Hey Sandra (v2)

Illustration Portfolio Site

CMS Integration, Interface Design, Logo Design, XHTML + CSS

The original Hey Sandra! was one of my first live sites and, as such is very dear to my heart. However, times change, and the web is a much different place than it was. Web Standards are the order of the day, and anyone who is not designing by them whenever possible in this day and age are doing a disservice to their clients and the web as a whole. A quick look under the hood of the old site revealed a tangled mass of old techniques, namely table based layouts and frameset (ick) … it was time for an update!

Out with the old, in with the new

A Solid Foundation

Upon discussion, we decided to use the Content Management System Textpattern as a basis for the site, thus providing Sandra with a backend system to alter the content on the site via her own admin login. All the text and links on the site are managed through the backend and are easily updateable.

Double the exposure, half the work

For the artwork galleries (the raison d’etre of the site) I integrated a gallery system that pulls it’s content from the popular photo-sharing site Flickr. This accomplishes two of the main goals of the site:

1. All the pictures Sandra posts to the portfolio sections on Flickr also show up in her online gallery netting her double exposure for her work (the Flickr community has a nice networking element to it, perfect for artists and designers).

1. The available Flickr tools she now uses to update her portfolio are of a much higher quality than anything custom that could have been put together on the alloted budget, so she gets a quick and easy way to bulk upload and write descriptions for portfolio pieces, which encourages her to update more frequently and get her fresh work seen, a double win!

Selected Samples from this project