Sarah Browne, a digital strategist and market researcher based in Carmel, California. She wanted me to create a WordPress blog for her with a charming retro feel that she could use as a place to profile what hot new products and trends live up to the hype, and which do not. The Guru of New is the result.

A small job was designing a placeholder page for a fantastic site that is coming in a few weeks named The Red Room. This site will be an online home for all of the world’s best writers—a place where they can post information directly to their readers and easily host their online presence. Writers including Salman Rushdie, Norman Mailer, Amy Tan, and Po Bronson are already committed to participating.

The folks over at Mommy Track’d hired me to design their bookstore portion of their redesigned site. This was an interesting challenge, as it involved going into their existing templates and integrating an Amazon store within their framework. (Without making it look like the user ever left their site.) The result (I hope you agree) is seamless.

I designed this site for New York-based Pilates instructor, Rebekah Rotstein. She wanted a site that would bring together the health and life benefits of the practice, and promote her new business as an instructor. Shawn created her logo, which provided the launching point for the design direction. There’s even a Spanish translated version!

Chronicle never disappoints with the books it asks me to write about monthly for their email newsletters. The featured books in June were Pretty in Punk, a book teaches knitters not how to craft cardigans, but rather punk mohawk hats and skull-and-crossbones armwarmers. I also interviewed the authors of Extreme Barbecue, who themselves interviewed guys who barbecue pigs in steel drums and coffins (not used, thank you). And lastly, I wrote about the pop-surrealist work of artist Alex Gross.

In my quest for world domination of mommy blogs, I started writing for another. Kids Off the Couch offers different activities for families that don’t involve anything you can see on Nickelodeon. I am the Chicago guide, which means that I’m discovering a bunch of fun things for Finn and I to do. Tune in for your weekly adventure!

Lee Fenvyes is a Bay Area-based artist and designer. For Lee, I set up a Web store to sell some of his work and revamped his style sheets to refresh the look and feel of his expanded site. I’m really pleased how the entire site came together. 

In May, there were some really interesting books to write about for Chronicle’s enewsletters. I took a “walk down memory lane” (har har) with Core Memory, a photographic (and surprisingly beautiful) look back at vintage computers. Also, I spoke with Joyce Ostin, who photographed everyone from Tom Hanks to Steven Spielberg for Hollywood Dads.

Working with big firms like Golin Harris mean that I can’t talk about the details of the work we do because of brand confidentiality and work done on spec. But let’s just say that it was fascinating to conceptualize a well-established brand through a proposed Web site design that is very of-the-moment. Frustratingly obscure description? Email me and I’ll tell you more.