Recent Projects

My goal is always to capture the essence of the business while delivering a clean, fully responsive, timeless, userfriendly website and superior customer service.

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Oliver Chard

Client Involvement:Initial 2 hour meeting to establish objectives. He provided me with content and images. Several follow up meetings.
Budget: $1,500.00
Timeline: 3 weeks

What The Client Wanted

This was a good learning experince for me. In our initial meeting I spoke with the client about what specifically he would like the site to look like. He wanted the homepage to basically just be an image, side navigation and an overall clean minimalist design for the site.

I soon learnt that this approach was a mistake and that I am better off focusing on the overall objectives with clients and going into the design process without any constraints.

I did what he wanted and he didn't like it; neither did I and to make matters worse we couldn't seem to agree on anything.

Challenges

It was more difficult working with an artist than an enterpreneur, with an enterpreneur it's about the business. Art is extremely personal and I needed to figure out a way to take the artist and his work and come up with something that would be a unique, accurate and attractive representation of his work.

I think some of the biggest hurdles came in because we had discussed specific elements that he wanted in the site. This didn't work well and the designs that I came up with working within these parameters were not very good. It just never quite looked right.

After a few days of not making any progress on the site I decided to ignore the clients reccomendations and came up with a few different designs for the home page. I sent him the best three and he liked them all so much that he had a difficult time choosing one.

Final Product

A fully responsive, unique and beautiful site that showcases the artsits work and taste.

We had many disagreements while I was making the site but I stuck to my guns on what I felt was important and the client never settled on what was truly important to him.

When the site was published we were both very happy with the finished product. The client loves his new site and said it was better than what he had imagined.

When the client asked me to do things that I knew would look bad, I told him. When I had a site made years ago for my own small business I'm sure the designer knew most of the stuff I was asking for would look like shit but he just did it and never gave any honest opinions or feedback. He was the expert and I feel he should have been honest and I would have preferred if he would have ignored what I was asking him to do and instead just made me a site that looked great and would be easy for my customers to navigate.

I'd rather argue with my clients and be honest upfront rather than letting them eat up their site budget on something that they won't love.

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Le Beau Cafe & Fudgerie

Client Involvement: Initial 1 hour meeting to establish main objectives. Was given a link to their facebook page to get necessary information and images.
Budget: $1,200.00
Timeline: 2 weeks

What The Client Wanted

The client wanted a fully responsive site with a design that would be consistent with the cafe itself. They didn't give me any instruction as to how the site would look, ie. colors, layout and content. Design wise they wanted me to make them a site that looked good, was modern and fully responsive.
When we met I focused more on finding out what they wanted to achieve with the site rather than the look of it or what exactly it would say.

The main objectives were to: Promote their lunches, find a way to hilight the fully licensed patio, increase awareness of their special events and to showcase their homemade fudge which is what they are really known for.

Challenges

After discovering the clients main goals with the site I was then given a link to their facebook page where I would find any necessary information as well as images. They wanted a site, they didn't want to take or choose images, write the content, pick colors, layouts or anything else; they just wanted it to be done and didn't want to hear much from me in the meantime.

My main challenge was the images. Luckily they had a lot on the facebook page so I was able to comb through those and edit the best ones for the site. I would liked to have better more carefully planned and laid out images done specifically for the site. There is a good chance that I will just show up one day and take new images for the site.

Final Product

A fully responsive site that used the colors of the cafe itself, features lunch specials on it's own page as well as the home page, has a page and an email sign up for the weekly evening events. I decided that one of the best ways for them to fill up their events would be to start an email list specifically for events. For this I set up a free MailChimp account and styled the sign up form to match the site and added links to the sign up within the site.
They update the facebook page daily with specials and events so the most logical thing was for me to also link specials and events to their facebook page.

The client was not concerned with SEO at all so I could have ignored this. However, that is a HUGE factor and not one that should ever be overlooked. I didn't bore the client with this but just took it upon myself to do some keyword research and optimized the site for those. The end result is a site ranking in the top position for most of those keywords locally.

