Introduction
Code is poetry and a website is a work of art. But it takes a different sort of artist to produce a web page. Out go the flouncing poets of history and in steps the true craftsman of the information age: the Web Master, librarian of the world’s knowledge. (Otherwise known as a boring bespectacled spotty gimp.)
Services
I offer a bespoke hand-crafted web design service. Faithfully following your brief I will create a beautiful website that is fully search engine optimised (SEO), and fully validates when checked by the World Wide Web Consortium (a moral obligation that many designers ignore) ensuring it is fully standards compliant. I will code it by hand to ensure that there is no clunky extraneous code of the sort that Dreamweaver and programs of that ilk produce. Your website will be cross-browser tested, and will include a user-friendly back-end Content Management System.
Professional Portfolio
Below you will find info about the websites I have designed already, as well as links to them so you can judge my skills for yourself.
GetIn! PR
Design and development of a new website for the PR Company GetIn! PR. Clients include Fedde LeGrand and Martin Solveig. Get in!
Love 4 Culture
Design and development of a new blog for the Love 4 Culture collective.
Little Italie
Design and development of an E-Commerce shop for Little Italie. Full custom E-Commerce application using Magento.
Gluckman Smith Architecture
Tom Smith and Robrt Gluckman contacted me to design their website. They had a clear vision of how they wanted the site to look, and we worked closely together to acheive that vision. Behind the scenes is a customised version of Wordpress that allows them to publish new projects with relative ease. Each project has its own slideshow, and there is also a current news section. If you ever need a house built, I can’t recommend them enough!
MTV Cherry Girl
MTV’s Cherry Girl asked me to design her new blog. Cherry Girl has been picked up by MTV to be the face of their Climate Change Initiative. Through her videos and online activities she inspires people to embrace a more socially conscious outlook. The site is the online hub of Cherry Girl’s global digital activity, integrating her presence on Facebook, Twitter and numerous blogs and websites around the world. A highly personalised Facebook integration was achieved using CSS, and Cherry Girl’s voice is conveyed using a non-web font for the heading of each post. As Cherry Girl is a global sensation the site employs the JQuery Javascript Library to implement Google Translate in a beautiful and unobtrusive style. It is also used to display her videos from Vimeo. Cherry Girl blogs on the go, so the back-end CMS is configured to be highly user-friendly. She asked for a simple, graceful blog-style website and is extremely happy with the result.
TheScarlettMark
TheScarlettMark are the agency who created Cherry Girl (see above). Their website was created in a mad four day period after TheScarlettMark found out that Cherry Girl was going to be on the cover of Marketing Week.
My Wonderful Day
My Wonderful Day’s website uses Wordpress for the Contact Form and Gallery, as well as allowing my clients to update the website without having to look at any code.
Clothing 4 Culture
Inspired by the I Love NY t-shirt’s popularity, the guys at Clothing 4 Culture came up with a design for London. You’ll have to visit the website to check out their t-shirt, as words can’t describe it; have a look, you’ll understand. The site showcases their brilliant new design by displaying the t-shirt behind every page. There is an E-Commerce shop, an interactive map on the homepage, mailing list functionality, a Paparazzi photo gallery, and a focus on typography to achieve a personal feel throughout the site.
The New Theatre
The new New Theatre website replaces my earlier design (see below). It embraces the JQuery Javascript Library, using a combination of AJAX techniques, slow fades, a sharp black look and some slick typography to achieve the desired brief: professional but welcoming.
Near Far
Near Far is an ethical fashion house that works closely with tailors in Sierra Leone to produce beautiful print dresses, bags, and other items. The site employs Flash galleries, a Flash E-Commerce shop, and an AJAX interface in the history section.
The Good Wrap Company
E-Commerce site which elegantly displays the different wraps in seasonal collections. Featuring Flash galleries, a full E-Commerce store, and transparency to ground the site in the Somerset countryside.
Butterfly Knights
Butterfly Knights was the first site on which I collaborated with a graphic designer. Lee Rennie is the Creative Director of the Butterfly Knights and he and I worked very closely to achieve the magical blend of awe-inspiring design and flashy but accessible functionality that the website employs. Notable features are the media gallery, pulling its content straight from YouTube and Flickr, and the smooth AJAX-ified user experience. It was great fun working with Lee and we are currently plotting a lengthy and illustrious future partnership.
