Category Archives: Design

My Brick Builds: A Site for LEGO Fanatics

My Brick Builds

Recently my friend and frequent collaborator, Luke, got into Legos. He had always been a fan, but it seemed like it became an obsession. It’s not hard to tell why. Legos are awesome. Kids love ‘em, adults love ‘em, and the LEGO company itself is awesome.

Luke and I would send cool pictures of MOCs (My Own Creations) to each other that other Lego fans have built and after awhile we wanted some sort of service that would allow Lego fans (or builders) to easily share builds that they like or have built themselves. Enter mybrickbuilds.com.

Mybrickbuilds.com is basically Tumblr for Legos. It allows you to quickly upload photos of a build you like, tag it, and add a source URL of where you got it from. You can comment and like other users’ builds that they’ve posted as well.

If you’re a fan of Legos, My Brick Builds is worth checking out. It’s also free and sign up is a snap.

Vist the My Brick Builds website.

Luke Stebner’s Portfolio

Luke Stebner's Portfolio

I don’t usually do this, but I designed a portfolio for someone else.

If you’ve seen any of my work, there’s a good chance that Luke built it. I worked with him at MerchantCircle (which was acquired by Reply!) and ever since then we’ve frequently collaborated on our own weeknight/weekend projects. We’re now working together full-time at BrightGauge Software in San Francisco.

Luke recently mentioned that his portfolio was feeling dated, so naturally I offered my help.

I created a simple single-page portfolio for him that was designed and built using Twitter Bootstrap’s 1170px grid. It’s straight to the point – clearly explaining the languages he knows and showcasing the sites that he’s built. We made sure to show his skill level with Javascript, HTML & CSS, PHP, databases, and Photoshop making it easy for anyone whose wondering what kind of projects he can handle.

Want to make sure he knows his stuff? Take a look at the article he’s written.

Visit Luke’s portfolio and follow him on Twitter

Stylie

It’s been a couple months since I helped out, but I still think this is worth mentioning. Stylie is a CSS animation tool powered by Rekapi that was created Jeremy Kahn.

Jeremy built Stylie, but needed some design help. I sent him a direct message on Twitter asking if I could offer my services and we were off. Stylie is a simple service so it didn’t take long for me to pass a design his way and it took even less time for him to develop it. The man is a coding machine.

Visit the Stylie website

I don’t know Jeremy personally, but we have a couple mutual friends and I’ve been following him on Twitter ever since he moved to San Francisco from Chicago to work at YouTube. If you go through some of his older tweets you’ll see he wasn’t too excited about being immersed in the San Francisco culture, but every now and then you’ll see him tweet about which yoga DVD he should buy or how much he’s enjoying the weather. Pretty soon he’ll be twirling his mustache and listening to Arcade Fire while riding through the Mission on a fixie.

Take a look at Jeremy’s portfolio

 

Heather & Firrend’s Wedding Site

Heather and Firrend Getting Married

Two of my good friends, Heather and Firrend, have finally decided to tie the knot after dating for nearly a decade. For a wedding gift, I offered to create their wedding site which was a deal for me because I’ve been itching to make a wedding site for awhile now.

Why would I want to create a wedding site? They’re simple and straight to the point. I like that. My goal was to design a site that’s super to easy to read for the bride and groom’s older relatives, but would also look great on their 20-something-year-old friends who would be seeing the site on their iPhone. This layout with it’s large images and text achieved both.

Visit Heather & Firrend’s Wedding Site here.

10 Dollar Gaming

I’ve been working with my friend and frequent collaborator, Luke Stebner, on yet another project. This time it’s a game review site named 10 Dollar Gaming.

Luke has always been passionate about gaming and created 10 Dollar Gaming nearly 2 years ago as a way for him to help indie gamers get noticed. The name came from indie games typically costing less than $10.

On Feb 5 2012, Luke moved the site off of the WordPress platform and on to his lightweight Node.js blogging platform, Bearblog (which I also helped with). I took this opportunity to revamp the look and feel of the site and help him out with SEO.

Since then the site’s traffic has doubled, the single ad we placed on the site is performing well, and Luke has been reviewing games like mad. I’ve even started to contribute game reviews, that’s saying a lot for someone who isn’t a hardcore gamer.

I think the opportunity for this site to grow is huge. iOS and Android games own nearly 60% of the portable game market and will only continue to grow. This makes reviewing games that cost less than $10 a snap since iOS and Android games rarely cost more than a couple dollars (most only cost $.99).

We’re continuing to work on the look and feel of the site, but I’m happy with the progress we’ve made in such a short time. Soon there will more ways for users to learn about the games they love and will be able to interact with other indie game fans.

Follow @10DollarGaming on Twitter.

New Portfolio Work: Parknear.me

Parknear.me Homepage Design

Yesterday I updated my portfolio with some design work I did for Parknear.me.

Parknear.me was (and still may be) a service that allows you to rent out vacant lots on your property to those that need parking in your area. The idea was conceived by my friend and former co-worker, Tom Hill. Tom, myself and a couple other friends started the process of building the site, but we have since become busy with our full-time jobs and life in general.

While it looks like the project will be on the back burners indefinitely, I’m still proud of the work I did so I wanted to at least share my homepage design.