HTML5 Freelance Work
Whilst recently working for a digital media agency, I was responsible for building bespoke HTML5 video players for Marks & Spencer, British Airways and Thomas Pink, as well as a mathematically complex HTML5 website showcasing the company’s respectable portfolio. Extensive use of cross browser HTML5 video, JavaScript & jQuery, CSS3 animation were used to create object driven applications populated by cross-domain XML feeds and also contained comprehensive custom-built analytic functionality.
Life Ionizers
Life Ionizers have asked me to work on various websites over the past few years, working on various sites using different CMS technologies such as; WordPress, Magento and Joomla.
For this particular design, I was asked to create a landing page for a new product. The main feature being the special discounted price that the item was on offer for.
Victor Dinaire
Victor Dinaire asked me to produce a single page launch pad site. The site had to look the part and have a video that played as soon as the page loaded. All this required was a few hours in Photoshop, some hand coded CSS & HTML and the integration of the JQuery powered Flowplayer.
Randolph Quan
Creating a wedding photography site is all about the images. We agreed on using JQuery to create a custom Javascript slideshow on the homepage. The website was built with a few unique features in mind. Firstly, it interacted with the SmugMug API to allow clients to access a passworded area to view their photo set. The site was also merged with a WordPress Blog, to improve SEO performance. Finally in the galleries, we continued the Javascript slideshow, but with further JQuery enhancements to provide an animated pop-up menu which controls playback of the slideshow.
IPM
As well as producing mini-sites for the Burger King and Suzuki branches of their company, I single handedly saw through the redesign and build of their new corporate website.
The brief was to create something that was professional, yet personal. The site didn’t need to attract any new business, it’s sole purpose was to strengthen bonds with existing clients. We came up with the idea of a Story based site, where members of staff could personally write content to keep clients up to date with their projects and the staff that work at ipm.
The entire site was built using hand coded HTML, PHP and MYSQL. Lightbox (Slimbox variant) was used to present the images on the story pages, and extensive use of @font-face was used to create cross browser compatible CSS3 fonts.
Top Two Fifty
As an avid film fan, I wanted to find a way to improve on the already existing IMDB Top 250 movies list. There is NO WAY that Shawshank Redemption would be anywhere in my list of top films, let alone number one! I decided to build a site in PHP and MYSQL that would take any list of films on the web, fetch the data and then parse it into a useable list. For this site, I used my extensive knowledge of Object Oriented Programming to create PHP classes that could be reused efficiently, no matter what format the original data was in.
On top of this, I decided to allow updating of your list via the Drag & Drop functionality of Script.aculo.us and AJAX calls using the Prototype Framework.
Tapping Course
For this project I was required to provide Photoshop documents which could be easily cut up and converted into CSS for a site running on Drupal. The site was used to display a set of videos so I decided to use the JW Flash video player. It had to be friendly, relaxing and easy on the eyes for extended periods of time.
Didaskalia Films
This website was built for a film company based in Montreal to showcase their work and to keep people up to date with their projects. It was a pretty simple site, built in PHP, MYSQL, DHTML and using Javascript to control the showing and hiding of elements on the site to keep it clean and uncluttered.
Cereal Science
Cereal Science was a lot of fun to make. It’s basically a review site, for cereal, but with a difference. My friend and I are avid cereal lovers, so I decided to create a site that conveyed our passion for breakfast and my love of programming.
I designed the site in Photoshop and then hand coded it using HTML, CSS, PHP and MYSQL. I always try to be very careful when coding, so that my site’s XHTML and CSS validate to the W3C specifications.
As well as embedding YouTube clips using an HTML5 compatible player, I incorporated a Lightbox image viewer, customised Amazon Affiliate product displays, a Flash MP3 player, an automatic Newsletter subscription feature, Social Bookmark buttons and a dynamically generated image using the GD Image Library to render polygons out of the stored data.
Fourthwish
This was an ultra-simple site that I built for an artist friend. He wanted something that conveyed his art, so I suggested that we break the mould of regular web sites and just have him draw the whole site out on the back of an old envelope.
Events Website
This was a personal project that never made it off the ground, but I was so proud of the effort that went in to all the planning and design, that I decided to post it here regardless. I worked with a friend who I studied Computer Science at University with and I remember feeling really excited about all the new possibilities with CSS and AJAX. We planned the entire concept of an Events based website; went through all the technical requirements; produced documents outlining the User journey throughout the site. The only thing that let us down was that we had jobs to do and neither of us had time to spare to work any further on this.
So, aside from a sack full of Photoshop designs, an unused company certificate and a stack of crumpled documentation; this is all that is left of what was essentially… a damn good idea.
Faceparty
Faceparty was the site that I worked on beginning in 2000 to my departure from the company in 2004. A friend and I put our sweat and tears into this site and turned it into one of the biggest sites in the UK, gaining over 3 million members in just a couple of years. With a site that big, we constantly outgrew hosting companies and had to continuously find both hardware and software solutions to cope with the high demand. The site was coded in HTML & ASP, and the database ran on Microsoft SQL Server. We provided custom Java based chat software for our users, a live chat window that allowed live communication between users, up to date user activity tracking and served millions of images to page hungry users. No wonder our servers were pushed to the limit. This was over 10 years ago too…!
As well as working 16 hours a day running the website, I also managed the office IT department, installing Windows Servers, Firewalls and Phone Systems.
We hosted huge parties for over 3,000 people with Miss Dynamite, Pete Tong and a custom built Aerial show, an indoor rainforest with running waterfall, Aphex Twin playing in a Cave and Boy George DJing to a sea of people on a giant orange carpet. There’s much more to the story here, but suffice to say during that time I acquired an immense skill set ranging from Print Design to Programmer, and Customer Service to Event Management.
