I always love designs before they go to the higher ups.   Usually it means designs are cleaner more cutting edge and more marketing focused.   At this point designers have free reign over what it should look like and what it should sell.  The design process is slightly ignorant to the legal issues or information that needs to be supplemented that drags it more back toward center.   The greatest dream for designers right at this point is to “WOW”.  If the designer can make a statement the design will be a benchmark that will win confidence that the marketing is heading in the right direction.  If the designer and design win this crucial battle the client is  more comfortable to leave you with the freedoms you have started with and the gravity of “center” will not affect the project.   I proudly present the early designs for IBIS.

–>> Continue reading IBIS – Design Comps.

As designers we are often faced with not enough of three elements, time, money, and or info.  Time can sometime be overcome with Redbull and coffee.  Money can be over come by just giving it away for free.  Info and or client direction can only be overcome by shooting things into the dark, or as my fellow designers say “throwing sh@#$t at the walls and seeing what sticks.”    Mark Center was an umbrella company who owns and operates multiple apartments outside DC and wanted to start branding the properties as one.  The old site was short throw from horrible and for some reason they liked the utilitarian quality of it.   All of us in the design shop thought  it was horrible and yet we weren’t given a lot of freedom to divorce from it.

–>> Continue reading Shooting in the dark- Web Design for Real Estate DC

A bit of R&D and flash fun. A banner for a Washington DC Condo the Vista.

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As coders we are lazy

I find now that meet more and more coders we are all driven by a very similar goal.  The main goal that fuels most coders is to be as lazy as possible. This doesn’t mean we don’t try or put effort in but if it came down to it coders in my experience will work smarter and not longer every day. I don’t know if it is just we want to get back to our video games, or beds but if there is a way we can do something cool without needing to continually update or type in every different element the better.

–>> Continue reading PHP – NONCODERS – Reasons for the code.

In my process of learning how to skin Wordpress I have started to learn PHP. This is a series of post that will explain what I stumbled over as a non-coder so you don’t have to.

–>> Continue reading PHP – NONCODERS – Introduction

Every want to upgrade your visual experience? Well i have. I often have to do visual searches for imagery that means hours of sifting through files online to see if I can find that perfect image. Well, today I stumbled across maybe one of the coolest plug ins.

–>> Continue reading Cool Iris- not so usefull but fun

My company is Merrick Towle Communications which a PR company for the Real Estate Business.  I work as there primary flash developer.  I do a a lot of galleries, interactive maps and maybe the most challenging is the building tours.  The building tour is in most basic form an interactive gallery of floor plans and its most complex is an interactive search tool that allows per unit inspection of the entire complex.  Maybe one of my first building tour was for the Met Gramercy Property

–>> Continue reading Merrick Towle Co.

So for all of you who have been here since the beginning I have been working on my own theme for word press.  Like most I started with a little help and cannibalize another theme to start.  So most of you might have seen my Notepad 1.0

–>> Continue reading Sometimes it is best to start over.

I feel like I am taking on too many tasks to make my new site a reality, but I am very happy with what my Web 2.0 design for my Digital Fantasy Art Section looks like.   I want to bring different real world elements into site.   Personally I love paper, pens and brushes, but in some odd changes brought on by fate I have become almost 100% digital.  So this design is in homage to the past that I try to emulate with the tools of the present and future.

So today I am starting my first training for a professional coding.  It is nothing great or even something super advanced. But I am really excited that I am learning the basics of AS3.  I have gotten pretty good at AS2 and for some reason every time I have tried to pick up AS3 I have had issues. It might be the fact that I might have missed some small thing back when I should have learned code or it could be that the Code is so close but so radically different in the more basic of elements.  I am truly excited to move on considering I have learned about many of the new features that this language has.  So wish me luck on my first training. I hope I am not too bored.