We realize that Bluffton, SC is a tad off the beaten trail. We like it that way; we find small town life extremely charming. But that means it's doubly important we keep on our toes and in touch with what's going on in the great big world of advertising and design. Sometimes that world visits our neck of the woods—the upcoming Geekend event in Savannah in a couple weeks' time, for instance. But more often we go to it, like I did earlier this month when I travelled to Chicago to attend An Event Apart, an intense two-day web design and development conference. My brain is buzzing with ideas to explore—using concept models rather than site plans as the base of a site's architecture, JavaScript libraries to equalize the browser playing field, and selective CSS3 attributes to improve a site's look and function. I was witness to a pronouncement on the slow death of plug-ins (including Flash!) over the next two years, and I watched bemusedly as speaker after speaker hammered home the importance of modular design. Can't wait to get started implementing some of these ideas!We realize that Bluffton, SC is a tad off the beaten trail. We like it that way; we find small town life extremely charming. But that means it's doubly important we keep on our toes and in touch with what's going on in the great big world of advertising and design. Sometimes that world visits our neck of the woods—the upcoming Geekend event in Savannah in a couple weeks' time, for instance. But more often we go to it, like I did earlier this month when I travelled to Chicago to attend An Event Apart, an intense two-day web design and development conference. My brain is buzzing with ideas to explore—using concept models rather than site plans as the base of a site's architecture, JavaScript libraries to equalize the browser playing field, and selective CSS3 attributes to improve a site's look and function. I was witness to a pronouncement on the slow death of plug-ins (including Flash!) over the next two years, and I watched bemusedly as speaker after speaker hammered home the importance of modular design. Can't wait to get started implementing some of these ideas!One current project close to being wrapped up here at FCG: the web site and online store for Orlando-based Holistic Skincare by Elisabeth Cortes. Because this startup's budget was tight, we knew we needed to create a site that was not only beautiful and functional, but one that Holistic would be able to maintain on their own after the initial site was launched. The women of Holistic are brainy and beautiful, but web programmers they're not; any user interfaces had to be easy to use for the layperson.
In the end we combined an osCommerce shopping cart with additional informational pages that draw their content from the backend database of a Wordpress blog. Each content area on the site is essentially a blog post, and changing text and images is as easy as logging in to the admin area of the blog and updating the existing blog posts. Genius! Both Holistic and FCG are thrilled with the low-cost, high-function solution.
In the end we combined an osCommerce shopping cart with additional informational pages that draw their content from the backend database of a Wordpress blog. Each content area on the site is essentially a blog post, and changing text and images is as easy as logging in to the admin area of the blog and updating the existing blog posts. Genius! Both Holistic and FCG are thrilled with the low-cost, high-function solution.
