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Retail — especially musical instrument retail — is known for trying to out scream the competition, but when your product is as gorgeous as a well-built guitar, perhaps the best a website can do is get out of the way.  The counterbalance is that it’s very hard to establish a brand with a pallet of subtle grays.  That’s where tasteful use of color allows the right elements to pop, while never getting in a shouting match.

2010

Sometimes an established design just works and has the underlying structure solidly in place.  Then all that’s needed to launch a new venture is a quick theme to give you access to all WordPress‘ features without making your user feel as though they’re jumping to a completely new system.  The existing site’s use of Yahoo’s YUI CSS can make the transition of the HTML to a new system completely painless with minimal original CSS.

2010

Some designs look great in Photoshop, but when the entire site is just one big image, it isn’t the most efficient use of HTML, to say nothing of standards compliance.  Little compromises and creative use of CSS must be employed so that the spirit of the design is intact.  An elegant fade here and a font replacement there are touches that can make the site beautiful from the outside, right down to the code.

2010

A promo site for a contest needs to tie into the core product’s site design and brand,  while standing out as a unique and exciting event.  Sometimes a lead image can accomplish this by communicating the core concepts of the contest while not actually presenting the product or contest format.

Polite Javascript gives above the fold calls to action without breaking the site for users who have scripting turned off.

2009

The one page website always wants to grow beyond a single page.  Location details, contact or signup forms, and other necessarily information can clutter the impact of a single, promotion focused page.  Javascript can help hide a quick webform or other key information until the user is ready for it, while keeping the site crisp and refined.

2009

Your choice of content management system can often come down a decision between flexibility and ease of use.  By limiting options, WordPress brings content management right down to the level that anyone can do it; Drupal provides a more robust system with a much higher learning curve.  But more and more WordPress plugins are being developed to help bridge that gap, and among the best is Role Scoper.

Some custom theme work and Role Scoper helped divy up Bellini’s store pages between location employees and regional managers.

2009

Stock photos can be limiting and unnatural, but they can also liberate a site design from the confines of perfect gradients and the two dimensional layout required by most sites.  An organic image of the actual client’s actual product is preferable, but on the other hand…who would’ve imagined there could be an attractive photo of a router?

2009

One huge advantage with using Drupal is the fluidness and flexibility of “blocks.”  Blocks are sometime dynamic pieces of content outside of the primary information being displayed on a particular page.  The ability to place this content in unique locations on specific pages is a valuable resource in skilled hands.