Web Design
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.
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.
Holy Cross Family Ministries
Website Design
Clean, contemporary, and flexible. That was the design I gave to the Holy Cross Family Ministries, an organization looking for a new sheen of professionalism on their corporate website. The main selling point of this composition was the large featured area in the center, which allows the people at HCFM to completely change the look of their homepage with a featured event of their choice. This is one of those designs that forgoes unnecessary flourishes in order to bring content to the fore. It doesn’t get much cleaner than that.
Project via Boston Interactive.
Family Theater Productions
Website Conceptual Design
I love creating dark sites. Family Theater Productions was one of several sites my company did for Holy Cross Family Ministries, focusing on their film production company. They were looking for something dark and sophisticated that really focused the user’s eye on the film clips and trailers. With this design, I set the mood with a virtual movie theater, putting the main messaging on the big screen. Each featured category would expand when selected, in an accordion-style animation. I really like how this one ended up.
Project via Boston Interactive.
PharmaVigilant
Website Conceptual Design
PharmaVigilant was a high-concept design that proved extremely challenging, and extremely rewarding. The main obstacle with this one was understanding what exactly the organization does. I won’t get too far into it here, but they basically make software for medical organizations and their patients. The main messaging was intended to be a widescreen animated piece that would pinpoint trouble spots in the clinical process, and identify how PharmaVigilant would conceivably solve those problems. The design incorporates the strands of the logo into the main image, which visually combines biology and technology. Also, the information buckets beneath the image are set up to expand and collapse as the user sees fit.
Project via Boston Interactive.
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 via 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.
Franklin Electronic Publishers
Website Conceptual Design
Franklin is a company that manufactures portable electronic reference devices, like pocket translators. In order to update their image, I created a sleek design that focused on their products. I also gave their homepage more air, making it far less cluttered than it had been in the past.
Project via Boston Interactive.
The Boston Consortium
Website Design
The Boston Consortium is a resource for college administrators for 13 schools in the Boston area. The challenge here was that the client didn’t want any photos that would pigeonhole their organization, so I had to go abstract. Notice that I transformed the logo into a symbolic network. How slick is that?
Project via Boston Interactive.
Northeast Public Relations, Inc.
Project Management & Website Design
NEPR is a one-man PR firm in Providence (see if you recognize the guy’s name). He didn’t have any photos to go on, so I spun the tagline into a grandiose image. To play off the logo, the pages have a very nautical feel to them. This design really panned out nicely, and should serve NEPR for years to come.
Lean Enterprise Institute
Website Design
LEI is all about simplicity. So why clutter up the homepage? When I got the wireframes for this project, I had to laugh at how much they wanted to say right up front. My solution? Push it all below the fold, and focus on what “lean” thinking is all about. Luckily, they went with it.
Project via Boston Interactive.
PathView by Apparent Networks
Website Conceptual Design
Now this was a great-looking design. For once, I landed a client looking for something dark and sleek. To achieve a modern, deeply technological design, I created a virtual room with a wrap-around viewing screen for the main messaging. The information buckets rise up in the foreground like flat-panel displays. Overall, a very dynamic look.
Project via Boston Interactive.
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.)
