A Lot Going On…

Posted by mdrisser on 2008/12/30 under Design, Development, PHP | Be the First to Comment

I’m pretty excited. I’m currently in the middle of a complete redesign for R1 Design Studios, I’m really pleased with the new look, and I’ll be doing the entire site using the excellent CodeIgniter PHP Framework. This will enable me to easily add new functionality into the existing site.

I’ve been using CodeIgniter to develop an application for NCTimes.com, and I’m really impressed with it. It’s small, fast, easy to setup and easy to learn, and flexible. If you haven’t checked out CodeIgniter yet, I highly suggest you do. when the dust settles from the redesign I’ll start posting some tutorials for CodeIgniter.

One of the things I’ll be doing is creating a much better portfolio section. I’m not really too happy with what I have right now, it was really a rush job. The new portfolio will be MySQL based, allowing me to more easily maintain it. (I should have done that from the outset, but I rushed through it.)

Here’s a little tease of what the site will look like. Its still a work in progress, but I really like the direction its taking.

The mock-up doesn’t show the main navigation or the complete typography, but most of the main design elements are there. And yes, the tag at the top center is an image map, allowing for some limited navigation.

The idea for the design came about as I was searching around various sites that I use for inspiration, I had seen several design elements that I really liked and I was browsing through my image library. I saw various elements that I felt would fit together quite nicely, and this, in part, is the result.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember where the background texture, the tags nor the ornaments came from, but if they are yours or you know who created them, please let me know, I’ll gladly give you credit.

I’m hoping to have the redesign up and running by the early part of next week.