Visualgui.com

I was given an opportunity to redesign tledc.com, Theresa Le’s jewelry designs. Theresa is a good friend who I have met over several bun mam occasions and she gave me complete freedom to rework her site. The only instruction she gave me was to keep it simple and sleek.

After browsing through her extensive gallery, I decided to incorporate her jewelry works into the layout. On the homepage, I wanted to let her artwork speak for itself, and it does so clear and bold against black background. On the secondary pages, I wanted to switch the layout to white for readability and accessibility. I revamped the entire gallery and made it much simpler to navigate. Customers don’t have to click through pages and pages to browse the collection. Everything in on one page and if you want to see the larger photo, you can do so without leaving the page. As of now, Theresa has not added e-commerce feature to her site and she still prefers the good old mailing payment. I have pushed her to go with PayPal, so hopefully we will see that in the near future.

The entire site is structured in XHML and styled in CSS. I kept the markup clean and simple so that Theresa could update the site herself. I also gave her logo a new, refreshing look. The type is set in lowercase with various colors.

So go ahead and take a tour at tledc.com and buy some jewelry before they are gone. As you see, she has sold quite a bit of them. Make sure you read the about page too. I love the way she describes her design process:

I don’t always know the name of the stones. I identify them by their beauty and character. Each stone is unique in its own way, and each is a piece of art. I take my time feeling them with my fingers, my mind filled with images of where they’ve been and how their paths and adventures had brought them into my hands. Sometimes I stare at a rock for hours seeing designs and possibilities. It takes a long time for me to work through each piece, savoring that wonderful feeling of creating something unique. I’m really just bringing out their natural beauty and I make a point to keep my pieces simple and elegant.

Isn’t that beautiful? Thanks Theresa for allowing me to redesign tledc.com. It was quite a pleasure project to work on.

I have revamped both the Sites and Motion page. As for Graphics pages, I am not sure what to do with it yet or if I should keep it.

The Alumni web site gets a bit of visual changed.

The Undergraduate site for GWSB has been revived with fresh, young and vibrant colors.

Although I am no longer working for Vassar, the web group keeps me on board for freelance projects. The redesign of the Art Department is my first work after Vassar. The department wants a clean and simple site and so it was delivered just the way it wanted.

The Career Center of GW School of Business is now live. Once again, the design is based on a consistent brand of the School of Business, but also has its own look and feel.

Visualgui.com is now set in Goudy. If you don’t have Goudy, Georgia will display.

One of the advantages of working with an existed design is that you could kick out pages faster. I put together the Commencement page for the School of Business based on a secondary template, but I changed the layout a bit to give more room for the cheerful photos.

One of the strange but cool things about working at the School of Business is the design process. Unlike many sites, which wait until everything is completed to launch, we just put up whatever we get done. For instance, the homepage was launched before any other pages were done. I was surprised when my boss told me to just put up the homepage and continue to work on the interior pages. So we are replacing the old with the new as we go along. In a way, it makes sense because the web is always changing. Even if you wait until everything is complete (might be a year or two later), you still need to make changes later on. In other words, nothing on the web is set in stone.

The landing page for George Washington University’s School of Business has launched. The design is based heavily on the graduate site for a consistent look and feel.

The School of Business’s faculty directory has been redesigned and brought back in house.