In my eternal struggle with web sites that provide service to their customers I have come across a pattern. Poorly constructed sites are difficult to use while beautifully constructed sites are easy to use. True statement. Right? Not so fast…

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My office is giving the OU Web Communications site a much needed overhaul. Along with updated content, information architecture and icons I am redesigning the main navigation. The site uses left navigation that can go up to three levels deep. Here is a look at my initial pass at the navigation.

Level 1. Base navigation, everything collapsed.

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My friend Cassie Ketrick is passionate about her feet, the color turquoise and film. Her love of film lead her to found CAN (Cinematic Artists of Norman) CAN’s mission is to strengthen the Norman film community by providing resources and outlets for anyone who wants to make films. I was impressed with the initiative Cassie took to create CAN so I asked if i could make a logo and poster for her first meeting.

For their logo, CAN wanted something clean and modern. Structured without being stuffy. Simple treatment with Neutra Book mixing upper and lower cases. deep blue and lime green provide the contrast.

Cassie provided all the copy for the first poster and she said “make it fun” So I did.

I was honored to be invited to speak at a recent AIGA Oklahoma event called 20 x 2. 20 designers had 2 minutes each to speak about the future of design in Oklahoma. 2 minutes? brutal.

I decided to talk about web usability and how important setting goals for your site and organizing your information is as well as poke fun at http://www.evangelcathedral.net/ a usability nightmare, but AWESOME graphix! (graphics with an “x” means its extra badass.)

About halfway through my presentation, I get the air horn signifying my 2 minutes of fame has ended. I blow through the rest of my presentation ending it by shouting: “Make it beautiful. Make is Usable!” I had a great time and reconnected with old friends and even made some new ones.

Although my primary responsibility is laying out web sites and testing them when they are finished, sometime I get the chance to extend my creativity into logos and wordmarks. Here is a quick look at a couple logos/wordmarks I’ve done while at OU.
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We just launched a new search.ou.edu. Christian Colon, The Mad Scientist of Web Development, did all of the back-end work while yours truly did the design and CSS presentation. Im happy with the way it turned out.

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I feel like I’ve given birth… without all the epidurals, tax credits and stitches.

After 4 months of design and development a new www.ou.edu is about to launch. Read rest of story…

So I was put in charge of making a Blog at OU. The Blog was to address the question that most prospective students ask – “What the hell am I going to do when I’m a student?” Well, the answer is pretty simple. Do whatever you normally do. Go out to eat, read a book, go on a date, play a video game, see a show, you know, all the normal things people do.

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I designed this site a few months ago at my day job. The OU Alumni site needed to have a classic, warm, inviting feeling.

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Seed packets can be sooooo cool or sooooo lame. This was one of my favorite projects because of the subject. The concept is simple, classic, and natural.

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