Portfolio of Graphic Design and Webdesign Projects
Here you'll find a collection of projects we feel strongly represent our design and development capabilities, the craftsmanship of the work we do, and the style with which we execute it.
Every project has it's own design parameters and problems, and we adapt to these characteristics with a dexterity you'll appreciate.
Quality stuff. You can tell by the weight.
Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center is located in Abiquiu, New Mexico, home to Georgia O'Keeffe. Thousands of people visit every year to attend various conferences, retreats, and many different types of educational courses that range from visual art, performing art, and writing, to spirituality, theology, paleontology, archaeology, and all sorts of ology things. One can find anywhere from 250 to 350 upcoming courses at any time.
The website was originally built on an outdated CMS, and needed to be brought completely up-to-date, in a very short period of time. There wasn't any time for a re-design of the look and feel, but Edifice Creative updated the original design, built the template, created solutions for the course reservation and payment system, the credit card donation system, a calendar, a catalog request form, and an eCommerce solution for the Trading Post. Later on, I also created a photo gallery with a few hundred images, and a solution for users to enter an annual calendar photo contest, as well as a secure way to process multiple file uploads and entry payments.
Alamosa is a city located in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, and is home to the Great Sand Dunes National Park, the Rio Grande Scenic Railroad, Zapata Falls, and many other wonderful natural and man-made attractions. The Alamosa Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Alamosa County Economic Development Corporation, and the Alamosa Chamber of Commerce, all share the URL www.alamosa.org, but have many different needs on the different sections of their website.
The Creative Director at Alamosa CVB already had a comprehensive design put together as a start point. Edifice Creative was hired to perform a bit of fine-tuning on the design, and to build the custom template, create a solution to handle member management and integrate it with Google Maps, as well as some other features like coupons, calendars, weather reporting, and newsletter signup forms. There is also a mobile version of the site.
Echo Mountain is Colorado's only privately owned ski area, which enables the mountain to do all sorts of cool stuff that other resorts can't. They have a pretty unique brand, and I was encouraged to come up with a fairly progressive design that reflected their attitude.
I designed the original presentation layer concept, as well as executed the development and CMS installation, for Internet Honey.
Barnett Bicycle Institute is probably the world's best school to study and certify for becoming a bicyle mechanic. It also happens to be located in one of the top US cities for cycle training and mountain biking. REI sends all of their mechanics here for training. They also make specialty tools for the industry, and sell them trough their web store.
Edifice Creative did the redesign and build, including the ecommerce section. There are some pretty functional forms that calculate total class prices on the enrollment form, and then allow you to print the data as a PDF to ease the enrollment process for the students and staff at BBI.
The school and work areas have an incredibly clean, organized, and almost surgical feel to them. One of the challenges to building and designing the website was to convey the level of professionalism and seriousness that the BBI takes in their work.
The website for Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments was already designed and built on an ancient version of Joomla! CMS when I began working on the project. My challenges were to: subtly update the design so as not to require board review; migrate the design and an large amount of content to an updated CMS; port the document repository over to the new database structure; optimize the information architecture; and review SEO.
My great friend, Daniel Werder of Los Angeles, is a tattoo artist working under the psuedonym Boar Tooth Tattoo. He is tremendously talented, and I've been lucky to grow up with him and see firsthand his evolution and growth as an artist.
Since he is a talented creative himself, it was delightful to collaborate together in an effort to come up with a design that we could both be proud of. Daniel has studied the elements of Traditional Japanese Tattoo, and this style has become his specialty. As a result, there was a need to draw inspiration from some subtle, but meaningful, design elements of this genre.
thedrearlight.com is my (Garrett Dawson) portfolio site. It showcases the more artful web designs I've created, usually personal projects that I take up simply to explore web design. If nothing else, it's a sandbox where I explore all the beautiful things I can do with Wordpress.
Sunlight Mountain is a ski resort located just outside of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. They also operate a ski and bike shop in town, and sell a lot of products year-round. The project was through Internet Honey, and included updating the presentation layer, and rebuilding the webiste on a new CMS. Garrett and Jason rebuilt the template, installed and configured the CMS, migrated over all of the content, and built the store using Virtuemart eCommerce solution.
