Design
I worked in print design for something like 15 years. Eventually, people stopped conveying their ideas through paper and ink, and everyone wanted websites. Well, OK then.
My web design is based on two main things:
1.) Subtext through textures.
2.) Simplicity.
Here are some of my favorite web design clients and their corresponding projects:
Downhill: The Bill Johnson Story
Bill Johnson is the first American Olympic Gold-Medalist in downhill skiing. The film tells the tragic downhill story of his life. Filmmaker Zeke Piestrup hired me to do this site in a big hurry, because the film festival was coming up. The opening night was sold out, and I almost cried.
Titled Sketch Project
Dan Oster of MADtv has started his own internet show. I was honored to be involved. This is the kind of project I say yes to, automatically. Check out their stuff.
Steve Krugman
Steve Krugman is a session drummer, instructor, and clinician in Los Angeles. If you need help moving, he’s happy to help. In cowboy boots.
Bend Bars / Lift Gates
Bend Bars / Lift Gates is a screenwriting website for everyone’s favorite creative genius, Carl King. I intentionally made my site very narrow, because sometimes I get tired of doing websites that are all the same shape. This was a fun experiment.
Lalle Larsson
Lalle Larsson is a Swedish Piano Virtuoso. This is a basic WordPress-powered site, which the artist can update himself.
Steve Vai
Everyone knows I can’t have a conversation without somehow relating it to Steve Vai. So at some point, I bought SteveVai.org and set it up as a little tribute splash page. I eventually let the domain expire.
Astro Teller
I re-coded this site for Astro Teller from the bottom up, based on his pre-existing layout. Astro provided me with zillions of video files in every format known to man, and I conformed them to embedded Flash players. This site was quite a challenge because of the multimedia coming from so many sources, which I had to hack apart and put back together. I enjoyed coming up with the “Circuits” layout on the front page, which was done as a Flash animation. We needed a way to display various aspects of Astro’s life and work, and to be able to accomodate multiple image types. It was an honor to work for a mad scientist!
The Lacking Organization
This is a custom WordPress template for The Lacking Organization, which is a radio show and podcast on WFIT’s 89.5 FM in Florida. This is the most complex graphical CSS I have created, as it has so many layers and decorations. Suncoast Studios provided those custom retro 3D cassettes, which were modeled in Lightwave. I personally refer to the theme as “Dirty iPhone.”
Science Babe – Dr. Debbie Berebichez
This site is for a TV show host and Ph.D. in Physics named Dr. Debbie Berebichez. I worked from some of her previous graphics and cleaned them up, then built a functional site out of CSS / XHTML. I also assisted with turning her Quicktime content into a Flash Player and some minimal video editing and conversions. I enjoyed organizing and preparing all of her various press materials, too.
Dr. Zoltan!
This is my very own long-term creative career project. Dr. Zoltan is a fictional character that bills himself as “The Funniest Comedian Since Carrot Top,” and “Hollywood’s Premiere Anti-Sociologist.” This is my place to do or say anything while wearing strange costumes. Satirical, post-modern social commentary. Through the music and lectures, I have worked with some of the greatest musicians in the world. Check out the WordPress Template, which pulls content from Dr. Zoltan’s Twitter and incorporates it into the home page. I am quite proud of this site.
Adam Shenkman
Adam Shenkman is an underground comedian in Los Angeles. I was basically told to go for it, and this zany, colorful site is what came out. I have basically been put in charge of Adam’s online presence, because he seems to be technologically cursed. This site is basic CSS / XHTML as usual. We’re working on putting together some more multimedia for him.
Harry Cox Brand
This is a fun T-shirt brand pioneered by a Texan who is really, truly named Harry Cox. For Harry Cox Brand, he needed a store front / shopping cart that fit his logo identity, so I used Shopify and customized its CSS. He also wanted a Blog for interacting with his fans, so I set up a custom WordPress install and a Flickr account. He also asked me to set up all of his social networking accounts and to manage them. Harry Cox wears his name proudly, and now you can, too!
Peter Stone
Peter Stone likes robots. In his spare time, he’s the founder and director of the Learning Agents Research Group (LARG) within the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin.
Employee Benefit Review
A financial company from Florida approached me in a rush and needed a website designed and launched that same day. Agh! No problem, but it’ll cost you! Employee Benefit Review is a basic “brochure” style site in a hi-tech corporate style. Like many of my sites, this uses a mixture of CSS, XHTML, and some elementary PHP. [NOTE: The company exploded a while back, and their website disappeared. Not sure what happened to them. Oh, well.]
Fred Heffelin III
This is a band from Los Angeles dedicated to performing the music of eccentric genre pioneer, Fred Heffelin III. A few photos, a few mp3 files, what else do you need? This is my favorite type of website to create because it’s simple, fun, and doesn’t get in the way of the artist’s message. Which is, in this case, uh… er…
Aktuator
This is a film composer website I assembled to feature the works of Aktuator. It was a collaborative soundtrack scoring team consisting of Steve Cox and I. I wanted to convey a fun, Nike / sports look for this site, since that is one of Aktuator’s biggest markets. On the more personal, creative side, you can hear a lot of my drum programming, guitar, and bass playing on the tracks: Kevlar Courage, Balls Station, and Field of Battle. The site has since been retired. As of 2011 you can check out Steve’s work at Stephen-Cox.com.
