ChromakiWebsite for an online boutique. With catalogues, fetured stylebook pages, and integrated e-commerce system.
Himalayan Community ProjectWebsite for NGO based in Nepal. Complete with full event galleries and teacher and student profiles. Designed to encourage donor response
Computer GuysWebsite for an IT support service company, with comprehensive articles base, case studies and pricing plans. With unique icons and infomational graphics
Soap by NorA website designed for a boutique soap maker based in Singapore. Complete with fully functioning shopping cart system and customised WordPress backend.
Madhouse HeavenWebsite for the Studio run by Danijel and me. I’m currently redesigning it as our job scope has expanded and the photo-intensive design isn’t suitable for the new projects we are taking on. Still, pretty funky.
EarthtreeWebsite deisgned for a television studio I worked for in the past. In an age where WordPress was still in its infancy. It was done with basic HTML, CSS and Javascript.
Orange GroveSite for Orange Grove, a band based in Den Haag. They needed something easy to maintain and quick to set up, before they went on their 2010 tour.
What I Do
I create dynamic websites for businesses and organizations using the popular Content Management System WordPress. The sites are always easy to use and maintain. They have robust administration panels that can be customized for different user permissions. Mobile friendly versions can also be made, along with custom email templates, so your online presence is consistent.
I can create the site you want, to suit the look and feel of your business and the marketing campaign you have in mind. They’ll be created with the latest web technologies, all W3 validated to ensure your site works and looks good on Safari, Firefox, Chrome and even *gasp* the last 3 versions of Internet Explorer.
What’s Possible
- Stunning 3D Sliders for featured images
- Sortable galleries for photo heavy sites
- Custom backgrounds (photographs/tilable patterns)
- Sexy jQuery Effects
- Events Calendar
- E-commerce support for e-shops
- Bespoke icons to suit your industry
- Informational graphics
- Pricing Lists
- Google Maps integration
- Comprehensive video support
- Multiple Language Versions
- Integration with Twitter, YouTube, Flikr, etc.
- Unique typefaces with @font-face.
- Mobile upload of new content
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Zen Journalist
Website for journalist Andrew Marshall, former Reuters Baghdad bureau chief . Simple design with a focuse on social sharing. The design of the actual site differs from the pages shown ...
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Chromaki
Website for an online boutique. With an integrated e-commerce system and twitter discount codes. Cufon font replacement (personally won't recommend it, but it's quite popular in the web dev community).
Visit Website preview
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Himalayan Community Project
Website for an NGO based in Nepal. Complete with full event galleries and student and teacher profile pages.
Visit Website preview
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Computer Guys
Website for IT support services with comprehensive articles base, case studies and pricing plans. Integrated contact form and googlemaps, with custom infomational graphics.
Visit Website preview
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Soap by Nor
A website designed for a boutique soap maker based in Singapore. Norfarizan specializes in creating bespoke handmade soaps that are Sodium Laurate Sulfate free and absolutely good for you skin.
Visit Website preview
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Madhouse Heaven
Website for the Studio run by Danijel and me. I’m currently redesigning it to suit an expanding service base.
Visit Website preview
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Orange Grove
Site for Orange Grove, a band based in Den Haag. They needed some easy to maintain and extremely fast to put up before they went on their ’10 tour.
Visit Website preview
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Denscity
6 style slides motion graphic on dense urban living. Project for Design21 Social Design Network.
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Mar26
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Mar25
- Articles archive
Typefaces
Typefaces are one of the design elements than can make or break a design’s look and feel. A well thought out font palette can make a design look really sophisticated and unique, bringing out the character and nature of the product. You don’t have to do alot (in fact it’s not advisable) with the borders, buttons and background if the fonts are chosen well. A few well chosen simple elements in a design coming together to make a complicated whole is better than lots of little complex bits with too much character by themselves, coming together to make a mess.
From Smashing Magazine
- Never use Papyrus and Comic Sans.
- Avoid Anachronisms
- Avoid Trite Correlations
Personally, I think Wallpaper magazine has the best font palettes. The fonts aren’t the same throughout the magazine, and the palettes vary with each edition. They manage to combine really bold, flashy headers (for example, calligraphy fonts) with simpler (but still quite special) sub-headers (e.g. rounded, modernist fonts) and more generic typeset for body texts. It’s designed to the nth degree, which makes all the difference in the viewers perception of the magazine’s value.
There’s loads of ‘rules’ out there about typography, but at the end of the day remember that usually, it’s the simplest fonts make the most memorable titles and ensure your text is always redable.
WordPress
WordPress is the most popular Content Management System currently, with a community base in the hundreds of thousands. It’s dead simple to use, easy to customise and infinitely extensible. You can do the same thing with less steps in WordPress than you can with Joomla or Drupal. The learning curve for WordPress is alot shorter, making site updates easier and more effecient. WordPress also has a system of template tags (e.g. wp_title, single_post) which are self-descriptive and dead simple to understand, making it easy for your web-manager to understand what is going on behind the scenes.
Support is extremely comprehensive due to a fast growing community base contributing regularly to its knowledge base. Development is crowd-sourced, and the WP core is constantly being improved through user feedback.
It’s so flexible you can create anything, from small portfolio sites like this one to full e-commerce sites with thousands of products and registered users. Each WordPress theme can be customized to suit your needs. The clutter free admin dashboard is totally customizable, which mean functions can be easily added to increase capability, or removed, to reduce complexity.
In most cases, after a site is designed with all it’s core pages and categories in place (my job!) all the updates can be done in three steps. 1. Make a new entry 2.Type in the entry 3.Publish.
There used to be a contact form here, but I haven’t had time to install a captcha device to prevent spam and was getting alot of unwated emails.
In the meantime, until I have some time off working on other people’s sites, you may:
Email me at isabellachen [at] babelogica [dot] com.
Cafes, restaurants, bars and other F&B businesses. Featured photographs, interactive location map, seasonal menus and daily specials. Regular menus with items sortable by any criteria (ratings, price, ingredients). Optional reviews page, staff listing, reservations calender and forms with optional booking fee payment via paypal.