Loaded Portraits
Loaded Portraits employs a fully searchable Image Gallery with a watermark feature to stop people from stealing images, and fully integrated E-Commerce shopping cart functionality, allowing people to buy caricatures through the site. Dave Bailey, the client, asked in his initial e-mail whether I’d be able to work with two “dimwits who think they are Bill Gates if they manage to send an email!” Ease-of-use was therefore forefront in my mind! The site has a Content Management System behind it which enables Dave to login and easily upload new images, and edit the content of the site. The site was finished ten days before the deadline, and Loaded Portraits are very happy indeed with their new face on the web.
Early Work
The following sites were the sandpits in which I honed my web design skills to perf… hmm. But yes, these should be ignored, and are only included here because I’m a bit OCD and like to have everything in the right place.
G2G Network
The G2G Website is clean, professional, and slick. Feautures include a full integration of Paypal with a shopping cart system, Twitter updates, a Calendar, Flash banner and logo, custom-built registration form, blogging capability, user-friendly Content Management System, and much more. It was designed from scratch using Valid X(HTML), CSS, Javascript, AJAX, PHP and Flash and took two weeks from the moment it was commissioned until it was live. The G2G team are currently enjoying my support services for a year.
Hoodoo Grooves
Hoodoo’s website is a revolutionary Web 5.0 Ajax fuelled webgasm. Using the latest web technology, Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript and XML), it displays all its content on one page, calling the server for external content without refreshing. This enables the user to listen to streaming mixes whilst browsing the site, and also wipes out one of the major flaws of the internet: the loading bar and the spinning globe.
Jack Sawbridge Arhitecture
Jack wanted a clean website with a simple image gallery to display his Architecture portfolio. That’s what he got.
LA Discos
The Director of LA Discos approached me about designing a new website with a very precise brief. Each page was to be a different colour of the four-colour logo, with rounded corners. This site required a lot of image editing, as every single rounded corner is a different image.
New Theatre
The original design for newtheatre.org.uk. I re-designed it in August 2009 and it is now a much slicker, more professional feeling website.
Crave Presents
The Crave Presents website, replaced now by Hoodoo Grooves, was a bold experiment in web design. It attempted to be the Holy Grail of Web Layouts: fluid inner column, flanked by two fixed-width columns. And essentially it succeeded, bar one minor flaw when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. However, as designer I got too bogged down with the Holy Grail aspect of the design, and the aesthetic did not prove popular with a minority of the Crave crew. (Even though I thought – and still do think – that it’s earthy psychedelic look was pretty cool.) This was an early website in my journey though, and I have learnt my lesson.
Theatrical Theatrics Production
ttproductions.com was the website that launched my web design career. I inherited the site when I became Company Manager in 2005 and it is in its second incarnation since that date (the first attempt being properly shit!). It assumed its current design in the summer of 2006.
Rates
The standard cost for a website is £1000. If it takes longer than 40 hours to complete (very unlikely) I will charge the extra work at the rate of £25 per hour, or we can negotiate. If you desire E-Commerce functionality the price goes up, as it’s essentially building a shop. However, the world isn’t black and white so get in touch for a personal quote:
Please e-mail me at aliblackwell@gmail.com.
Testimonials:
from: Stephanie Hogg
to: aliblackwell@gmail.com
date: 14 September 2009 12:22
subject: RE: Invoice
Hi Ali,
Thanks for your amazing website! The comments I get from it are endless and everyone wants to know who put it together. Your patience with me fiddling around with it was great and I just love every detail of it. I will pass on your details to all who ask as I believe that your great to work with and put 100% energy into your work.
Thanks so much.
Lots of love Steph
http://nearfar.co.uk
from : Loaded Portraits, info@loadedportraits.co.uk
to: aliblackwell@gmail.com
date: 26 May 2009 17:45
subject: Website Design
Dear Ali,
I would like to thank you on behalf of myself and Dean for building what is essentially the perfect website for ourselves. It is exactly as we wanted it, easy to navigate, eye catching and incorporates all of the criteria we specified.
I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending your services to anybody who requires a top class website. On top of all this we both found you to be an extremely nice chap and would certainly like to stay in touch.
All the Best
–
David Bailey
Loaded Portraits
w: http://www.loadedportraits.co.uk
t: 0798 33 44 777
e: info@loadedportraits.co.uk
