Digitally Refreshing

The newly branded PruHealth website, in conjunction with a product launch went live yesterday.

The PruHealth brand went through a subtle colour restructure and evolution. I wanted to carry this through to our online space, which was used to reflect different areas of the business: Individuals, Employers, Advisers and Providers.

Taking advantage of some of the simple look and feel benefits of CSS3, I was able to add rounded borders with much less HTML than I was using before. The site works as it should in all modern browsers, and degrades gracefully for IE6. Where possible I’ve added IE6, 7 and 8 specific styles to mimic other styles such as CSS3 gradients.

Okay, last time I said I would build a new Ubuntu nature wallpaper using the GIMP, on my Ubuntu box. But I couldn’t find the time to get back in to the swing of it, so I used Photoshop instead. Hope you don’t mind!

Download this wallpaper now.

I’ve opted for a more natural look this time, a slight departure from my previous Wooden themed Ubuntu wallpaper.

I created a site for my photography called matthewbowden.com, if you’re using Firefox 3.5 or Safari you’ll see the wonders of the CSS3 @font-face rule. More browsers need to step up, come on Chrome!

I also make use of PNGs (this is old news though) so I can swap out my background image easily.

I can’t take credit for the workings of the POP-ups though, this is all down to Highslide JS. Highslide was great for usability but not so for Google Analytics. I won’t bore you with the details here but I struggled to get the onClick tracking for the thumbnails. So have resorted to using onmouseup to track clicks and onclick to launch the POP-ups. It’s not ideal as I still need to work out how to track when someone uses the left / right controlls. But the way it’s set up now I can tell that the image I’ve used at the top of this post is the most popular.

Next step, get random background images to load up behind the thumbnails.

Completed another great site with the help of Ron Olivier down in South Africa.

Esias & Esra Bosch’s work really appealed to me, and I suggest you have a look around for yourself!
Esra Bosch is a ceramicist known countrywide for her attractive range of individual and functional ware. Her work reveals excellent decorator skills, flair for colour and an impressive sense of pattern. Esra’s dedication to her craft spills over into her surroundings, and she has created a warm, welcoming atmosphere in the studio where her ceramics are exhibited. The Bosch Studio – which bears the inimitable stamp of her father, celebrated artist Esias Bosch – has been a sought after destination for lovers of ceramics and art for some fifty years. Personal attention to customers has become synonymous with the studio, so that visitors return to it time and again when they visit the Mpumalanga Lowveld.

Here you go, please take a look at my first natural wood style Ubuntu wallpaper. I’ve only built it at one size for now, which is: 1440 x 900. If you’d like any other sizes I’ll gladly make – just write down what you need on this blog post.

Update: New! Ubuntu nature wallpaper

Spice Lumb is an event production and design company, producing very creative bespoke events since 1997, winning awards along the way. The company deals with all aspects of staging a successful event from venue finding, concept and production, set design and art direction, show production, live entertainment, creative consultancy and catering.

So, they needed a website which reflected that! I worked closely with Hattie who supplied a great deal of the graphics as she wanted to ensure that her style was carried throughout the site.

www.spicelumb.com is a great example of a keen and involved client working directly with a designer to produce a fantastic experience.

I arrived in Vegas a few days before the MIX09 conference so I could revisit my birth country (my family and I left when I was 9) and take in a few of the sites.

Sunday was spent on an Adventure Photo Tour which was a great sightseeing opportunity but hardly a ‘Photo’ tour as the website suggests. Pitching up with my Canon 5D and tripod must have seemed odd to the camera-phone wielding group. I charming couple even asked me how to switch off the flash on their automatic so it wouldn’t startle the helicopter pilot.

Monday and Tuesday were really exploratory days. Me, with camera, on foot. The sun was out and it was hot, I mean really hot, so my bar stops were many and quite frequent. This obviously took it’s toll on me and I spent the rest of the week alcohol free. Probably a good thing as then I could focus on MIX09!

The conference

Watched a great opening presentation, setting the pace and excitement for the next three days. I especially liked Bill Buxton and all his energy. Stack Overflow (a bit like a Yahoo! answers for programmers) is technically great and a fab resource too. Netflix showed just how good Silverlight can be. And if you’re still not convinced take a look at the Rolling Stone back issues site (not live yet). Great design and love the way it feels.

