CLIENT: Philip Lanyon

WORK: Custom WordPress theme

URL: philiplanyon.com

Project Description

Director of Photography Philip Lanyon enlisted Mustbe Marketing to design a new website featuring videos he had created including commercials, music videos, shorts and other material. He wanted a non-linear front page in which each of the videos was displayed in a “broken” grid patterns where the different video thumbnails were of different sizes. But most importantly he wanted the front page to update automatically whenever a new video was included in the site.

The Mustbe Marketing team created a sleek and sophisticated design with a subtle menu bar on the left and the video content on the right. The front page featured the broken grid as requested. When an individual video was opened the video would appear on top with a list of thumbnails for related videos below. The spec also called for a regular text-page section, a photography feature and a latent blog that could be activated later on.

Mustbe Marketing came to us to build a custom WordPress theme to fit their design. The front page and individual page menus called for some fairly unusual theme hacks and the end result is a site that looks less like a WordPress site than a custom artist portfolio. Which is exactly what Philip wanted.

CLIENT: BOC-Group

WORK: Custom WordPress theme

URL: boc-group.ca

Project Description

Vancouver based consulting firm BOC-Group contacted Tracy Sullivan of Design Schooled Kids to see if they could get a website built that looked very different from other sites. To be specific they wanted a site that looked and behaved like an iPhone. No small feat.

Tracy designed the site to feature the BOC logo on the left, an iPhone replica, complete with one app for each page in the middle, and the BOC mantra on the right. She then passed the project on to us to be built into a WordPress theme.

Tracy’s design called for quite a few elements that are not usually seen in a WordPress site (or any other site for that matter). For one there was to be almost no text on the front page – just a series of icons pointing to the different pages. Secondly each of the pages would open in a modal lightbox rather than on a separate page, thus further emulating the iPhone feeling. Thirdly all the content had to be updatable at any time.

After some experimentation we ended up building the BOC WordPress theme as a child-theme of the stock twentyten theme that ships with WordPress. We rewrote most of the style code and also reconfigured both the featured image function and the page and single post functions and set up a lightbox feature that suited the purposes of the design spec.

The end result is a standard WordPress twentyten child-theme that looks and behaves nothing like WordPress.

CLIENT: Bellevue Gallery

WORK: Custom WordPress theme

URL: bellevuegallery.ca

Project Description

West Vancouver fine arts gallery Bellevue Gallery was looking for a way to improve their presence on the web and serve their web visitors better. They wanted a site that not only drove web users directly to the art shows, artists or even art pieces they were looking for, but one that also allowed the gallery to communicate more directly with the visitors through a news page and social media. But most importantly they wanted to create a site the gallery owners could manage on their own by adding shows, artists and photo galleries and write articles about the everyday goings on in the gallery itself. The natural platform for such a site was WordPress.

Based on the original site we knew we needed a front page, an exhibitions list displaying past, current and future shows, a gallery artist page with sub-pages for each artist, a news section, an artist submissions section, a page with info about the gallery itself and finally a contact page. Since the client is an art gallery and they had a huge number of photos of art pieces we needed to find a solution that would make the artwork easy to display for the owners and easy to navigate and digest for the visitors.

The design of the site needed to stay true to the visual identity of the gallery, built over several years. To help in the design process we brought in Alexandra Oosterom from Fresh Media Designs and she turned out a clean yet stylish look for the site that fit with the parameters we outlined.

To get a full overview of how Bellevue Gallery came together and what features were built in head over to Design is Philosophy.

CLIENT: Frugalbits.com

WORK: Custom WordPress theme

URL: frugalbits.com

Project Description

Last year we were contacted by two veterans of the publishing business with an idea for a new online magazine called “Frugalbits“. It would be a daily publication in which readers would find deals and ideas on how to be more frugal – a virtue we all wish we had more of. They were looking for a highly customizeable web solution for the site and had realized that the answer might be WordPress. Smart ladies.

The resulting site, Frugalbits.com, runs off a highly customized WordPress theme that incorporates a story carousel that displays the latest 8 stories on the front page, an author box that displays a picture of the author as well as the name and bio on selected pages, several custom layouts depending on the content and a host of other features.

To get a full overview of how Frugalbits.com came together and what features were built in head over to Design is Philosophy.

By far the biggest production we have ever been involved in would be the 12×12 Vancouver Photo Marathon. “Being involved in” might be a bit of an understatement here: Pink & Yellow Media was the originator and driving force behind the project which come September 12, 2010 will be in its second running.

