I haven't done much web-design as of late. Instead I have been focusing on programming (primarily for the web). Still, here are some of the designs I have created over the past couple of years. (Some of the sites have since been re-designed, so the original screenshots are all that remain.)
Needless to say I design and maintain boynamedbri.com, even though it isn't listed below. (That seems a bit redundant.)
The primary purpose of the Auto Showdown project was to create an online community for auto enthusiasts. With it, users can exchange information (photos, car specs, etc.) and meet others with similar interests.
The design of this site is bright and colorful with an auto/racing theme. I also created a small "featured banner" area in the left below the main menu for the site's sponsor, Car Effex. (Care Effex, listed below, is an after market auto parts dealer.)
One of the more interesting challenges of this project was to create user profile pages that were easily customizable. Rather than go all-out with customization like some sites do (ie. MySpace or LiveJournal), I decided to restrict users to color theme changes. To do this, I designed a color-picker tool that a user could use when logged in to select their theme colors. Then, using CSS, I created a design (screenshots available) that would allow for many color combinations while still remaining attractive.
Please feel free to sign up for an account yourself and test this feature.
Cast Easy is a pod cast authoring tool for OS X. This site was built to showcase its features and also inform users of the current status of its development cycle.
Since Cast Easy had been created with a typical Mac user in mind, it was very important to my client that I built a site that captured the user-friendliness of the tool. I had been brought into this project at a point where the application icon had already been created. My job, then, was to create a design that complemented the pre-existing brand and conveyed the user friendliness of the application.
The result: a very simple, easily navigable site. The larger buttons make prominent features easy to find and the bright and airy color theme lends an air of friendliness to the site and its content.
Ground Effex is a New England based auto parts distributer. This site, then, is an online storefront for their after-market parts.
When this client approached me, their goals were fairly open-ended. They wanted a site that was easy to use, but there weren't many visual constraints. With this design I tried to create a feeling of sleekness and speed. Splitting certain links (such as "View Cart") off from the rest of the navigation helped give the site a larger feel. Despite the very graphical header, the navigation is still very easy to locate and use.
One of the more interesting challenges of this design was creating the main header graphic. The 2 cars used in the image were originally from different photos. I digitally edited (resized & rotated, adjusted colors/shadows, etc.) the two so that it appeared as if they had been photographed side by side.
LB & J is a management company that works with a variety of different businesses. To allow site users to easily locate content within the larger site that LB & J required, I created a 2-tier navigation menu. The first level categorizes the various types of business LB & J manages (apartments, golf, office rental, etc.). The second level then provides greater depth into an individual business.
Visitors to this site range from business owners interested in renting public office space to college students looking for housing. Because of this, this design allows for the possibility of completely customized sub-sections of the site. (See the Packsaddle Ridge project below.) This gives LB & J the ability to target their various clients/audiences with designs that appeal to them.
Because of the diverse quality of visitors that come to this site, I created several concept designs for this client and let my client select the one they felt best represented their business. You can view these mock-ups using links to the right.
Nennius is an open-source CRUD application framework written in PHP 4. Using it, developers can create complex web applications that manage data within a relational database quickly and easily. Nennius offers users the ability to search, sort, filter, and paginate records as well as standard create/read/update/delete functionality.
Creating a design for Nennius presented several unique challenges. First, the design had to be very flexible, as it could contain a whole lot of content (or very little) for a given deployment of the app. It also needed to make the best use of its available space, since a lot of information is present on the screen within a Nennius session. To add another level of complexity, many features are configurable (easily toggled on or off) and so the design must gracefully handle all possible combinations of these toggle switches.
Since not all Nennius users will be web-savy, I also created an integrated help system within this design to display both context-sensitive help (if available) as well as global help (explaining how to use the Nennius interface at a higher level).
Please visit the Source Forge site and try the free online demo. No account sign-up is necessary.
The Packsaddle Ridge golf course is one of the many businesses managed by LB & J Limited (shown above). Although Packsaddle was originally part of the larger LB & J website, my client felt it was unique enough that it should be given its own custom, stand-alone design. Users would then be able to access the site using the primary LB & J domain, or the custom Packsaddle domain.
