I just completed another project for another artist, Prop Stylist: Barb Fritz. After being abandoned by her previous web designer, Barb was referred to me by a friend. Barb had some very specific ideas as to what she wanted to achieve and wanted a site that was as minimalist and modern as possible. I have to say, minimalist has never really been my style, but the job of the web designer is to create the client’s vision. I think together Barb and I created an elegant web site that really highlights her work.
I have just about wrapped up the most fun and creative website I’ve had the opportunity to work on for quite a while. The website is for Tisha Paige, an artist and illustrator. You can view the site at TishaPaige.com.
It is a little intimidating for me to create a website for another artist. I’m used to expressing my creativity and design aesthetic for other people. For most websites, the client tells me a sort of “style” they’d like to achieve and leave it up to me to make it happen. I get a lot of free reign in terms of design. In this case, I had to take Tisha’s marvelous artwork and translate her vision onto the web. It was a challenge, but I had such wonderful raw material to work with! Not only is Tisha a talented illustrator, but she has done some really creative 3-Dimensional work as well as paintings.
I really got to flex my CSS layout skills with this one in order to place the navigation crows among their paisley branches. This site also gave me the opportunity to create a complete custom WordPress theme that Tisha will use for her sketchbook and works in progress.
I just completed a website for John A. Alvarez & Sons, Modular home builders in Hudson, NY. The production process couldn’t have been easier. I wish every client was as thorough and organized as Jason Alvarez and his staff. They sent me a disk full of descriptively labled pictures and a text document with page headings and the content they wanted on each page. From there it was a matter of coming up with a color scheme, navigation plan, create the design and plug in the content. It was when the site was complete that we ran into problems.
The previous AlvarezModulars site was hosted with one of those “package deal” companies that provide a domain, hosting account and a web template where you just plug in information and pictures. While this seems a simple solution for a quick business website, it wasn’t so simple when they wanted to change to a new host for their new website. The first sign of trouble was that there was NO contact phone number on this hosting site. It happens all the time, businesses sign up for a hosting account, buy a domain name and promptly lose their log in information. Support tickets went unresponded to, password recovery didn’t work (because we didn’t know what email had been used to create the account) and so what were we to do?
In the end we were able to resolve the issues, and I won’t go into the tedious process necessary to recover control over the domain and everything, but I write this post with a purpose. If I can give potential web site owners any advice it’s this: if there is no phone number and mailing address on your potential web host’s site, FIND ANOTHER WEB HOST. What I generally recommend is for the website owner to purchase their domain name seperately from their hosting. That way, you’ll always have control over your domain, no matter what web host you are using. Buy your domains first, from a reputable Registrar like GoDaddy or Network Solutions. Then purchase your web hosting from a reliable source that offers 24/7 tech support by phone/email/trouble ticket and clearly publishes their phone number (preferably a toll-free one) and their mailing address. Once you’ve done all that, make sure you file away your log in information somewhere safe!
I just wrapped up the ArtAndSportAgainstPoverty.org website for a non-profit organization that uses the power of Art and Sports to help the homeless. They are best known for their international Homeless Soccer tournaments. This site includes Flash animations as well as static HTML and CSS. It was a real pleasure to work on the site, especially a pleasure to get to work with the amazing photographs by Mae Lambing. I recommend you check out the photo gallery on the ASAP website to see more of her work. Dr. Jeff Grunberg and all the volunteers are making a real difference in the lives of the homeless and I hope you can take a moment to visit their site and perhaps support their organization.
Welcome to Cristaldi Designs! We’ve been so busy working on our client’s websites that we’ve had no time to update our own, so please be patient while we expand the information here. I’ve recently switched our site from a Flash based page to a WordPress Blog with a theme that I’ve customized so that we can provide you with more up to date information about what’s happening at Cristaldi Designs.
My most recent project was an HTML/CSS based website for photographer Anthony Scano http://anthonyscano.com. Anthony’s website also included the installation of a WordPress Blog so he could post information about the performances he’s photographing, as well as a php photo Gallery that will allow him to post his photographs online without having to edit HTML pages. I customized both the Blog and the Gallery to match the rest of his site.
Keep checking back to see links to our work!