Lakewood Poster Design
The event poster design was created to promote the spring, 2011, Hannah Kahn Dance Company performance of Knoxville: Summer of 1915 at the Lakewood Cultural Center, in Lakewood Colorado. In addition to these eye-catching 11×17 posters, which feature all the dancers, singers, and performers that appear in the “Knoxville” piece, matching postcards were created and sent via USPS mail to Denver-area dance and arts supporters.
This event poster design for Knoxville: Summer of 1915 features a vintage, aged/distressed treatment, and embellished title fonts to help convey the emotion and era of this piece. This Dance concert features a famous piece of music by American Composer, Samuel Barber, and is performed by an opera singer and piano accompanist during the dance piece. All of the Knoxville text that is performed during the concert is also incorporated into this poster design across the background of the entire design, and adds an element of elegance, as well as texture to the poster design.
The costumes of the dancers and performers are impressive and very detailed, and we thought it would be helpful to show all the performers on stage within this poster design to highlight the size of the cast, as well as some of the movement that the audience can expect to see during the concert production.
WordPress Customization
The Visualist Blog site launched in January, 2011, and serves as a visual computing technology blog for Denver-based Christopher Jaynes, the CTO for Mersive, which he founded in 2004. The goal of this WordPress customization site design was to create a rich visual computing and information resource, along with post discussion and social media integration, all while carrying over branded colors and elements from existing Mersive brand standards into the design. The Mersive.com company website features a prominent link to The Visualist Blog in the main site navigation, so the user experience was a significant consideration during the wireframe and creative process. Another major consideration was the ability to add frequent posts and other content to the site, so we developed and coded this site leveraging the WordPress platform and administrator interface.
For the banner area of this site, we chose a large, bold, and modern font with a letterpress effect, and subtle gray to white gradient that intentionally overlaps with the main content region, slightly truncating the bottom of each letter, and creating a very connected look between the top and body regions of the page. To add depth and incorporate Mersive brand colors, we created a green light-beam effect behind this bold headline text to convey the visual and technology aspects of this blog in an abstract way.
Secondary color choices beyond the green of the graphic banner area allow for small additions of color throughout the page on links, buttons, and comment notifications. Custom fonts were also used for the blog post titles, and custom functionality was added for site language translation, as well as RSS feeds and custom email notification and subscription to the entire blog, or just individual posts. Social Media components were also installed on individual posts to allow site visitors to easily share the content with their own friends, networks, and professional colleagues on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Google Buzz, and many others.
Boulder QR Code Campaign
This QR Code T-Shirt design was created for a QR Code campaign in Boulder, Colorado, and for use at a NACA Convention in Hartford, Connecticut. QR Codes are just like bar codes, except that they can be “read” by free QR reader Apps on iPhones, Androids, and Blackberry Devices, by taking and scanning a photograph with the mobile device.
The goal of this campaign was to encourage free sharing of music, as opposed to music “Piracy”, so we chose the primary message of “You Are Not A Pirate”, followed by three alternate messages: “I’m In The Band”, “I’m With The Band”, and “I Love This Band”. Beneath these message are the QR codes, which each download a song onto the mobile device, begin playing, and subsequently added into the device’s media library or iTunes software.
The graphic design style for the shirt design uses clean, bold fonts and tight line height for the primary messaging, allowing for interesting use of the negative space between the text lines to invert the text and background colors. Several shirt variations were designed and printed with different QR code song downloads on each design, so fans of the band could choose the design that contained their favorite song choices. Boulder was a perfect location to test and run a campaign like this, as it is a very tech-savy area with a large college-aged population. This setting turned out to be ideal for both the QR Code poster campaign along the Pearl Street Mall poster kiosks, as well in preparation for the NACA Music conference. These shirts were printed by Advantage Design in Lafayette, Colorado.
Boulder Web Design: CCC
This Boulder web design project for the Colorado Cross Classic event website was created to for the annual Cyclocross race, which takes place in Boulder, Colorado, and attracts professional riders from all over the state and beyond. This years event was supported by sponsors like Webroot, 1st Bank, Oskar Blues, VeloNews, and many other local Boulder area businesses.
The primary goal of the Colorado Cross Classic website / Boulder web design project was to inform riders about the 2010 event, including course maps and event info, online registration, event news and updates, as well as prominent placement of sponsor and partner logos for this Boulder event. To help convey the location and setting of this event, we chose to use a large image of the iconic Boulder Flatirons as the site background, and then blurred the image to create a sense of distance and depth on the page. The additional scrolling image banner on the website home page further highlights the nature of this Cyclocross event, and allows for graphic banner drivers to allow visitors to easily register for the Boulder event.
This Boulder web design project leveraged the popular WordPress platform, which allowed us to hand off the site and its content to CCC event staff for ongoing updates, news posts, and addition of sponsors and other event info as race day approached. The powerful WordPress admin interface allowed for fast and easy site updates by multiple website editors, and connections to social sites, like Facebook & Twitter, were also very easy for CCC site editors to manage and update. This project was completed on an accelerate timeline.
Cloudburst: Boulder Web Design
Cloudburst Design Studio helps companies, both small and large, improve their online presence by designing, developing, and implementing professional looking websites that are easy to use for site visitors as well as site administrators!
Boulder Website: Heidi Wicks
The HeidiWicks.com website was designed to clearly communicate Heidi’s personalized approach to Date Coaching and Matching, while incorporating her existing logo and branding colors throughout the site. This is a WordPress driven site, with a high level of customization to drive page functionality, as well as a customized WordPress theme, custom page templates, and a remodeled WordPress admin to make managing the content very easy for Heidi into the future. Custom content types were created within WordPress to handle templating and style formatting for client testimonials, news announcements, blog posts, and page content updates.