The site itself presented a design challenge in that, unlike the primary site, it would contain very minimal content. My goal then was to create a design that filled the empty space within a users browser in such a way as to make the lesser quantity of text unnoticeable.
One way I attempted to overcome this obstacle was to create a design that floated in the center of the screen. This minimized the amount of empty space on any given side of the content. I also used a lot of graphics (relative to the amount of text), making each page look more like a brochure than a typical web page. My hope in doing this was that a user would be given the impression that the amount of text displayed was chosen for design reasons, and not lack of content.
This site showcases the services of Peridev Solutions, a web design and development company.
Peridev was a newly created division of Nexpoint Technologies (nexpoint.net) when I created this site and as such, they did not have much in the way of a public portfolio. To compensate for that, I chose a design and content that gave the appearance of being established and mainstream. By integrated several easily recognizable technology icons into the design, my goal was to convey the notion that Peridev was well familiar with industry-standard technologies. Separating paragraphs into table columns with visible dividers and lots of padding also helped to expand the smaller amount of content so that it filled a page (rather than left it looking empty).
Southeast R/T is an online auto parts dealer and custom work shop. This design showcases the various services they offer in a simple yet professional manner.
It also includes an online Mopar parts catalog. This catalog was requested by my client after the completion of the initial site. As the original design of the site was not created with a catalog in mind, I created a separate (though complimentary) design for this new section that made better use of available space. Being of a fixed size, the left menu of the website was re-located to the top of the catalog section and the dynamically created catalog menu was put in its place.
A dance club in Charlottesville, VA, The Dawning needed a website to showcase upcoming events and to post schedules for regularly rotated DJs.
When designing this site, my goal was to capture the feel of a night-club through both color choice and graphic style. Since the primary time of business for a club such as the Dawning is at night, I chose to go with a darker color scheme (grey, black, blue, and purple). Although bands do occasionally perform there, it is primarily a dance club. Because of this I chose to integrate dance and motion into the design itself, albeit in the background.
This site, like some of the others listed on this page, has relatively little content. Because of this, the design itself is larger and more striking. This helps to fill the empty space with motion without detracting from the text of the site.
Culpeper is a small town in Virginia. It is home to about 15,000 people. Until recently, it did not have a website.
I created this design as a proposal for the town, when they began looking into creating a site. The goal of this design is to make a wide variety of information available and easily accessible to a (primarily) non-technical audience. The menu system is two tier in order to organize the content into simple categories. The surrounding graphical elements are simple- attractive, but not flashy or distracting.
Although this proposal was not adopted, I am happy with the way it turned out: simple, yet effective in its purpose.
Tunes for You is a project I completed during my senior year at James Madison. At that time I was taking classes in a variety of programs: computer science, technical scientific writing, and media arts and design. This project brings together elements from each.
The design is modern and makes heavy use of graphical elements, while still remaining yet friendly and welcoming. The main audience for this site is comprised of college students, so the navigation and search UI are a bit more advanced than some of the other projects listed here. Because of this, I also integrated "Help" and "Quick Tour" systems for users with less technical background.
From the "Music Library" to the "Contact Us" page, this site contains several variations of design. Each was created to best fit the content of a particular section while still tying in with the larger design.
Vital Assets is a software design company operating in both private and government sectors. The primary purpose of their website is to attract new clients by showcases the high caliber work they have done in the past.
It was important to all parties involved that the site design I created for them be professional and established while at the same time looking new and creative. Although this is a common goal, it can be difficult to strike a balance between the two. Because of this, I created several concept designs at the start of this project (listed to the right). Vital Assets then chose the design they felt most accurately represented them.
This site actually made use of a 3-tier menu system. The top-most tier contained higher level service categories offered by Vital Assets. The second tier contained options that fit within the higher level categories. Then, a third level was available (where needed) to drill down further into the options presented by the second tier. Although this may sound a bit heavy in writing, in practice the menu system was very lightweight and easy to use.
Music and content copyright 2007, Brian Vaughn.
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