See Expression Blend in action, from concept to production. Need too many words to explain, so just watch.

At the end of a long day I attended the launch party at TAO, where I met some great people – mostly Microsoft partners, all out to have a good time and talk about technology.

Friday was probably my favourite day. This was down to fascinating presentations by Luke Wrobleski (I even bought his book) – Web form design and Dan Roam – The way of the whiteboard.

Both sessions were packed full of great ideas and examples that I can bring back to PruHealth and PruProtect and implement on our sites.

Overall the conference was great, the venue fantastic and the people, both presenters and attendees friendly and interesting. I’ll definitely pester my boss for the budget to go again next year!

And finally, a big thanks to Conchango for inviting me!

Further reading and viewing:
A list of all speakers

Check out some photos taken at MIX09

Working within a corporate can get lonely. Not because I am alone (I’m surrounded by great people here at PruHealth) but becuase I’m the only web designer in the building.

When we meet with our digital and traditional agencies I think what it must be like on the ‘other side’, working with differnt brands and technologies where new sets of challenges presents itself every week.

This is why, when I received an invite from EMC Conchango to attend a Fantastic Tavern event at the George, I lept at the chance.First up was DoubleClick who presented new banner technologies – all of which are in use now. Imagine being able to do a Health Insurance Quote within a banner? Well, now that I’ve seen something similar from DoubleClick I want to do it myself. We spend a lot of time and effort trying to get people to our website in order to complete a quote or research Health Insurance – perhaps we should spend some of those resources talking to our customers whilst they are in the comfort of their preferred webspaces – Facebook for example.

Then EMC Conchango took the stage and I watched Microsft Surface come to life. Designed by the experts at EMC Conchango and tested by children (yes, really!) – the possibilities seemed endless. I can’t wait for a version which I can roll up and take away with me – but that’s probably a few years off!

I’m certainly looking forward to the next Fantastic Tavern.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working closely with Great Britain rower Pete Reed to build him a website in advance of the Olympics in Beijing this summer. Pete will be competing at the Olympics as part of Great Britain’s flagship coxless four boat. As double World Champion, he’s one of Britain’s brightest medal hopes and needed a website to match.

I’ve designed a website to reflect Pete’s personality and the challenges of his sport, whilst trying to capture the feeling of patriotism and excitement that surrounds the Olympics. His website needed to fulfil a variety of functions including corporate promotion, blogs, galleries and feedback capability, but retain the flexibility to change with him (and to be easily updated) and he moves through the next 4-year training cycle to the 2012 Olympics in London.

I built the site on top of the popular Joomla CMS. It was my first attempt at getting to grips with Joomla (version 1.5) and I had to do a lot of learning! If anyone is interested in dabbling with the popular CMS then get stuck in. The help forums, help pages and general instruction manuals are excellent – much better than they were this time last year!

I think it’s just about there now – check it out at www.petereed.co.uk and let me know what you think!

This will be my 10th year working on the web. I was first employed by The House of Synergy in 1998 as a web designer. Since then I’ve worked for agencies and corporates in South Africa and England. I’m now working for PruHealth as a senior web designer.

I started on Photoshop 4, running on a Silicon Graphics machine, where there were no dynamic filters, no transform previews and if you wanted to edit text you had to delete the layer and retype!

I learnt and wrote HTML in note pad and tried to understand the intricacies of JavaScript, being the only tool I had access to which could bring a webpage to life. Other than an animated gif of course!

I’ve learnt a great deal in that time, not only about web design but also about what people (agencies, end users and management) expect and want from the web.

I think the biggest realisation for me is that the average website visitor to the average website isn’t actually all that interested in what the page looks like (above and beyond being readable and understandable), they are more interested in the information they can gather and the speed at which they can do it.

Through many one-sided-mirror usability testing sessions I have realised that I could have spent half the time I actually needed to on the subtle design tweaks. As long as the user journey is clear and the content well written the visitor is usually happy.

I would like to add that there are still many visitors who appreciate all the effort designers put into their work. In certain industries this high standard of design and detail is absolutely required by both visitors and owners alike.