Hollywood Drum
I put Hollywood Drum together for Los Angeles drummer, Steve Krugman. He came to me with a concept for a L.A. drum-scene oriented site, and we developed it with the purpose of being a “Drummer Hang.” It also serves as a web presence for his retail showroom and teaching studio. We hope to see it expand with more feature content and serve drummers with its Forum, News, and Calendar being central. The front page grabs and displays content from various dynamic feeds to keep the content fresh. Most of Hollywood Drum is powered by WordPress as a Content Management System, because Steve wanted to be able to update the site on his own.
The Throne Room Cafe
Lisa Curry and Erika Cervantes came to me and needed help. They were on an extremely low budget and needed a website to raise money for their USC student film, called Open Mic. The trick was, they wanted to design it to look like a website for an actual night club. It’s a very surreal script. Erika, a producer with very strong thematic ideas, collaborated with me on coming up with a site design. She sent me her Photoshop files… and after a few incarnations, we came up with something that fit the look and feel of the film. I also set them up with a Flash-driven photo gallery, to show all of their production stills. When it was time to launch, I set them up with some hosting on CarlKingClients.com to get them started.
The New Twenty
The New Twenty is a new independent film by Chris Mason Johnson. I work extensively with the directors on creating all of the collateral materials related to the release of the film — post cards, business cards, invitations, posters, Apple Trailer thumbnails, signs, and lots of magazine & newspaper advertisements. I pay a lot of attention to the branding, making sure it is consistent with the look and feel of the film. The website is XHTML / CSS with a bit of Flash.
Tamar Halpern
Tamar Halpern is a writer-director of commercials and independent films. This particular site uses embedded Flash Videos to show off her commercials and viral videos. The pages were coded from scratch in CSS / XHTML.
Where Is Daron?
Daron Malakian is the guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter of System of a Down. I made this site just for fun, because Daron disappeared a while back. He had nothing to do with it — it was really only a one-page fan site / homage. I since let the domain name expire, but it was fun while it lasted.
The 400-Hour Workweek
400-Hour Workweek is a parody of Tim Ferriss. I thought it would be funny to blame his famous book for the economy crashing. I am pretty sure the domain name expired, but there’s the design.
Llyn Foulkes’s Lost Frontier
Llyn Foulkes is a fine artist and musician in Los Angeles. He is the subject of a documentary by Tamar Halpern and Chris Quilty. I put this very simple site together for them to sell DVDs to institutions.
Man With Press
Man With Press is a one-page site for a local screen printer in Nashville, TN.
Accutech Restoration & Remodeling
Sometimes I’m all about building custom WordPress sites for small businesses from the Southeastern U.S. I tend to turn away corporate accounts, but the occasional family business sucks me in, much like a diesel truck-mounted Hydro-X Extreme Extractor™ would if I were several hundred gallons of sewage. Thanks, Accutech!
Donna Kanter Company
Donna Kanter Company wanted me to build a website that featured their TV programs and documentary films. I assisted with editing all of her trailers and embedding them as YouTube videos. I built the site out of CSS / XHTML. This site seems to be in a state of transition at the moment. I haven’t spoken to Donna in ages.
Write Strong Consulting
Write Strong Consulting is a website for a writing consulting business in Los Angeles. The goal of the site is to help students prepare their Personal Statements. I was provided with a Word Document containing the text for this site and some color preferences… this is what I came up with. I built it out of CSS / XHTML.
Rachel Beth Levin
Rachel Beth Levin is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. She wanted a site that captured her personal vibe (style, textures, colors) but would allow her to easily edit content and post blogs. I designed this custom WordPress-powered site for her to store and organize all of her articles from a simple web interface.
Tangible Entertainment
This site has gone through various incarnations over the years. It is the home of Brendan Davis and Blue Nelson, a film production team in Los Angeles. I designed the “geoteric” Tangible logo back in late 2006, and have also handled the bulk of Tangible’s collateral material since then. This site seems to be in a state of transition at the moment.
Eman Laerton
Pastor Eman Laerton of “You Have Bad Taste In Music” hired me to help publish Phase Two: Church Across America. The site contains several fun Flash elements and sound effects to highlight the topic of Biblical Scholarship. During the creation of the site, I helped him with audio recording & editing, logo design, and photo editing. The best part was getting to be a cameraman for one of his live street sermons.
Ezzy Fish
Another site for Tamar Halpern. One of her recent films, Ezzy Fish, needed a website to show off several video clips, script selections, and related photos in the style of a Look Book. I spent a lot of time in Photoshop enhancing the visual depth of various elements, adding paper textures and photo-album tabs to the photos. The site is basic CSS, php, and Flash Navigation. I recently did a reworking of what was once her 100% Flash site, Tamaroland Pictures. I will be converting it over to pure CSS soon.
Christopher Schlegel
It was time for Truth Against The World to be powered by a Content Management System, so I designed this custom CSS / WordPress Template for him. The artwork at the top is a tribute to Atlas Shrugged, one of Christopher’s favorite Ayn Rand books.
Black Ink Item
This micro-site was designed as a FlashPressKit. Black Ink Item was looking for a slick website to show off their portfolio of screenprints. This site is entirely Flash, which is something I rarely do. Chris recently changed his company name to Man With Press, so I replaced this original design with a stripped down, simple one-page site.