This was the first project in a new partnership between Fishbucket and Cinematic Music Group. We’re planning to do some ongoing work together; revamping the sites in their current lineup and putting together some new ones. Stay tuned!

(Offer only valid for users with modern browsers. Actual backwardness may vary.)

Happy holidays from Fishbucket and Bishfucket!

Also worth noting: Things move! Without Flash! I still like Flash and hope it doesn’t die off completely, but it’s been good to try out some alternatives so I can make things move without relying on it. (Only in the most recent non-IE browsers, of course.)

Big thanks to Loic Villepontoux. I’ve been working with him for about a decade now, and his art direction and instincts are always on point. (Thanks to Phillip and Mimi and Chief too!)

October saw three different sites launch. One of these days they may just make an appearance in the portfolio, but in the meantime here’s an overview…

Buddy

This is a single-page site for Pharrell’s new protégé, Buddy. It had a quick turnaround time, but luckily we had some great photography to work with. This one has a liquid design^* and can work at various window sizes.

*Not related to Liquid Design, the company where this writer started his web design career in the late 90s.

Violette New York

A remade site for Vashtie’s clothing line, Violette. It’s always a pleasure working with Vashtie. I’d like to think it’s because we both grew up in the Capital District and can relate to each other on a 518 level, but it’s probably because she’s generally a great person to work with. She wanted to go simple and use a lot of black & white for this one, so we worked in some desaturation magic and kept everything smooth and slick.

The shop uses Big Cartel, which I’d been looking forward to using for a while. I was pleasantly surprised, it was very easy to work with.

The Rens

This was a quick site, (still in progress,) for an NYC youth basketball league, The New Renaissance. This site is currently just a quick overview of this new program, and will grow in the near future to show more about the teams.

The client requested an auto-playing Flash intro, complete with audio. (classic!) So be warned before you click, there may be a loud burst of Jay-Z.

Note: Parts of this site are based on an excellent theme by MKNY Studio.

(Best viewed in Netscape 1.1)

Back in December 2008, I was brought onboard to redo the official site for N*E*R*D. Another company had been working on it, but the band wasn’t happy with the direction they were going in. I was soon on a call with Pharrell, who was detailing his concepts for the new site: an old-school Atari theme.

This got some wheels churning. As luck would have it, a friend I’ve known since 3rd grade is a big Atari fan and has a pretty large collection. We arranged for him to send me a package of games, controllers and a system. I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d do with them, but hoped that the gear would spark some ideas.

And they did! I love those old, classic cartridges. The labels, the graphics, the way they were all worn down from years of use and abuse. I didn’t have an Atari growing up, (we were a Commodore family,) but it took me back.

I then looked to the album artwork, which also had great illustrations:

My next step seemed obvious…

I started laying out the different labels, naming them (some with titles that still make me chuckle,) and got to cutting and pasting (literally this time, not digitally!)

The results:

One thought was to have each cartridge associated with a section of the site, and the homepage would let you select which cartridge to put into the system. (roll over for example.)

In the end I was really happy with the results, but this “real retro” style just didn’t fit in with the “8-bit retro” style of the rest of the site. The cartridges are currently lined up next to my desk, trophies of a concept that didn’t make the cut.

Of the over 8000 entries submitted to the 15th Annual Webby Awards, fewer than 15% were distinguished as an Official Honoree.

So – cool! This was one of the ten selections in the Celebrity/Fan category, alongside Asher Roth, Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse AND the Rockettes. Thanks to Paisley Benaza at Dossier, it’s been a pleasure working with her for the past few years and I look forward to many more!

Then I started to understand, where a blog post should have a title and a point, a tumblr is less formal and more random. (aha! steve catches up to 2008.) So I started pulling some things out of the archives, lining up some assorted nonsense, and somehow I’m already up to 80 posts. Take a look! You’ll also see recent images from there in the new sidebar on the bottom right of this here blog page.

http://fishbucket.tumblr.com

In 2005-2007 I did a lot of work for Hollywood Records, which included a bunch of websites for teen pop acts. Most of those projects haven’t made it into the new portfolio yet, but I figured it was a good time to dig this one up.

It was an all-Flash site, and was her official site for about two years. Best of luck to Vanessa!