The marathon consists of two separate events: The marathon itself – 12 hours of photography by 60 participants – and the following grand gallery showcase. The result of the first ever 12×12 Vancouver Photo Marathon, held on December 12, 2009, can be seen on the dedicated Flickr page. For further information you can read all about it on the project website www.vancouverphotomarathon.com

The 12×12 Vancouver Photo Marathon is a non-profit event put on by a group of local artists and new media specialists lead by Morten and Angela from Pink & Yellow Media and consisting of John Biehler, Anny Chih, Benjamin Luk, and Lesley Tetlow Stefanski.

CLIENT: Design Schooled Kids

WORK: Custom WordPress theme

URL: designschooledkids.com

Project Description

The Design Schooled Kids project caught our interest because it would push WordPress to its very limits both in terms of “look and feel” and functionality. Designer Tracy Sullivan had already worked out extremely detailed drafts of what she wanted the site to look like and it was our job to make her designs on paper a reality on the web.

To make the project even more complicated the site was to be an online shop selling stationery for children. Tracy’s designs called for a highly customized shop interface that looked nothing like the standard boxed e-commerce solutions out there so we had to quite literally think out of the box to make her designs a reality.

The result is a site that looks, feels and functions nothing like what you would expect from a WordPress based site yet retains all the functionality and is easy for Tracy to manage and upgrade.

You can read more about the development project on Design is Philosophy.

CLIENT: South Hill BIA

WORK: Custom WordPress theme

URL: www.southhillbia.ca

Project Description

The South Hill Business (Improvement) Association contacted us about creating a site with two purposes: Bring awareness and customers to the businesses on Fraser Street and create a central location where the Business Association members can get privileged information about what goes on around the are and communicate with each other. In short they needed a site with a public section and a members-only section.

Focusing on the public section (the members-only is, after all, members-only) we decided immediately that the main purpose of the site should be to provide an easy place for visitors to find information about the stores, services or restaurants they were looking for – preferably within two or three mouse clicks. For this purpose we created two separate menus; the top menu with general content such as history, location, arking etc.; and the larger contextual menu from where you can find shopping, dining and services quickly and easily.

Now the visitor has two ways to find the business she is looking for: Either use the contectual drop-down menu to specify the general service category and then pick from a list of businesses within that category or use the search feature in the top right-hand corner to find the business directly. Once a single or a list of businesses is specified a contextual map on the right shows the visitor exactly where the business is located on Fraser Street.

In addition to creating a business directory the South Hill Business Association website provides an opportunity for the businesses in the area to purchase additional space and place additional information on the site. That way even if they don’t have a website of their own they can use the listing page on this site as their own home page providing further information and photos to bring in more clients.

CLIENT: Anny Chih

WORK: Custom WordPress theme

URL: www.annychih.com

Project Description

This site was created for Angela’s sister Anny when she was competing for The Best Job in the World. Anny decided to parttake in the contest early on and asked us to help us produce a video entry and also a website. Because of the nature of the contest we felt a straight up blog would be the best option so we created a blog that fit with Anny’s nature and featured her prominently on the front page.

The blog may look fairly basic but it has a lot of interesting details. For one the image of Anny on top hovers over the background so if you change the size of the browser window you’ll see her moving independently of the background. It also uses rounded CSS corners and has threaded comments which had just been released in the new WordPress version when we launched the site.

On a sidenote the photo of Anny was actually taken in our living room while she was sitting behind the piano. She was actually sitting like this and Morten asked her to look longingly up into the ceiling which she did. To everyone’s surprise the photo actually worked and became the primary feature of the site.

CLIENT: Renaissance Painting

WORK: Custom WordPress theme

URL: www.renaissancepainting.ca

Project Description

Eric Goodwill of Renaissance Painting and Decorating came to us with a business card and an idea: A website that reflected the style of the business card and also gave a clear indication of what the company did right off the bat. He also wanted a blog where he could educate people about painting and decorating in general and green renovations in particular.

Renaissance Painting and Decorating is a company specializing in restoring older Vancouver homes and we wanted to keep that feeling of “old and classic” in the design. At the same time we needed to incorporate Eric’s business card design which featured a dark grey background and a gold art-deco font. After several drafts and some demos it became clear that using deep Guinness-style tones of gold and brown made for a rather dark and gloomy look which was contrary to the message we wanted to send. Looking at all our drafts and paperwork lying around the idea of using a stack of photos, some paint chips and the business card itself came to us by fluke, and it worked. The result was an open and inviting site that immediately told the visitor what the company was about and at the same time gave Eric and his company what they wanted.

Anny Chih’s fabulous application video for the Best Job in the World.