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DESIGN PROJECTS
 
KnowledgeSEEK.com is an informational resource supported by advertising. The design for this website had to be visually pleasing and easy to read, while allowing room for a large number of banner and text ads. Palfrey Media designed a site that rotates banners in and out of three different locations, without overwhelming the editorial content.
 
Canter Magazine, a print publication for equestrians, relied on its website for 90% of its initial marketing campaign. During Canter's market testing phase, the goal was to keep overall expenses down while determining the viability of the magazine's editorial focus. This was accomplished with a compelling website design, concise copy, and a basic mechanism for ordering subscriptions. Using public domain artwork, Palfrey Media designed a simple website, wrote search engine-friendly copy, and implemented three form mailers that visitors could use to subscribe, order advertising, or send general questions to the company. Palfrey Media also developed a complex search engine submission plan, which included manual submission to the top general search engines and the most popular equestrian business directories.

The goal of this project was to create a customizable equestrian community with an advertising and affiliate based business model. The challenge was to provide content and services that are unique among existing equestrian based websites. Palfrey Media accomplished this by creating a database driven application in ASP which allows users to create a personalized "start page" where they can store medical records, breeding information, notes, a to-do list, and favorite links. This personalized area also features a calendar/training log, and a PERL script allows for the creation of a free, one-page website with a user-uploaded image. The site's "articles" section also encourages user submissions, which contributes to Equine Post.com's truly robust community atmosphere. To these unique features we added the other staples of a comprehensive online community, including database-driven ASP classified advertisements, an ASP community bulletin board, and links to affiliated equestrian shopping sites. In addition to building the back-end of the site, Palfrey Media designed the user interface, provided the copy, and created all associated images.
   
Cabré Arabian wanted a simple, information-based online presence to advertise their star colt's first show season. As a new business without a true physical location, they wanted to present a serious image without seeming limited by their relatively small size. The answer was to create a site with big eye-appeal that focuses primarily on their colt and his star-studded pedigree. Palfrey Media designed a look and feel for the site emphasizing image over information. Fifteen brief profile pages highlight the lineage of Cabré Arabian's star colt. The result is a site that appears robust even though it contains limited copy, with plenty of room for future content additions. The design package for this project included user interface design, content/copy creation, support graphics, logo design and even pedigree research.
   
The New Curiosity Shop is an innovative company that creates "educational entertainment products" and interactive exhibits for hands-on museums and science exhibitions. As a company with a very unusual product line, The New Curiosity Shop needed a site that clearly and quickly conveys their company mission to first time visitors. Palfrey Media felt that their original static, mostly text-based presentation of this information provided a limited representation of a highly interactive product line. To solve this problem, we created a very simple, interactive interface using basic Javascript rollovers and form-based navigation. The new site uses images of museum visitors interacting with New Curiosity Shop products to provide a page-one description of the company's overall product line. Detailed product information is easily accessible on second level pages, and the overall site provides an atmosphere of discovery that we feel is an accurate representation of the company's mission. (NOTE: This website is currently offline.)
   

DESIGN PROJECTS IN PROGRESS

 
CORPORATE EXPERIENCE
  • Alteon WebSystems - Alteon WebSystems, as a part of the content business networking unit of Nortel Networks, needed someone to integrate their website's existing look and feel into a pre-packaged database management application. The project required extensive application testing and troubleshooting as well as graphics creation and HTML implementation.

  • LoanCity.com - LoanCity.com implemented two site redesigns over a nine month period. They needed experienced production assistance to help convert graphical concept representations into functional HTML. They also required a dynamic, ASP based solution to a complex navigation structure, allowing them to keep a half dozen incarnations of multi-level navigation in one easily editable location. Additionally, this project involved creating both the user interface and back end functionality for a registration system, an automatic email generator, and a co-branding system that presented user-specific customized headers.

  • Women.com Networks - Women.com, one of the foremost online destinations for women, wanted to quickly implement and launch an e-commerce site marketed to their users. This project was primarily concerned with managing their database of products and in turn writing detailed technical documentation to assist with future maintenance and additions to the site.

  • Kensington Technology Group - Kensington Technology Group had an ongoing need for development and implementation of "microsites," or mini-websites that they launched primarily for promotional purposes. This project included converting concepts into functional HTML, and performing maintenance tasks on existing pages.

  • Daytimers, Inc. - As a catalog-based business model, Daytimers Inc. needed to maintain a robust web presence. Their UNIX based e-commerce application required complicated bi-annual data loads and graphics processing. Additionally, this project required someone to develop an in-depth knowledge of their application in order to troubleshoot and answer user questions.

  • Chicago Title Company - The Santa Clara County division of Chicago Title Company had a very basic, one-page website containing their logo and limited contact information. They needed a much more complex site to help answer customer questions about their products, locations and sales representatives. The assignment was to completely redesign and rewrite the existing site, arrange hosting, and implement the finished product.

 
 
 
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