Feb 13 2008
Giving Birth to a Website
In my last post ››, which marked the introduction of the new GregWardwell.com ››, I promised to go into the details of the new site design. Those who are familiar with my original website design…
…know that I drew my inspiration for the colors, as well as some of the layout elements, from the artist Piet Mondrian ››. The design I created for the original site was, although very rough around the edges, a fun design. As I branched out into design services, however, I decided that I needed to create a more refined brand for my services that would expand into print as well as the web. That was the start of the new GregWardwell.com and Greg Wardwell Design.
The new design has been taken further than just the world wide web into the realm of print. In an effort to create a uniformed brand, I implemented many of the elements found in my website design in my company stationary.
The information found on the old GregWardwell.com is all here, but it has been restructured a little bit. All the links, including those that used to be on the Store page on my old site, now reside on the the Links ›› page. There are also a brand new option in the navigation, Services ››.
My services page explains the services offered by Greg Wardwell Design, my freelance web and graphic design agency. It particularly hits on the three areas I feel most design work fits into, Corporate Identity, Print, and Website Design. I realize there is a lot of variety within those areas, but most design work can fit in one of those three. There is not a lot of specific information on that page, as most of my pricing is extremely reliant on project details, but it gives a general idea of what I, as a designer, can do for you. To solve the need for pricing on my website, but to keep from selling myself short when clients want an unbelievably complex design solution, I created a simple online estimate form.
The Project estimate form is the simple solution for prospective customers to send me their project ideas. While the form itself is a simple HTML form, the power behind the form is PHP. In order to circumvent the typical CGI-bin solution for form submission, I programmed a PHP form collection, verification, and email generator script. With the information provided, the PHP collects the info and constructs an HTML email providing me with the information you submitted. The PHP is a little diverse as it was written to handle both my project estimate form as well as the simple contact form. Rather than duplicate the back end for the estimate form, I simply expanded it to handle both forms.
It wasn’t an easy rode to get from the old design to the new one. It took a great deal of research and trial and error to solve some of the browser compatibility issues I ran into along the way. In the future, I plan to delve into some of the methods I used to create this website, from the PHP back end to the XHTML and CSS construction.
What’s your opinion of the new design versus the old? Do you have any personal website redesign stories you’d like to share?
