visit the site

If you’re looking for the latest news and reviews on all things in the movie industry, IndieWire is one of the heavy-hitters on the web. They provide insight and coverage on everything coming out of Hollywood. They just needed a good website to put it all on. I worked with my friends at Tribe again to design a new IndieWire.com from the ground up.

Depth, depth, depth

The content you can drill down through on this site is just awesome. Not only did we have to design for all of it, we had to make sure visitors wouldn’t get confused while they were moving from story to gallery to review. We spend hours wireframing the best way to tell each section’s story.

Powerful Widgets

On some websites the sidebar widgets are an afterthought, thrown in to take up space. Not so on IndieWire. Each widget throughout the site offers fresh content, relevant links, and standalone info about current movies. We wanted to make sure the user understood this too. Careful consideration was given to make each widget appealing, easy to understand, and part of an integrated whole while it offered it’s own unique message.

A Vast Network

But IndiWire.com isn’t the only part of this project. The site features a huge network of other blogs and sites that feed into IndieWire. One of the problems we solved was unifying all these sites into a more cohesive network. We created a number of corresponding design template so that each network could choose a similar look, while getting options for making their own site unique.

Nominated for a Webby

The new design didn’t go unnoticed. In 2012 IndieWire was nominated for a Webby Award (the Oscars of the web). Go check out in the Media: Movie and Film category!

Or, read one of these:

1. AP College Football Website
2. Value Inn Website
3. e3 Website

view the app

Its not every day that you get to work with one of the top companies on the internet to create a brand-new app for the world’s leading smartphone. Working with eBay on their new Motors iPhone app was a dream project. The Shane&Peter team brought me onboard to help create a functional, friendly user experience and a beautiful, memorable design for this new app.

The project started with Shane and I creating wireframed screens and walkthroughs of the entire app – basically thinking through how the user would use and navigate every part of the program. After that was done I turned into lead designer on the project and worked with Ryan to create the look and feel of the entire app. I put together a style that was a throwback to the idea of old baseball cards (one of the themes of the app), while still being very clean and modern. I paired rough textures with clean, sharp fonts and lots of contrast to create one of my most favorite designs I’ve worked.

The app itself is packed with features. You can browse beautiful cars, save specific searches for your car, and even create your ‘garage’ which stores info and pictures about cars you own or want to own. Go ahead and download the app in the App Store, or read Shane&Peter’s announcement of the completed project.

In the end this was a great project for everyone. My client, Shane&Peter, was super happy with the way the design turned out; eBay was delighted with the app we gave them; and dozens of great customer reviews in the App Store show that the target audience is loving this work.

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My article on the FreelanceSwitch homepage

I also love helping other freelancers and startup companies and recently thought about writing a helpful article and trying to get it published on FSW.  I spent some time crafting the post and submitted it.  Lo and behold – FSW accepted the article and posted it soon thereafter.  I was/am super-excited to be a part of the FSW team!

Here’s how the article begins:

Remember when you graduated from school or first decided to become a freelancer?  You likely didn’t have much work to show and had to scramble to fill your portfolio.  If you now have a few years under your belt, you’ve probably started to build up quite a collection of finished pieces.

The importance of having a professional portfolio website has been discussed on FreelanceSwitch – it is essential for the modern freelancer.  But how do you decide what to include in your portfolio? If you fill your site with only your favorite work it could be focused in the wrong direction and not attract business.  If you only display giant commercial projects it may feel like a sterile presentation with no heart.  Somehow you need to show that as a freelancer you are both capable in your skills and able to produce high quality, creative results.

I suggest this 5-pronged approach for deciding what you want to include in your portfolio:

Go read the rest at FSW>>

I’m looking forward to a continued 2-way relationship with FreelanceSwitch!

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