In addition to the WordPress customization, we integrated the contact form on the site with Heidi’s existing SalesForce.com account, so that all lead generation through her website is automatically synced with Sales Force, and she can more easily manage her clients and new leads going forward. We also migrated her existing Blogger blog posts into the new site structure and dating blog, which can all be maintained from the Admin panel and CMS that Heidi now uses to manage all her site content.
We kicked off this project with an informal meeting in Boulder over coffee, where Heidi described her hopes and requirements for the new site, as well as her existing online content that she wanted to incorporate into this new site. We presented several site design variations to help guide the conversation and make decisions about overall layout, look and feel, as well as high level site functionality and color choices. Once we collectively narrowed those options down to a clear winner for the site design, we were able to move forward and setup her site hosting and configure her existing DNS entries to point at the new domain. At that point in the process, we launched a great looking landing page for the new domain with the Heidi Wicks date coaching logo, and some textual information about when the new site would be launching with a countdown timer.
The only page visible to the general public and search engines at this point in the process is that front landing page, but behind the scenes we were able to fully develop the new site, and create login access for Heidi and other project stakeholders so they were able to review the site development and offer feedback at various stages to ensure the project was on track and progressing daily. After several rounds of feedback, site review, and site testing in various browsers (IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, etc), operating systems (Windows/Mac), and mobile devices like Blackberries, iPhones, iPads, and Android phones, Heidi was ready to launch hew new website, and we were confident that it would look great no matter what device or computer OS people were using to visit it! All that was left to do was take down the placeholder landing page, and the site was open and ready for visitors, search engine indexing, and potential clients to find Heidi online!
Webroot Enterprise Banner
This graphic banner design was created for the Boulder, Colorado, web security company, Webroot. In addition to security software products for Home & Home Office, Webroot also offers cloud-based, layered security solutions for enterprise and business customers around the world. This banner is displayed on the Enterprise Products page of Webroot.com, and the primary “Call To Action” within the banner is designed to drive potential business customers to watch a detailed product overview.
In addition to driving potential customers to learn more about their business products, Webroot’s existing customer testimonials are an excellent resource for new customers. On the webroot.com enterprise home page, we designed and launched a simple, but powerful, flash banner to highlight these positive testimonials and customer experiences with Webroot’s products. This banner design features a modern, colorful “Bokeh” background texture, which gives a significant amount of depth to this design by creating an out of focus lighting effect and artificial depth of field. The primary messaging utilizes subtle white and warm-gray gradients, and a modern font treatment with letterpress effect to create a good sense of string lighting on the page. To enhance the primary message of “layered security” even further, we created a layered panel effect with the text boxes, which also further adds to the depth of this corporate banner design.
Webroot headquarters are located in Broomfield, Colorado, and this projected was completed for Webroot’s online marketing team in a collaborative design effort with many rounds of revisions and creative designs. Cloudburst Design Studio is based in Lafayette, Co, and serves clients local to the Colorado Front Range, as well as across the United Sates.
Mishawaka Poster Design
This live concert poster was created for the Mishawaka Amphitheater to promote a summer show at the venue, as well as promotions around the Colorado Front Range. Wish We Were Floyd is a live band that recreates the the Pink Floyd experience at their shows, so the design had to quickly communicate the connection to Pink Floyds’ music by using classic imagery and font treatments that are unmistakably “Floydian”.
The title font treatment was modernized by creating a 3D vanishing depth on the lettering, and then adding highlights to enhance the effect. Strong and bold event info at the bottom pulled colors out of the classic Pink Floyd prism rainbow to tie everything together.
Veritext Brochure Design
Cloudburst is responsible for many of the marketing materials for Veritext, a National Deposition & Litigation Services Firm. Clean and bold, the Veritext designs represent a more corporate style. This recent brochure was made to promote their new video technologies offered to their clients and was just a part of a much broader marketing campaign including a html email campaign, postcards and online graphics.
Boulder Logo Design
This Boulder Logo Design Conscious Key project started with a request for a quote through our Cloudburst website contact form. New to the Boulder, CO, area and in the process of solidifying a space for their store on the beautiful Pearl Street Mall, the Conscious Key folks were looking to develop a new logo design for their business that communicated their philosophy and storefront accurately. The Pearl Street Mall has a great deal of foot traffic, high visibility, and definitively portrays the iconic image of Boulder with small, local shops, great atmosphere, and the Flatirons as the natural backdrop and scenery for the setting.
With very little logo design direction we set to work brainstorming ideas based on the name and the description of their store. The Conscious Key “will sell products and services that promote consciousness and awareness, like gem stones, books, health products, art, meditation chairs etc. Things that help people find there own self.” After several internal rounds of sketches, brainstorming, and creative efforts, we delivered a first round of logo design ideas to the Boulder company that covered a huge variety of styles hoping that one would hit close to the owners’ hearts. After feedback and close communication with the client, rounds two and three of the logo design and revision process were spent refining one of our initial logo design ideas, customizing the font, tweaking the colors and playing with horizontal and vertical layouts. This process took place over a couple of weeks time.
The final logo design that was chosen incorporates elements of a yin-yang sign, the consciousness colors of the crown and brow chakras and the symbolic meanings of the snake and dolphin. All of these small details add to the deeper meaning of the Conscious Key logo as a part of this Boulder Logo Design Project.
Virginia Night Sky
This time-lapse photograph series was taken on May 10th, 2010, between 12am and 1:45am, just outside Charlottesville, Virginia. Over 80 individual exposures, each lasting 30 seconds, were later assembled in Adobe Photoshop to reveal the star trails and movement of the night sky.
The light against the horizon is minor “light polution” from the city of Charlottesville, and just out of view in the upper left corner of this photo is the North Star.
