It seems still to be common knowledge amongst the majority of people that building more roads is a solution for congested traffic in urban areas. Wrong idea. It is even more wrong to think that building a road through a wetland would not have an impact on the environment.

To keep it short, as a person with a strong naturalist background and proactive thinking about environmental issues, I was pretty exited to take on the project of redesigning the old website and putting it into new shape and colour.  It was the first time I have worked for a non-for-profit organization and the outlook of contributing my knowledge to the campaign was very exciting.

The design goal was to create a website that delivers news about the campaign as well as help to create an image of the Beeliar wetlands, which includes environmental values, beauty, sanctuary for the people of Perth and recreation.

As far as the design concerns, I decided to use a colour scheme that would incorporate green, blue and a nice off-red. Although the homepage would include a large panorama of the wetlands, I decided to work mainly with typography as a design element in the section and article pages. I used the “Laegue Gothic” typeface to give headings a bold strong character.

The website is driven by Expression Engine 2.0. It was a good opportunity for me to try out the 2.0 version. In comparison to the 1.6X versions it showed  improvements, especially the file manager is now much more of a feature.  I also tried out pixel&tonics Matrix add-on for the first time and was heavily impressed of how user friendly slide shows can be built. Uploading images, resizing and building slide shows without any additional third party plugin! One of the features that needed to be developed was an online petition. Expression Engines flexibility allowed an out-of-the-box solution by simply modifying the commenting module.

The Solid Kids - Solid Schools project is about locally relevant and culturally secure bullying prevention and management in the Mid West Education District of Western Australia.

The aim of this website was to make the results of this study available online to give Yamaji people the opportunity to prevent and manage bullying situations.

The website was designed in collaboration with artist  Jilalga Murray-Ranui.   The website was built using Expression Engine (1.6.8). Additional features such as the solid game and the online poster creation activity were build with flash.

The Cyber Friendly website is a comprehensive web resource to reduce cyber bullying. The client is the Child Health Promotion Research Centre (CHPRC) at Edith Cowan University Perth/WA.

The project involved a variety of different design and development aspects:

1. Design, html, css and javascript (jquery) of website templates
2. Illustration and flash animation of parts of the websites homepage
3. Installation and deployment of content management system (Expression Engine 1.6.8)*
4. Custom php, javascript and mysql web application (Cyber Leader Activity)

The website is currently accessible as an extranet only. To see the website you can sign up for membership (only until 31.05.2010).

The project aims for public access in the future and will constantly expand. At this stage it is in trial mode and your feedback is very much appreciated.

The website development project benefited from the contribution of other very creative and clever people: Arpit Vavadia from vavadia.com (programing); Andrew Miller from Miller Design (design) and Andrew Hopgood (illustration).

Thanks also to the staff of the (CHPRC) for their corporation and professional teamwork throughout the whole design and development stages of the website.

*List of some of the extensions and extras I used to customize the functionality of Expression Engine:

• Structure (1.3.0)
• User (3.01)
• Wygwam (2.0)
• Playa (2.1.3)
• Campaigner (2.0.1)
• Freeform (2.7.2)
• FLV Media Player Plugin (4.5.0)
• Excerpt (1.03)
• LG .htaccess Generator (1.0.0)

E-commerce website for woodroc design

The e-commerce website project for woodroc design was diverse in nature. The product featured is a beautiful centre piece hand-made out of the finest
timber of Western Australia, combined with granites = luxury Cutting Board.

The client supplied a draft logo and example cutting boards. To enhance buyer potential I included product photography depicting the cutting boards in a variety of uses. The mood of the website is dominated by the warm and earthy tone of the cutting board together with some timber texture.

The shape of the websites boarder is very round and soft enhancing the boards character. Shopify has been used to develop the website. Its very intuitive back-end and simple and safe checkout makes it easy to work with. The template generator - liquid - is quite easy to work with.


WOODROC DESIGN Testimonial:

“Christian asked all the right questions and made very helpful suggestions to identify the key attributes and features of the website I needed for
my new small business.
I now have an exciting and fully functional e-commerce website, providing a professional shopfront for
Woodroc Design.
I am now learning about the various marketing alternatives to promote our products via the website.
Without Interface Creation, and Christian’s one on one approach, it simply would not have happened!”

Lorenna Grant requested the creation of a website featuring simplicity and minimalism. The challenge was achieving this character and at the same time providing space for abundant artwork.

We decided to go fo a 9×5 grid for her images with each thumbnail containing an individual slide show. I decided to develop the rather complex 9×5 grid image gallery with the Highslide Plugin. The plugin is very easy to customize and is vercitile for displaying image galleries.
The contact form has been upgraded with a nice live-validation plugin (livevalidation).

The website looks fantastic, compliments Lorenna’s artwork and is easy to navigate”.

Plugins, modules and components used: Virtuemart 1.1.3, Ignite Gallery 2, JoomlaPack and swmenu.

jock&tilly website welcome page

jock&tilly product detail page

A new fantastic restaurant will open up its doors in August ‘09 in Hamburg. Guests will be spoiled with an interesting creation of Japanese food in tapas style. The owner and head chef Martin Schulz is preparing your menu with a modern approach to a traditional cuisine.

The web project was about building a html/css website from delivered psd-files 1:1. The fantastic design, built by S. Sorgatz/Hamburg was fun to work with. I wish the restaurant “Kitsune Izakaya” and its staff good luck!

Claire Burke from Funky Muma could not resist my offer to build her business a new website with online store included. I designed a website based on their branding material and transformed the photoshop design into a Joomla template.

I used Joomla! 1.5.9 as the core CMS and Virtuemart 1.1.2 as the online store component. The stores template files have been completely customized to make fit to the overall look of the Joomla! template (flypage, browse page and shop index). We decided to use paypal as the preferred payment option.

One module in particular I found really handy: Australia Post shipping calculator. It is an upgrade of the core version and includes national and international shipping. Runs like a breeze. (download .zip file)

Funky Muma’s Testimonial:

“Your web design is just brilliant. Everything worked perfectly the first time. Thank you so much! I’ve worked with a number of web designers around the world and your service and support through this process has definitely been world class. You listened to my needs and turned them into a reality. I have and will continue to highly recommend your company to others.
Your after sales service has also been impecable – quick, reliable, to the point and solutions that work!
I am extremely impressed with the professionalism and overall experience of working with Christian and Interface Creation, thanks again for helping me grow my business — it’s just what I needed.”

After

Before

Furthermore all extra information has been wrapped up in Jquery popups rather than additional pages.

Rebecca from “WA Wedding Extras” said:

“The website is terrific, we are really pleased with the results and the
professional service provided.  Thank you for making it such an easy
process from our end.”