The icoloradosprings project is selflessly produced, managed and funded by some anonymous individuals who are passionate about the city of Colorado Springs. Edifice Creative was hired to design and build a website, based entirely off of an existing postcard design. The challence was to create a clean and progressive design, in order to reflect the progressive and artistic nature of the project. I think the Flash logo is a clever accent to the design. It's a blog based site, that incorporates a simple rating/voting feature, along with a category tagging and search feature.
Windsong Living is a senior living facility for seniors who are mostly self sufficient. The project required communicating the individualistic approach that Windsong takes when providing for their residents. Edifice Creative put together a new website design, and built it on a CMS that is easy for the management to administer. We also worked with photographer Jeff Cloutier to document photos of some of the staff, residents, events, and apartments, for use on the website and in the brochure. The website was built and optimized to rank high in a very competitive industry, and is currently performing well from an SEO viewpoint.
Nik Arnoldi is an American artist living abroad. He has an incredible amount of work to showcase, and needs a way to reach people all over the world, with his art. I also happen to have a special interest in helping fine artists. Edifice Creative designed and built a website based on Nik Arnoldi's particular vision. The site is built on a CMS, and is very easily updated from wherever in the world Nik happens to be creating art.
ClubRSX is a Colorado based company that has earned a national presence by becoming the industry leaders in everything related to a vehicle made by Honda Motor Company; the Acura RSX. Their two main offerings are: an incredible forum community that allows fans of the RSX to share their knowledge, and become resources for eachother; and an extensive eCommerce store that offers a selection of just about every part and accessory available for the RSX.
Edifice Creative was hired to update the presentation layer, in a way that didn't completely abandon the exisiting mood, didn't betray the expectations of the existing and loyal user base, and was able to appear progressive in an ever-evolving industry. The new design has been successful in presenting the company as a thought-leader in the import aftermarket industry, with very little backlash from the often critical user base. Almost all of the users (145,388 at last count) who commented on the design had positive things to write.
Monica Vanconant is a recent BFA graduate from UCCS, in Colorado Springs. She specializes in photography, and published a book of black and white self portraits. She needed a website that she could use to showcase her collection of fine art and photographs, so she hired me to design and build an artist portfolio site for her. She is able to make updates quite easily, and keep her website current.
Michael Sanderson is a talented, young, and fresh illustrator, splitting his time between New York and Colorado. He has his own unique vision for his personal breanding, and had already designed a horizontally scrolling website layout when he approached me for the build and CMS install. The image gallery is easily updated using Slideshow Pro.
A labor of love, killtheliterate.com is an explanation of of how art can be propagated through an equalized medium. The premise is that poetry does not need to be shuffled through the high dollar university presses in order to claim poetic right.
The design has been through several iterations, and will go through several more. Each design attempts to improve the flow of eye movement across the page, with complete emphasis on the words and photos.
Oh - I love minimalism, and what better application of it than a design where nothing is more important than the content. This site is a showcase for Colorado Springs artist Molly Harris. It's built using a very interesting CMS called Indexhibit. I wanted to see what it could do, and illuminatedattic.thedrearlight.com was the perfect opportunity.
The website for Glenwood Whitewater Events was originally built for the U.S.Freestyle Kayaking Team Trials event. The site is a microsite for the City of Glenwood Springs Resort Chamber Association, and its purpose was to serve as a sort of PR outlet for the event, and to help facilitate lodging sales for the city. The design was already put together when Edifice Creative was approached to build the template, and install the CMS.
I originally helped build the website for Four Corners Rafting when I was working with Nuleaf Media years ago. More recently, Garrett was hired to rebuild the site on a CMS, so the client could more easily make updates on their own. The original design by Nuleaf was retained in the migration.
I originally helped build the site for Echo Canyon River Expeditions, while working for Nuleaf Media several years ago. More recently, the site needed to be migrated to a CMS, in order to make updates easier, and to expand the website's funtionality and capabilities. The origianal design that Nuleaf did is still relevant, so it was retained when Garrett and Jason did the migration and template build.
The website for Forest Hills Investments was built by Jason to settle a lease debt, when he had to close down his art gallery. The landlord was nice enough to let us out of the lease, but there was a catch: Jason had to do mow his lawn for a year, and design and build him a website for his real estate company. The website turned out much better than the lawn, and Jason later went on to build another site for the landlord, called Chipita Ranch (this time to repay a debt for severe damage to the lawn).
