Together with author Sara Paretsky, I recorded a series of ten different podcast episodes. Sara read from her new novel, Bleeding Kansas (which will hit bookstores January 1st) and her series of essays on her journey as an author and advocate of free speech, Writing in an Age of Silence.

Lauren Streicher is one of the most well-known OB-GYNs in the country. But besides her wildly successful practice, she is the author of a book, Chicago Sun-Times columnist, host of an XM radio show on women’s health, regular guest of iVillage’s In The Loop, and a regular contributor to ABC and CBS news. This site tells about her many (many!) accomplishments and promotes her to the world at large.

My latest article for HOW is about a subject close to my heart—design for the book publishing industry. I spoke to people from Picador, HarperCollins, Quirk Books, and (of course) Chronicle. It was fascinating to hear about how different publishers hone their design process, an I loved hearing the stories about how the designs came together. (Even an Oprah pick.) Click above to download the article as a PDF, or look for it in the next issue.

It’s beyond cliche that customer service for Web entities is disappointing. This site was created as a way for Yahoo’s users to suggest ways to improve their customer service and create an honest, ongoing dialogue. With this site, I installed WordPress on the server, souped it up with a bunch of plug-ins, and integrated the design with custom CSS.

The City of Chicago had a ton of information they wanted to make available to residents about what to do in an emergency, but no real Web structure to do so. They wanted this site to be a hub that people returned to, with realtime news and information. I designed the architecture and look and feel for the site, hoping to convey a unique Web presence for the city, as well as a useful hub of information.

I designed this pretty little site to promote a cottage for rent in San Francisco’s Sunset neighborhood. Quick and dirty, this site took just three days to build and launch. Check it out at Studio on Sixth. Just goes to show, there is no job too big or too small!

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!