Scanning through Cameron Moll’s book Mobile Web Design, and he points out the difference between Art and Design:
…what separates design from art is that design ‘is meant to be functional’.
I couldn’t agree more. The graphical, visual look of a Web site, in order to succeed, must serve to make the site useful.
Pemaquid Communications has scored three nominations for techMaine’s annual Best of the Web Awards. Pemaquid tied for the most nominations of any Maine Web design studio. The nominees are…
The site features exquisite stationery for any occasion, along with fine art prints, calendars and something racy called Go-Go Wrap! The company manages over 200 product listings in more than a dozen categories, along with order tracking and fulfillment, through a custom version of Pemaquid’s Commerce Manager.
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This site draws out the visually appealing nature of this part of the Maine Coast. For many Internet searchers, the site is a tourist gateway to the region and it was very important to the Chamber that the site, through its look and feel, compare favorably to similar sites for more well-known Downeast destinations.
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The Big Easy is Portland, Maine’s premier night spot. The club wanted a new Web site that rocks as loud as they do. The Content Manager allows easy-self-publishing of upcoming events as well as multiple Photo Galleries of local bands in action on its stage. The design really makes you want to be there!
Best of the Web award winners will be announced at techMaine’s Gala, taking place May 20th @ the Eastland Park Hotel Ballroom.
Actually, it’s would be more than a little unfair to get all the credit for the Big Easy site. The absolutely amazing graphic design is the work of Walt Craven. Walt’s also the lead singer/guitarist in Lost on Liftoff, a local band that often plays at The Big Easy. Walt has done graphic design work for the club for some time.
Jennifer Ecker, Pemaquid Web Designer extraordinaire, rocked out the world-class HTML and CSS in her spare time (of which she has very little).
A simply stunning work of art!
Yours truly set up the Web hosting, plugged in the Pemaquid Content Manager, gave a little architectural guidance to Walt & Jen and showed club co-owner Ken Bell how to use said Content Manager to self-publish updates to the Calendar and Gallery.
Last weekend marked a milestone for those of us involved in the online world here in Maine. Joe Michaud, who had led MaineToday.com for the last dozen years, stepped down at the end of April, and many MaineToday “alumni” were on hand at Ri Ra last Friday to wish Joe well (Ellen Kanner, an old co-worker who now is a Web designer at Dartmouth, even came down from Hanover).
Folks who spent time working under Joe’s leadership have gone on to form successful, influential Web businesses in the area: Franklin McMahon (former MaineToday.com Creative Services Manager) now has a well-known photography and podcasting company; Justin Davis now heads Portland Web Works, a Pemaquid competitor whose Clients include the Maine Office of Tourism; and (because I like to enumerate things like this in groups of three) I’ll throw myself in there as well.
Way back in the mid ’90’s, when we barely knew what a “browser” was, Joe and a small team at the Portland Press Herald created a skunkworks to try to figure out this “Internet thing”. What developed was a series of Web sites that coalesced to form MaineToday.com. Under Joe’s leadership, MaineToday won many awards, often against larger competitors, and became known as a standard-setting creative force in the mostly bland world of online newspaper publishing.
We were always testing boundaries. I remember covering the 2000 election from the studios of our television partner, WMTW. My job was to post up-to-the-minute blurbs to the MaineToday site about the local, regional and national returns coming in that night. It was pretty radical for a newspaper to have someone publishing on the spot with very little editorial oversight. We didn’t call it blogging back then, but that’s exactly what we were doing.
Now Joe is hanging out a shingle as a consultant to said newspaper industry - and they really need to hear from someone like him. Newspaper ad revenue continues to erode, and those dollars are not migrating to publishers’ digital facsimiles of the printed word. Newspapers’ core revenue centers have continued to lose out to online competitors like Craig’s List (want ads), Cars.com (automotive ads) and Zillow (real estate ads).
My take is that it won’t be long before the creative destruction precipitated by the Internet drives newspapers to the same fate as encyclopedia salesmen. However, if there’s anyone who can help smart publishers figure out how to best take advantage of their remaining assets - strong brands, relatively large audiences and strong advertiser relationships - it’s Joe Michaud.
Pemaquid Communications recently designed and relaunched a Web site for annie|catherine, a dynamic duo that produces designer stationery and related accesories from their studio in the Dana Warp Mill in Westbrook, Maine.
Their products include cards for most important occasions - birthdays, holidays, thank yous and other note cards - as well as calendars, picture frames, wrapping paper and prints of the amazing and colorful paintings of Catherine Breer (she’s the “catherine”).
Working with Catherine and her partner, Annie Darling - graphic artists every bit as talented as our own design team - made for an interesting project. Our challenge was to translate the very clear vision they had for the look of the site into something that would be pixel perfect across all browsers.
That’s why making sure the xHTML and CSS was valid was so important. That’s also why we used a “sIFR” (Flash image replacement) javascript to render the page titles in the specific font requested by the Client.
A custom version of our Pemaquid Commerce content management system for e-commerce allows annie|catherine to easily update product images, prices and descriptions, review and process orders and update other site content including Store Locations, Reps, News and Events. They can also create custom promotional pages.
Finally, we developed an easy-to-use e-newsletter manager that allows a|c to send email promotions at will using a simple yet elegant template Pemaquid designed for them.
If you’re looking for great looking designer stationery or fun holiday cards in advance of the holiday season (Gosh! Is it that time of year already?), you definitely ought to surf on over and have a look.
annie|catherine is graciously offering readers of this blog a 20% discount if they enter the promotional code “adcb” at checkout (good through October 31).
If you have OS X, you might want to check out Jeffrey Zeldman’s dashboard. I’ve swiped the screen shot (below); he’s got links to some of the widgets you see.
Fortified with wholesome nuggets of Web-ified information and 100% of the Recommended Daily Allowance of 10 essential Web Standards and Best Practices for Web Design in Maine.
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