A site near and dear to my heart, and not just because I designed the site, just made InStyle Magazine’s Best of the web list. Three Custom Color Specialist offers a fantastic ready to wear line of cosmetics and they do custom blended makeup. That’s right, their makeup artists will custom blend a lip color or eye shadow or concealer that is perfectly personalized to match your complexion, mood or even outfit. My personal favorite is Jackie’s Wedding Lip Gloss.

The site features a full retail store, custom blended makeup and an extensive searchable database of discontinued lip colors; as well as beauty tips from serious beauty insiders. I am thrilled they made InStyle’s list - check it out.

Tags: linkedin

Another site I worked on has recently launched. ACM is the world’s largest scientific computing association with an international membership of over 90,000 professionals from the fields of computing and information technology. Communications of the ACM, the organization’s flagship monthly magazine, had recently undergone a significant change in its editorial model and print design. They were looking to redesign their website to reflect the brand and editorial content of their print magazine. The goal of the redesign was to deliver a range of high quality technology news, information, and resources, while providing new ways for current and prospective members to engage with the magazine and the association community.

This was a really fun design project. Working with the interactive agency, Digital Pulp, I designed the overall look and feel of the site. My contributions included, global design templates, navigation design, translating the print magazine identity to an online space as well as article page design and various site features.

As with any project, this design evolved over time. For example the navigation bar changed pretty dramatically from my initial designs. This is fairly common in the world of interactive design. Production design often takes on a life of its own. Maybe it’s a case of not enough room in the nav bar to accommodate growing site sections, or the client has chosen a different color scheme, or the marketing department needs additional promotional areas etc. I wonder what other designers have to say about this process. At what point do you decide that the design no longer reflects your vision? Compare my original mockup below with a screen shot of the live site. I would love to hear what others have to say about this.

Design mockup

Screenshot from live site

Tags: linkedin

Photoshop Disasters is a hilarious blog showcasing the worst photoshop retouching fit to print. The blog asks you… “Have you seen a truly awful piece of Photoshop work? Clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter. And yes, deep down, we love Photoshop. If it is commercial and awful then please let us know! Anonymity can be arranged for the easily embarrassed/canned.”

Sometime the examples are subtle, sometimes they’re obvious - but the snarky editorial commentary is always entertaining. Check it out - but be warned - this one is a real time burglar.

Tags: linkedin

The Natural Resources Defense Council is an environmental organization that works to protect wildlife and wild places and to ensure a healthy environment for all life on earth. Working with the interactive agency, Digital Pulp, I have done extensive work on the NRDC website - including a redesign of their homepage. Smashing Magazine is one of my favorite design resources so naturally I am thrilled to have a site I have worked on listed as a “best practices” site. Check it out.

Tags: linkedin

Butter by Nadia Online Store

www.shopbutterbynadia.com has gone live! Brooklyn based fashion designer Nadia Tarr’s fantastic clothing line now has an online store. We had an impromptu launch of the site after receiving a lovely press piece in Timeout NY.

This has been a great project from start to finish. I was contacted by Stacey Elms, project manager/developer to do the visual design of shopbutterbynadia.com. The project was to create and online store that worked as a sister site to butterbynadia.com. The design initiative was to reflect the existing brand established by Elisabeth Smolarz while incorporating an array of cool site features that highlight the versatility of the clothing line. The result is a straightforward, easy to use, customized e-commerce site that looks like a million bucks (but cost much less).

Visit the site.

About Stacey Elms | Coeurméchante
Part developer, part business strategist, part project manager, Stacey Elms is one versatile web professional. In short, a real sweetheart or in French “Coeurméchante“.   She brings a wealth of agency experience to smaller budget projects. We have teamed up on several projects in the past and have been able to deliver agency level results without agency budgets. Check out her site.

Tags: linkedin

Okay - so you got a client with and identity problem? No - they aren’t suffering from delusions of grandeur or believe that they are indeed Oprah or the Terminator - not that kind of identity problem. Your client just doesn’t know which font is used in their logo. Well look no further; What the Font can help. Upload a jpeg with a sample of the font - say a logo - and bingo What the Font spits back a number of close matches. A real time saver if you have no clue and are sick of flipping through your font books.

Tags: linkedin

I love the design, the mission and the methods of this site.

Absolutely worth checking out.

Tags: great sites, linkedin