy, incorporating a thin, sans-serif font to compliment the logo without competing with it. I really like how this one turned out: modern, clean, and light.
Project via Boston Interactive.
Stratus Technologies
Website Design
Stratus Technologies was a great project to work on, mainly because the client trusted me with just about every design decision I made. When I presented this composition to them, they instantly got it, and were very appreciative of all the subtle design elements I used. The main image is impactful without being too flashy, and really serves to boil down what the company provides its customers in one simple graphic. Also, the dark colors used in the main messaging serves to emphasize the yellow and blue accent colors, and draw the eye to those points. This composition is pure class, and pure character.
This site was later recognized as a 2010 Official Honoree by The Webby Awards.
Project via Boston Interactive.
Running on Empty V2
Website Design & Development
The redesign of my webcomic site was a huge undertaking that really tested my technical expertise. I took every usability lesson I had ever learned, and applied them to the new design. I also had to learn how to modify a WordPress theme known as ComicPress to create something that conformed to my vision. The site has a wide range of extras that make user interaction effortless, along with navigation that is intuitive and accessible. Best of all, the integration of WordPress makes it easy for me to upload new comics, and give the fans what they want.
The Interactive Pulse
Blog Design
The new design for the Boston Interactive blog was a pet project of mine, which I worked on between client projects at work. I wanted to create something that was more in line with modern design blogs, Smashing Magazine being chief among them. The idea here was to break up text with large, eye-catching typography, color variation, and an image for every article. The project hit a slight snag when the blog title went through a few iterations, but it really came together nicely.
Project for Boston Interactive.
The PJ Library
Website Conceptual Design
The PJ Library is one of a family of sites that my company created for the Harold Grinspoon Foundation. The PJ Library is one of their key programs, giving books to children between ages 6 months to 8 years. As such, the design had to speak to parents and children alike, and convey a light-hearted and playful tone. This was one of those rare opportunities to create something totally unconventional and unrestrained.
Project via Boston Interactive.
Gentle Giant Moving Company
Website Design
Anyone who lives in the Boston area has probably seen the big purple trucks of Gentle Giant movers. They came to my company looking for a much needed redesign of their site, but they didn’t want anything too showy; they wanted something more down-to-earth. So what did I do? I grunged it up. It made sense to me that a moving company’s website be packaged like a shipping box. I’m very satisfied with the result.
Project via Boston Interactive.
NYSE Technologies ioinet
Website Design
NYSE ioitnet was the second landing page I designed for the people at NYFIX, who had recently been acquired by NYSE Technologies. I see this as an evolution of the previous design I created for them, with a dark motif and just the slightest hint of grunge design in the background.
Project via Boston Interactive.
Save the Harbor/Save the Bay
Website Design
Save the Harbor was an interesting design opportunity for the team at Boston Interactive. With the company approaching its ten year anniversary, it was decided that one feature of the celebration would be a public contest between three different design compositions. As such, three designers, myself included, created unique designs for a non-profit organization known as Save the Harbor/Save the Bay. What you see to the left is my contribution to the contest.
On the night of Boston Interactive’s tenth anniversary party, this design was announced as the contest winner.
Project via Boston Interactive.
Earth Fare Blog: Tomato Talk
Blog Design
Earth Fare is a North Carolina-based natural foods grocer that came to my company looking for a rustic online presence. My creative director handled the main website, which was unconventional to say the least. I was charged with creating the design for the company blog. My composition effectively balanced the more extreme design elements of the main site with the established structure of blogs. It’s a little rough, but for my first blog design, I think it turned out pretty well.
Project via Boston Interactive.
Destructive Fiction
Website Design & Development
Destructive Fiction is a site that features four different webserials I’ve written over the years. Two years after its debut, I gave the site a whole new look, and a much more interesting homepage that features the main characters from each storyline. I made use of a very nice CSS trick to make three of the main images blur when you hover over any one of them. Try it out.
Biscotti Mobile Analytics
Website Conceptual Design
Biscotti was a client with a very complicated business model that had to be summed up very simply on the homepage. Basically, they manage ad space and related analytics for mobile websites. I’m not a big fan of clutter, so I streamlined their process and this was the result. Any good?
Project via Boston Interactive.
South Shore Vocational Tech
Information Architecture & Website Design
South Shore was an interesting project that seemed simple at the outset, and got progressively more involved. Why? Well, it became clear that I needed to dramatically reorganize the site’s content when I saw that their main navigation consisted of 26 items. As a result, I created a whole new site map, then wireframed the homepage and went to work on a design. Not bad for a pro bono project.
Project via Boston Interactive.
Two Ten Careers Portal
Information Architecture & Website Design
Two Ten Footwear Foundation is a non-profit organization that my company created a site for. As their job board filled up, they decided to create an entire careers portal that merged elements of social networking with a job search functionality. This was pretty intense, as I was tasked with creating wireframes for the site, predicting and anticipating every possible scenario that a job seeker and employer would face when using the site. Thankfully, I had a great project manager, and things came together nicely. Although my design was chosen for the final site, what you see to your left is my favorite composition.
Project via Boston Interactive.
Fitzgerald Industries
Website Design
Fitzgerald Industries is a distributor of antibodies, antigens, etc. that wanted an e-commerce site. Now this is a real underdog story right here: A senior designer at my company tapped me to create a quick composition with almost no prior knowledge of the company or what they were looking to see. The other designer had his two comps go up against mine, and Fitzgerald opted for mine. Not bad.
Project via Boston Interactive.
Running on Empty V1
Website Design & Development
Running on Empty is a comic strip I’ve been writing and illustrating since college. After publishing an online version of it on my own site, I decided to move the strip to a separate URL in 2007. This design took the comic through its second and third seasons, offering up a very sleek, dynamic, and dark motif.
Since the site has been redesigned, you'll have to settle for a demo rather than a live version. You can check out the artwork that appears in the comic here.
Craigville Beach Association
Website Design
With CBA, I was given the opportunity to incorporate a few choice grunge effects into the design. This is most obvious in what I did to their logo, and in the title design I created. I also Photoshopped the hell out of the main image, turning a beautiful tropical beach into a crappy New England beach. Not bad, right?
Project via Boston Interactive.
Daniel Beadle.com V2
Website Design & Development
Right after I learned HTML and CSS, I couldn’t wait to build my own website. In all my enthusiasm, I wound up creating a site that was packed with portfolio pieces, comics, and characters. But like a college freshman, I soon realized that I had packed way too much. With more experience in the industry, I recognized my mistake, and created a decidedly more targeted website, which you’re looking at right now. Even so, it wasn’t a bad looking site, right?
(In case you’re wondering, version one was created before I knew anything about web design, so it’s not worth showing.)
