Role: Design, Development, HTML, CSS, jQuery, Magento Shopping Cart Customization, Custom WordPress Blog Theme

Website design and development for natural pet food retail store owned by my wife and I. She runs the business and merchandising while I handle all the creative and marketing. My duties here include branding and logo design, web design and development, email marketing, traditional and online advertising, SEO and social media.

I created a custom WordPress theme for our company blog, where I regularly write articles and tips about natural pet care.

I’m currently working on an e-commerce site built on the Magento shopping cart software that we plan to launch this Fall.

visit website

Unleashed Pet Shop Homepage

Unleashed Pet Shop Contact Page

HTML email campaign designed & developed for FastModel Technologies, the leading basketball play diagramming software in the pro sports industry. This series of emails was designed to help the client broaden their reach into the high school sports teams market. The first email is a follow-up email to previous customers enticing them to forward the same promotion onto friends, other coaches and colleges. Also part of this project was a custom built landing page with address book import functionality.

First eMail sent to Customers who Previously Bought FastDraw

Second Email Forwarded to Friends of Customers who Previously Bought FastDraw

Design, HTML, CSS & jQuery

Design and front-end development for login page and video player for a weekly webinar on online marketing. The goal was to incorporate the new company branding and update the page with more functionality. A new collapsible video player for viewing previous episodes was added. As well as social sharing functionality and a link to subscribe via iTunes.

Chatter Marketing Login Page

Chatter Marketing Login Page w/ Video Player

Design

Design comp for branded social network website. This site brings together all of  the e-commerce retailer’s social networking efforts in an interactive community format with integrated online marketing and advertising campaigns.

Cookie's Kids Branded Social Network

Design, HTML, CSS, jQuery, Magento Shopping Cart Customization

I was responsible for the complete design and front-end development of wholesale manufacturer’s e-commerce website featuring over 500 items. The company previously had 2 separate websites,  a static html product catalog and a separate hosted shopping cart. I rebuilt the entire site on the Magento shopping cart platform to increase usability and in turn boost conversions by incorporating the 2 sites for a seamless user experience.

Michel Design Works Homepage

Michel Design Works Category Page

Detail of Mutli Level Category Navigation

At Gary Null & Associates I was assigned with the task of creating a “really sharp yet affordable” folder for their media kits. I went with a 1 color design on matte stock with a UV gloss varnish. The gloss varnish added a touch of class and the 2 color print job saved a lot in cost.

Media Kit Folder Front

Media Kit Folder Back

Designed a logo / brand identity for Unleashed Pet Shop and applied to to our business stationery, mailing envelopes, business cards for the store and stickers for shopping bags.

Unleashed Pet Shop Letterhead & Envelope

Unleashed Pet Shop Business Card & Stickers

I launched a new theme for my website today. I read a fantastic post recently on Think Vitamin called Cookie Cutter Websites, that really inspired me. It talks about how similar a lot of website’s look these days, but what resonated with me was the quote:

So, this is a mini challenge to designers out there (including me!) to take a look at their designs and make sure we get them to reflect the personality of the person, company or product.

Upon reading that I looked at my site and thought to myself “this is crap”. It looks nice but it doesn’t reflect my personality, there’s no real design theme and it looks a bit “cookie-cutter”. A day or 2 after that this “natural graphic design” concept popped into my head. So I decided to go with that theme and let the design take a natural progression and see what I came up with. I decided I wouldn’t look at anything else, especially other sites for inspiration, and just see what flows out.

I’m pretty pleased with the results. Sure, it has elements and techniques that may be similar to other sites out there. but I feel like it fits me much better. I’m a big fan of natural products, I eat organic whenever I can and I’m straight edge so the “chemical free” thing has a nice double meaning for me.

It’s also a bit of a parody. Everything from coffee to tires seems to be “all natural” these days. Even though I own an “all natural” pet supply shop with my wife, I wanted to poke fun at the trend a little on my site.

Now I just need to update the backlog of new work I’ve done recently.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the design, please leave a comment!

Here’s what I did on the 5th week of 2010…

Day 29

Walked around Manhattan taking pics yesterday. It was ridiculously cold outside so most of my street shots were rushed and came out looking that way. Anyway, I went to this great lighting store on 7th ave called Sunshine Lighting. Cool place, loved these paper lanterns.

Day 30

Wanted to try to capture Lindsay’s pregnant belly from her point of view.

Day 31

Testing out my new birthday present… Not this super nice car but the 50mm f/1.6 lens i used to shoot it.

Day 32

A yellow monkey. Spotted while driving through Westchester yesterday, Cross River I think. Been taking a lot of pictures of signs the last few days. Might make for an interesting photo set.

Day 33

Big fan of the clementines. Bigger fan of this 50mm lensthough… This thing makes everything look great!

Day 34

Day 35

A chandelier at my company’s booth at the Javits Center. I think I’m just going to leave the 50mm lens on forever…