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Transformative Medicine

Client Involvement: Initial 2 hour meeting to establish objectives. She also provided me with the content for the about page and some main points that she wanted in the site.
Budget: $1,400.00
Timeline: 9 days

What The Client Wanted

The client just wanted a website. She had zero interest in the project and had been dreading having it done. She is a wonderful Homeopath who is concerned with looking after her patients, she is focused on helping people and to her the website was just a pain in the ass.

When I met with her I had to really focus on getting her to give me the basics of what she wanted the site to have. She didn't want a lot of content but we were able to figure out that she needed the site to have the following: a new patient intake form that would be easy for patients to fill out and submit, her contact information, a list of her services with pricing, a way to promote the free 15 minute consultation and some basic information on homeopathy and how it can help where western medicine has failed.

Challenges

The colors, design, main content, logo, business card and even the site name were left entirely up to me. Perfect, when I say, "I'll take care of everything..." I mean it. The challenge for me in design came in when working to create a site for a homeopath that didn't look like all of the other sites for homeopaths. They all looked pretty similar and felt like they were trying to look like a medical site combined with elements of nature.

I didn't think the most effective way for her to attract new clients through the website would be to focus exclusively or even primarily on the Homeopathic Medicine because many people are very skeptical. Instead I broke it down and hilighted the various areas that she works on with patients to achieve health through a more integrated and wholistic approach.

Another challenge was with local search volume for Homeopaths. After some research I decided to brach out with the keywords I would use to attract people who were searching for similar services.

Final Product

A fully responsive, clean, website that the client felt "captured her essence." I was thrilled to be able to take someone who was dreading having a site made and be able to give her something that she loved and felt truly expressed what she is doing through her work.

The site successfully promotes the free consultations with buttons on every page linking to a page where users can book a free 15 minute consultation right on the site.

The site inclues an easy patient intake form that can be filled out and submitted right on the site. For this I used Google Forms, I chose this method to keep the cost down for the client while still giving her exactly what she wanted.

This might sound like a difficult client but she wasn't and I loved working with her. I understand that most often business owners just aren't into this stuff and they don't want to waste their time learning or even thinking about everything that goes into it.

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Purely Platonic

This was my final group project in a web development bootcamp done in the fall of 2017
Timeline: 10 days
My Responsibilities: designing and coding the front end

About The Project

This was a school project done in the fall of 2017. It is a full stack web application build using Ruby on Rails. I was in the same group as the ZuckerBurgers project but with this one we were left to come up with everything.

I knew settling on an idea would be difficult but I love psychology, personality tests and anything that connects like-minded individuals. We ended up going with one of my ideas for the project which was to create an app for matching friends based on personality type as well as common interests.

Challenges

Again, working in a group was challenging and if it was me working on my own the site would have looked differently. I was in charge of the sites design and front end coding, for this one I didn't use any css frameworks as I prefer not to; I want to learn how things work and I don't believe I would if I used Bootstrap.

I managed to find an api for a personality test which only takes about two minutes. This was crucial for presenting within the time we were given and is entirely based on images so it's more fun than a typical personality type test.

The Finished Product

We had about a week to work on this so given that timeframe I'm very happy with the finished product. I do wish I had more time to work on the design. There were some pages that were a little too minimalist but I think it's better to have less.

I don't think you should add shit to a site just to fill space; I think the content should make for a better user experience.

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ZuckerBurgers

This was my mid-term group project in a web development bootcamp done in the summer of 2017
Timeline: 4 days
My Responsibilities: designing and coding the front end

About The Project

This was a school project done in the summer of 2017. We were put into groups of three for our midterm which would be a full stack web application of our choosing. Our group chose the option of an application for ordering food from a fictitious restaurant.

