Category: Portfolio

This monthly intranet magazine site is one of the most fun projects I have ever worked on. With the client being a lively, positive company with strong branding principles it carries great satisfaction to hand a site to them every month that is technically accurate and on-brand.

There was no initial remit for the design, other than to keep to the branding rules. Hence I contacted the IT department of the client to find out details such as target browser and screen resolution before creating a pitch that was very well received.

I had the idea of changing the banner and navigation background graphics every month in order to make the site appear even more fresh when new content was added and to make each issue stand out individually.

The navigation menu is a DHTML outline list that allows the users to open up a section and navigate down the tree of content. They can choose to hide or show the content in order to focus on one or more sections and this system has proved very popular with users.

I use Macromedia Fireworks for the creation of background graphics and styling of content graphics for branding purposes. Everything else I hand code in HTML and use CSS to position box-outs and pictures, as well as maintain the site-wide consistancy required by the corporate brand.

Updated : In Q1 2002 this intranet site won an award for its design & structure. Cool!

I created this PlayStation game fan site in early January 2001 to serve an online community that had grown from the popularity of the futuristic racing game “Wipeout.”

The site enables users to register then update their lap records for different tracks in the game, take part in forums, polls, chat rooms, and read feature articles, as well as download screen savers and wallpaper submitted by members.

The site does require a large amount of my spare time to run, but the positive feedback I have received from the community and from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has made the effort very worthwhile.

The site was designed in Adobe ImageReady and Macromedia Fireworks then hand coded in Allaire Homesite in HTML and PHP. I use CSS to format the content extracted from the database. The navigation bar was created in Macromedia Flash, as it provided the effect I wanted for the button roll-overs.

The style of the site is in keeping with that of the Wipeout games and I decided to go with this to make it instantly recognisable to fans of the game.

At the time of writing, WipeoutZone has approx 250 registered members, hopefully numbers are set to increase when a new version of the game is launched for the PlayStation 2 in February.

The Insight intranet site was my first intranet project for this client and was a resource of information on the development of a new aircraft.

Although not technically advanced, the site had to carry consistancy and usability due to the broad scope of user profiles – covering different languages and cultures.

The site contained technical information that had to be navigated quickly, so I used a DHTML drop down menu system that allowed users to jump to individual sections without having to follow a fixed path through other pages.

This site also had the unusual restriction of being targeted at Netscape’s 4.7 browser, as this was the standard browser installation across the company.

The site was challenging to work on, but fun too and feedback from the client was very positive: on hand-over I was told it was “the most technically accurate site they had ever taken delivery of.”