In honor of Valentine’s Day’s impending arrival, I’ve compiled some images that I found inspiring in a sweet, adorable, lovey-dovey sort of way. We’re working on incorporating more posts which are image-based and simply put – inspiring to us, so you can expect more content like this from Fresh in the upcoming weeks!
Three years ago I began working on websites as a young account coordinator/project manager. I did not understand what CMS (that’s Content Management System for you kids at home) stood for or let alone what the difference was between open source and proprietary software. But, that didn’t matter because clients wanted a way to update their content that didn’t involve them taking classes at community college. Back in those days eROI had three CMS options to offer:
Marqui – A hosted proprietary system, which wasn’t terrible, but definitely was not worth the money and developing for it seemed to be a pain. I averaged 10 calls a month from two sites that had been live for years.
C
MS/MS – An open source solution that served the purpose of a basic CMS with the best price around (FREE!). The only problem was that it was difficult to use from an Admin perspective, and was not as flexible for developers to be a truly powerful CMS.
Contribute – A trimmed down version of Dreamweaver by Adobe sold on Amazon and came in a real box. I won’t go into those forgotten nightmares too deeply, but let’s just say the software in the box had about as much value as an old AOL CD. The amount of time wasted trying to get this software to function as it was billed to could have been used to go to Mars by now.
Having had clients on all of these systems made me completely hate CMS systems. (more…)
In honor of WordPress week, I’ve collected an assortment of sites that are tickling my fancy in some way or another and oh yeah, they all use WordPress. Hopefully you will find a couple that you haven’t had the pleasure of checking out before.
This is a blog about all of the intricacies of typography ranging from the basics to super technical jargon-filled goodness. The design is a beautifully simple execution of what they preach.
I just found out about this site today, and I really dig the idea! Humble Pied features interviews with creatives (check out the latest post which features Aaron Draplin) over iChat. The advice they share is geared towards recent graduates and folks still finding their way in the industry.
The presentation is super clean and the idea is simple : “One inspiring creative sharing one piece of advice, all over iChat.” Go check it out for yourself!
Leading up to the holidays last year I was keeping an eye on what West Elm was doing with their email designs. They were aggressively marketing to me and I was impressed with all of the emails I received! The clean design and photography is really first class and they used a number of devices to keep them interesting day-to-day.
West elm has a slew of what look to be templates that are super clean in their design. They rely on the great product photography for the most part and always have a grid as the foundation. There is care taken with the typography and this helps the designs sing. The photography is very high quality with beautiful staging.
You may have checked out the mobile site we launched in conjunction with touch.wacom.com after we mentioned it in our post, “Menagerie of Mobile Madness.” We’re really proud of that little beauty, and excited to see its getting some recognition out there in the interwebz. Big thanks to Mobile Awesomeness for featuring it in their gallery (And if you haven’t checked them out yet, go do it!)
he latest from Jessica Hische, Daily Drop Cap is a service to bloggers everywhere. Every day she is creating a new decorative drop cap for the public to use. She has created some beauties thus far, and I’m sure many more to come. She includes html to copy into your blog with each letter she posts. Thank you Jessica!
(images: Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische. Found Via Apartment Therapy)
If you didn’t get a chance to check out Zach Johnsen’s Acid In The Ice Cream show, which was held at Backspace last December, he’s at it again but this time in his own studio!
Date:
October 24th, 09′
Time:
6pm-11pm
Where:
North Coast Seed Building
2127 N. Albina Ave.
Portland, OR 97227
I’ll let the visual aids do the rest…
He will also be celebrating the launch of his two new websites www.zenvironments.com & zachjohnsen.com so make sure to check it out!
To start, I must say that the people I am about to write about are very close friends and loved ones, and this may give me a biased journalistic angle. I am confident, however, that you will agree with me that they are noteworthy creative people, doing progressive and cool things. I hope that this insight into their world inspires readers to subscribe to their blog, buy some of their wares, attend their event, go make something themselves, or better yet, all of the above. I give you How We Develop and Content 09.
How We Develop is a collective of creatives based in Portland centered around their passion for fashion, Art, Design and creative exploration as a whole. Clothing designer and seamstress Gretchen Jones, Jewelry designer Anna Korte, and graphic designer and illustrator Ada Mayer met through mutual friends, and began working together immediately in 2008. Gretchen and Anna both enlisted Ada’s help with their respective identities, marketing efforts and web presence, and the alignment of their tastes and creative aspirations led to the birth of their blog, How We Develop in the summer of 2009.
Just getting started on a mobile website project? (Have you read our post “Five Tips for Mobile Site Success” yet?) Here are some of our favorite inspirations and resources from around the web gathered just for you!
Mobile Awesomeness: An all-around awesome mobile gallery. It is really handy for design inspiration because they include screenshots of the different sites, so you can quickly peruse without opening it in your iPhone or an emulator. Be sure to check out the mobile web resources section they’ve put together, too.
© 2010 eROI, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 505 NW Couch, Suite 300, Portland, OR 97209
