Brown Brick

Live and Kicking

olliemcvey — Wed, 20 May 2009 02:48:00 +0000

Brownbrick is at last online and ready to go…check it out…www.brownbrick.co.uk

Latest freelance work – Guernsey Image Library

olliemcvey — Wed, 20 May 2009 02:25:21 +0000

Another piece of freelance work i’ve been working on this time for the Guernsey Image Library. This one i’ve been working on for quite a while and this is the latest version

Business Cards Arrived Today!

olliemcvey — Wed, 20 May 2009 02:21:03 +0000

So my business cards arrived today from Moo. Got to say i am very happy with them although they are not exactly perfect. They are a little darker than i though they would be and the contact details on the back are a little too close to the edge but both those problems are faults in the design on my part. Anyways here’s a little picture of them.

OSA Recruitment – More Freelance Work

olliemcvey — Wed, 20 May 2009 01:51:50 +0000

Here’s another piece of freelance work i have recently completed doing. It is a redesign for OSA who are one of Guernsey’s leading recruitment agencies. Large version of this design is available on the brownbrick website.

Site Production

olliemcvey — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:59:35 +0000

Below is a number of videos which demonstrate how i built each page of the Brown Brick site using Dreamweaver and using CSS, HTML and Javascript languages.

Brownbrick Site Production – CSS Stylesheet Part 1

Brownbrick Site Production – CSS Stylesheet Part 2

Brownbrick Site Production – HTML Home Page

Brownbrick Site Production – HTML Portfolio Page

Site Design

olliemcvey — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:50:39 +0000

For my portfolio site i want to encorporate a number of factors. Firstly i want to produce something that is clean and simple but a design that promotes me as a designer. I want to design something that doesn’t just showcase my work but also showcases me, my personality and what i can do. Like all my work the design is done in Photoshop and aims to encorporate as many of the principles of a good portfolio site, discussed in an earlier post, as possible. I also want to encorporate the branding of Brown Brick that i have come up with and use big images to showcase my work.

Here is a video of the design work i did in Photoshop. Instead of hours of me working on the design i have put together this video that highlights key areas of the design and how i achieved these in Photoshop.

Below is the final design artwork for the brown brick site

The homepage design for brownbrick

The portfolio design for brownbrick

Portfolio Site Research

olliemcvey — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:23:37 +0000

“A personal portfolio website is all about promoting you. You are a brand, and your name is a brand name. No one is going to know about your brand unless you get it out there; and if you’re a Web designer, developer, writer, gamer or any other type of creative, then it’s essential that you have a good portfolio website.” 10 Steps to the Perfect Portfolio Site, Smashing Magazine

This post showcases some of the research i carried out for this part of the project

The main resource for my research was Best Web Gallery which is an online gallery of the best websites across the web. I used this resource to not only research portfolio sites but to also gain inspiration for the design of my own. This is what Best Web Gallery is so good for…providing inspiration and ideas to designers and creatives. Here are some of my favorites that i came across:

Incognito

Couch Creative

Nine Lion Design

Elysium Burn

Colourpixel

Things that are Brown

Another valuable asset that i found while researching Portfolio Sites was an article on Smashing Magazine titled “10 Steps To The Perfect Portfolio Website” that covers and discusses, with examples, 10 areas and aspects that a portfolio site should contain. I aim to use as many areas of possible in my design. Here’s the link:

10 Steps To The Perfect Portfolio Website

Grammar School – Yet more freelance work

olliemcvey — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:40:58 +0000

Busy with yet more freelance design work. Here’s a design i put together for the Guernsey Grammar School…they’re current site needed a serious facelift…again a larger size image of the design will be available on the Brown Brick portfolio site once it goes live…

Domain Name and Holding Page

olliemcvey — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:36:03 +0000

I’ve signed up for hosting with Streamline.net on a fast hosting package and also received the domain “www.brownbrick.co.uk” for free so that was a bonus. Just going to get a quick holding page up until the final site is done…here’s a design i’m going to work with…

Participay Design – More Freelance Work

olliemcvey — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:17:32 +0000

Another piece of design work i have just done on freelance. A company called Participay. They had no real previous branding and so i designed the site and logo. A larger image of the design will be available to see on the brown brick portfolio once it goes live.