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Mysterium is a small, independent convention organized annually by fans of the Myst series of video games. The games are very heavy on book-related themes, and I wanted to bring some of that into the design of the site, while still featuring the “falling man” graphic that serves as the logo for the convention. This was a replacement for the convention’s old site, which was a very basic WordPress blog.

For this rebuild, I wanted to improve the accessibility of important convention information, which had previously been buried on sub-pages, and eventually placed in a tacked-on header above the blog content on the homepage. The tabbed collection of convention-related items and the prominent placement of the location and date – Mysterium is in a different city every year – rose out of this, as did the multi-column approach to the homepage. This design vastly improves the immediate accessibility of critical convention information and surfaces several social media components, while its spacious design ensures that the increased information density isn’t overwhelming.

I also wanted to more prominently feature the various community involvement aspects of the convention, including the annual t-shirt design contest and various planning feedback polls. This led to the Contribute section on the homepage, which could be easily updated by maintaining the links collection in the WordPress system.

Finally, previous years’ Mysteria had attempted to better integrate into social media through an initiative at my.mysterium.net. This never took off, and the concepts were instead folded back into the main site in the form of the enhanced Twitter and Flickr integration.

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Riggz was a fun project to work on. The subject matter called for a graphic, energetic look with bold colors and an edgy feel. The site itself is fairly straightforward, but takes advantage of web fonts from Kernest to carry the look established by the logo through the rest of the page.

The site is built on WordPress, using the WP e-Commerce plugin to provide a way for the skate park owner to list products available in the park’s skate shop. Shopping cart and checkout functionality have been removed, as the client only wanted to provide a list, rather than a full shopping experience.

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This kennel site was tricky, as the original request was very heavy in Norse imagery which didn’t flow very well as a website. After working with the client, the imagery was scaled back and made a much more subtle aspect of the site design, allowing for a greater focus on the dogs themselves.

Kennels of Asgard was built in the GetSimple CMS, and utilizes web fonts from Kernest.com. The design work was done in DrawIt, and the mountains were a custom render created in Terragen.

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Latah Partners is a business cooperative in the greater Spokane area (Latah Creek, to be exact), which contracted with me to redesign their website. The new site is clean, professional, and easy to navigate. It takes advantage of some less common but still broadly-supported web technologies such as web fonts, using files provided by Kernest.com.

Latah Partners is built on the gpEasy content management system, which was necessitated due to the site’s older installation of PHP.

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May Contain Nuts is my personal web log, powered by WordPress.  Please be aware that content on this site may offend, as this is where I go to speak my mind.

This redesign was built in part to experiment with creating web designs in Pixelmator, and to play with a grungier design, while taking a different visual approach to the blog title’s play on words.

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Elite Salon is one of three sibling sites built for a local company called Elite Spokane. The site is built on WordPress, and utilizes a number of plugins, as well as some custom programming for a PayPal-based instant gift certificate program.

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The All Fur Fun website is a design built on a pre-existing back-end that serves the content and manages users. Its visual style was determined by the theme of the convention, “Ancient Greece”. The illustrated characters at the top of the site’s header graphic were created by Samantha McGunagle.

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DPWR.NET, or “D’niPedia / Writers Ring” is a Myst community fan web site, which hosts a community-generated database of information regarding the titular video game series’ locales, characters, and story.  It was originally built in 2000, and has undergone numerous changes and improvements over the years.

The site is built on the PHP-based Invision Power Board forum software, with custom programming and several additional forum components (i.e. a gallery, wiki, and links manager) complimenting the forum software, and intergating its session tracking and member management into the rest of the site.