Challenges

The main challenge for me was working in a group. There were some other more technical challenges related to backend programming but I was responsible for coding the front end of the site (what you see). We decided to go with a more democratic approach to everything including the design, this was particularily difficult for me; I like having the freedom to do what I want. I especially hate having to get approval from others at every step, I would rather just come up with the vision, make the thing, then if someone doesn't like something we can change it.

The Finished Product

I was pretty happy with the app especially considering the short amount of time we had to work on it. It met all of the crieteria and I was able to make it fully responsive. Our group was able to function fairly efficiently and we still wanted to hang out and have beers together when it was done.

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CGB Bookkeeping

Client Involvement: Very minimal. She left me in charge of everything. My ideal client.
Budget: $500.00
Timeline: 1 week

What The Client Wanted

The client just wanted a simple website for a small local Bookkeeping Business that she was starting. She needed a responsive site that was straight forward, small and clean.

Challenges

There really weren't any challenges with this one because she really let me do everything. I was in charge of: the site layout, colors, logo, business cards, site content, important keywords, she even had me research what her competitors were charging and had me come up with a pricing strategy. I asked the client for a picture because I felt that without one the site would be too impersonal; she sent me one that was complete garbage. I told her it would look like crap on the site and set up a time for her to come to my place, I told her what to wear, did her hair and make-up, took some pictures and edited the best one for the site.

The Finished Product

The client loved the site and couldn't say enough about how easy the whole process was. She didn't think it was possible to have a site made without her having to really do anything.

The end result was a fully responsive site with a minimalist design that would quickly give potential clients the infomration that they were looking for without any additional fluff.

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DC Accounting

Client Involvement: A few emails were exchanged. This was a redesign of an old outdated, un-responsive site.
Budget: $900.00
Timeline: 2 weeks

What The Client Wanted

The client had an outdated wordpress site that wasn't responsive at all. He wanted something that was clean, modern and would look good on any size screen. He told me to just use the content from the old site on the new one, he just wanted a re-design and better functionality on phones and tablets. He also wanted the business location to me more prominent as his customers had often complained that the address was nowhere to be found on the old site.

Challenges

The main challenge on this one was finding a way for the site to not look too bare with the absence of images. Another issue that came up was the client did not like the color I used, he asked me to change it to another and I did, he liked the new colors but I didn't. I could have just used the color he liked even though I thought it looked bad as we're taught to do whatever the client wants so we can get paid. That did not sit well with me and I was not going to put something up that I knew could look a lot better. I changed the colors completely and tweaked a few other things.

The Finished Product

After the color disagreements both the client and myself were happy with the new colors and the site as a whole. Even though he didn't love the idea I was able to convice him to let me put a picture of him on the About page to make it more personal. He wanted clean, modern and responsive and that's what he got. In the end I was happy about the color disagreement because it pushed me to try some different things, I stuck to my guns and the client got a new updated site that he loves.

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BB Cloth Dipaers

Client Involvement: I was the client and this was the second site I made.
Budget: none
Timeline: 1 month

Not The Best Looking Site

I know this one doesn't look very good but it's definitely the one I have the most affection for. It's the second site I made for my first business. I was sick of dealing with web guys who charged me way too much and were never straight with me so I made a squarespace site, I was sick of not being able to customize things the way I wanted on there and I also didn't like spending $400 a year just to keep the site up.

Challenges

Everything. I taught myself to do the first site and that one really looked like shit and wasn't very responsive, this one was only slightly easier than the first to make.

The biggest challenge on this version of the site was building a quiz into it so people considering using cloth diapers could answer some multiple choice questions that would come up with a score and an answer as to whether or not they should buy cloth diapers. I loved making that quiz, coming up with the questions, deciding how to score everything and finally what the answers would be for each range.

Why It's On Here

I do cringe when I look at it but I think it's important to leave it how it is and not go in and fix all of the things that I dislike about the design (and there are a lot). If it weren't for that business and this site I wouldn't be doing any of this now. I wouldn't treat clients the way I do because I wouldn't have the experience and perspective that I gained through that business. That's why this one is my most important site and it's on here to remind me to never stop pushing myself.