Janice Cole had already been running a successful blog about homesteading chickens—Three Swingin’ Chicks. This blog helped her sell a cookbook/memoir to Chronicle Books entitled Chicken & Egg: A Memoir of Suburban Homesteading with 125 recipes. Janice commissioned a new site that promoted her book, redesigned her blog, and showcased her other work in recipe development and food styling.

I just loved working with the folks from The Euphrates Institute. This nonprofit is dedicated to bridging cultural gaps and misunderstandings between the US and the Middle East in the wake of 9/11. They wanted a site that brought together their work, but also inspired other students and individuals to participate in their movement. Using lush photography against a minimalist background, the site brings together a lot of information beautifully.

Link to case study

Zoom Eyeworks is a California based company that manufactures and distributes eyewear for brands including ICU, Dr. Dean Edell, ZoomSun, and Fisherman Eyewear. They needed a corporate site that highlighted the quality of their brands, along with promotional information like relevant press. Working together with Shawn, we designed and built a minimalist site where the product photography carried the design aesthetic.

Maria Martinez is a hairdresser who currently lives in Dublin, but who has worked all over the world. She cites her styling inspiration as coming not from the celebrity rags, but rather from urban style. This site serves as a virtual lookbook for hairstyle trends, as captured by Maria’s camera on the street. Maria’s incredible photography is paired with her narrative, which deconstructs each style.

Link to case study

Women’s Media Group is a Chicago-based group that promotes the public dialogue of women’s issues from a feminist perspective, via radio, film, recordings, social media and the Internet, as well as live production. The group needed an easy way to promote new shows and provide them through the site as podcasts. We used WordPress to build a site that allowed them to promote the vast breadth of their media and provide audio playback right in the site.

Brooklyn-based Hyperakt is a firm opposed to the notion that design is just about making something pretty. Here’s a profile I wrote for HOW on this design firm.

This site was designed to promote a new book which pubs in the fall from Crown Publishers. The Sacred Thread tells the story of a woman who became a mother through an Indian surrogate. The site was designed to not only promote the book, but become a resource to families seeking international surrogacy through resources and a blog.

Admittedly, this is random. But if you find yourself in the Irving Park neighborhood at 6am on either Mondays or Wednesdays, you should totally take my spinning classes. I just became a certified instructor.

Here’s my Spinrise Facebook group.

And my Spinrise Twitter feed.

At branding firm CBX, they’re not just selling a logo, they’re selling a story. Talents gleaned from the dramatic arts (and even the martial arts!) help sharpen this staff ‘s presentation and branding skills. Here’s how they do it.

When its original site was designed, McEvoy Ranch just sold olive oil. Over the years, they expanded their business into a body care line, specailty foods, ranch tours, and merchandise. They needed a dynamic site that not only served as an efficient ecommerce portal for their retail arm, but promoted the ethics and spirit of this beautiful Petaluma, California-based company. Built on Adobe’s Business Catalyst platform, this site supports all aspects of this family-based business.