RollingTurtle » Design

Introduction

I have had the good fortune to participate in numerous rewarding web programming and design projects for educational institutions, businesses, and non-profits. Following is a sampling of that work.

Please note that some of these projects (further down the list) are a few years old, and while they were created with the utmost care, they were also created in an era before web standards such as XHTML and CSS became widely supported. Therefore, although they represent the highest quality work possible at the time, they no longer reflect the best practices that I use in my design work today.

Original Design Work


PASS » www.brown.edu/pass: A full featured PHP/MySQL workshop scheduling and registration system with a snappy front end. Tracks registrtaion, attendance and student evaluations, sends reminder e-mails, and generally automates the PASS program. Big thank-yous go out to Andy Rah '04 for contributing Oscillo (the boxy blue guy in the corner), and Kai Iamsumang '06 for designing the new PASS logo and assisting with back-end development.
The Brown CIS Org Chart » www.brown.edu/cis/org-charts/: One day, I was asked to update the CIS organizational chart with some new job titles, only to discover that the org chart consisted of several PNG files which had to be edited by hand every time a change was made. I decided this was the perfect opportunity to try coding my first PHP/MySQL app from scratch. I happen to think the result looks pretty good, but more importantly, the admin interface allows our HR people to update the chart without outside help, any time they like!
Finger Consulting » www.fingerconsulting.com: The web site for this dynamic business consulting company was completely redesigned from the ground up in 2003, courtesy of RollingTurtle. It is now 100% valid XHTML and CSS, and it looks great too! Notice the "quick index" pull-downs on the longer pages that make navigating the blocks of content a snap. Notice also that the layout is quite "liquid" -- the browser window can be expanded and contracted a great deal and the content will "flow" accordingly, without any of it being obscured.
Women Leaders of the World » www.brandeis.edu/~dwilliam/: My first major web design effort, for the now disbanded Center for Instructional Multimedia Technology (CIMTech) at Brandeis University. As you can see from the front page, I immediately became quite enamored of combining animated gifs with javascript rollovers. I spent many, many hours perfecting a technique that I later discovered no one in their right mind uses because it takes a huge amount of effort and bandwidth (nowadays, one could more reasonably achieve a similar effect using Macromedia's Flash plug-in). As a consolation, I believe it is not immodest to say that these may be some of the smoothest animated gifs ever created by anyone, in large part because the competition is so thin (or just silly). Google for “best animated gifs” if you want to see what I mean.

Design Contributions


The International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life » www.brandeis.edu/ethics/: Whitney Cohen (no relation) did the graphic design for this one. I wrote the HTML and helped clean up the hideous, hideous file structure mess that had been left by the previous site maintainers. It was actually kind of fun. I like tidying up.
Brandeis University home page » www.brandeis.edu: I assisted in coding the Brandeis front page that was live from 2002-2004, based on a graphic design from Brandeis' resident designer. The design I worked on was replaced in early 2005 by the current one. Incidentally, I also made substantial graphical contributions to the Brandeis campus map. Click the “Interactive Version” link to see it.