using my head

I have just finished customising a lovely clean, simple and easy-to-read WordPress theme for a new client, Capital Fire and Security. I like the clean lines and the way the blue and white make the photos really pop off the page. This project was another collaboration with the rather wonderful Katrina Dixon a.k.a. The Marketing Lady, who is a real pleasure to work with. Although this was primarily a design & build project for me, I thought I would help out the client with a few SEO tips during the training session. WordPress has a few good SEO features built-in (or via plugins), but the best SEO always boils down to content, content, content.

I think both the client and Katrina were pleased with the results, and I can already see that they are using the blog on their site well, filling it with really useful news articles relevant to their clients. So I can finally stop bugfixing and working around crazy IE6 hacks just in time for Christmas. Hooray!

Woohoo – how exciting. Those nice people over at Imagine Publishing have put together a nifty guide called the Blogger’s Handbook, which covers all the major blogging platforms, advice on setting up and designing blogs, and info about how to make blogging work for you. And yours truly is featured on page 114 in their feature on Squarespace.

It sure is nice to be recognised out of the millions of bloggers/designer-developers out there. And speaking of Squarespace, I have set up a showcase of my Squarespace projects, so hop on over to UsingMyHead on Squarespace if you fancy learning a bit more.

When a photographer colleague of mine approached me to help him create a new website to showcase his work, I was quite excited, because the project allowed me to exercise a little creative thinking on how he could easily create photo galleries that didn’t look like the bog standard stuff you usually see these days.

I like to tailor the job to the client, and make something that slots right into his or her workflow, rather than forcing poeple onto a particular tool or platform regardless of whether it’s right for them. So, because he was already using Adobe Lightroom to process his images, it seemed like a good idea to base the website on the galleries that come built into Lightroom. But they are a bit boring and pretty limited in terms of customisation. And the client wanted a really individual website that visually represented what his photography was all about: edgy, modern imagery.

The final solution was for me to build a custom HTML framework that houses embedded versions of the Lightroom galleries. This means that the client gets all the visual appeal of a bespoke site, with all the ease of exporting and uploading galleries directly from Lightroom. He didn’t have to learn anything new, and he gets to take advantage of a tool already built into his normal working environment. It’s great to be able to work in this way, and I look forward to other projects where I can help people save time or make their workflow a little simpler. That’s what gives me the greatest satisfaction in life. I don’t think of this kind of project as a ‘design’ job: to me it’s all about helping people. Check out the results here.