Digitally Refreshing

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.

Have you ever found that no matter how many hours you pour into your site it’s always a few days from completion? As I sit here I can’t help wondering what this page would look like with heading images and differently styles tabs.

Maybe I’ll just keep editing it, after all that’s what the web’s about.

I’ve been in Australia for the past month, so it seemed apt that I use my Sydney harbour photograph as the new header. This image is actually made up of 6 photographs all stitched together. On the right is the Sydney Opera House and to the left, Sydney itself. In the centre of the image is, of course, the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

You’ll notice that when the page is reduced to 800×600 the header image still works, this is because it’s a background within a DIV.

I have many more images which I’m currently submitting to iStockphoto, Dreamstime and Fotolia in order to sell. My favourite photographs turned out to be of my sister’s, wedding. Overlooking palm beach you can hardly go wrong when taking a few snaps. I’ll be posting a few more on this site soon.

A touch of colour from the original Pixel Juice website.

The design is far from finished but the greys and blues of the semi-complete style sheet were a little too bland.

I’ve moved the navigation into a tabbed structure at the top of the page, giving me more width to play with and I’ll be styling the existing left navigation area soon.

Who says lists are boring? Well, mine are for the time being, as they’ve only been mildly styled with the help of CSS techniques I’ve learnt over the years. Here are a couple of my favourite list styling tutorials:

• alistapart
• cssplay

The CSSplay page has dozens of real examples – a great list styling tutorial resource.

Pixel Juice will now be called Digitally Refreshing. The pixeljuice.co.za domain will still be alive for a while yet and will point to this website - but I felt it was time for a brand evolution.

Digitally Refreshing far better describes what we do here, which is building digitally refreshing websites!

Now comes the hard bit - the big redesign! I’ve decided to proceed in a way that I’ve never tried before. Why begin with an image typically created in Photoshop, why not just jump straight into the CSS and design from the code up?

Check back for my daily progress. And along the way I’ll make sure to share all the CSS secrets and unwritten rules I find…

The South African Breastmilk Reserve takes pride in "bringing milk to babies, safely"

Based in Gauteng the SABR collects, pasteurises and delivers breast milk to homes and orphanages in need of healthy milk.

With recent appearances on television and related websites, Stasa Kersevan is making strong headway in the fight to keep babies healthy. With the already high number of AIDS mothers’ growing daily, her work here in South Africa is critical.

We were challenged with the creation of a corporate identity for a brand which needed to grab the attention of potential mothers willing to donate milk. We felt that steering clear of conventional "baby" related imagery was a must. SABR needed to make an impact upon its potential donators often from the wall of a nursery or doctor’s room.

Aloe Nursery needed a one page, quick win result. We were able to quickly understand customer requirements, design and implement a one page site for Aloe Nursery.

“The site will grow in time, but for now I just need a simple, effective and attractive presence” – Owner.

We feel we have met the objectives laid out by Aloe Nursery. Take a look for yourself, and while you’re over there order some aloes for your garden!

A nail-biting encounter took place on the Ash River outside Bethlehem this weekend when current SA Champion, Cameron McIntosh, narrowly kept off an impressive surge by junior Michael Watson to win a historic 7th national title

Read more about Cameron and his development teams on his website, CameronMcIntosh.com.

Cameron approached Pixel Juice for a website solution which would allow him to regularly update his own website without having to pay costly updating fees. We used a Wordpress solution and custom built a look and feel template which is easily updatable. When Cameron reaches the Olympics, we’ll be able to update the look and feel of his website in order to reflect this achievement.

Another website from Pixel Juice! Tiffany Markman, of www.tiffanymarkman.co.za, needed a cost-effective website she could manage without having to visit expensive web designers. Now, simple content changes, up-to-date articles and a very interesting blog (stop by and have a read) are just a few clicks from Tiffany’s editing fingers.

Built on the Wordpress content management system, Tiffany’s website details her editing, copywriting and corporate training services. And when she needs a new look ‘n feel or wants to add information, it’s as easy as 1 - 2 - 3. Edit a few files, tweak some CSS and she’s away, driving her web presence into the future.

Tiffany specialises in editing and writing for websites, newsletters, brochures, proposals, presentations, atl &amp btl advertisements, scripts, books, magazines, reviews, speeches and more… Make sure to stop by and see what she’s all about.