A Simple Site Is Hard To Find

Courtney has an aesthetic approach very similar to ours: keep it as simple as possible. Elegeance is found in such things, but only where the simplicity is derived from distilling complexities into the most palatable and digestible of forms and formats. The short version of that sentence is: If something doesn’t need to be there it shouldn’t be there, and if you need that something, does it have to be complicated?

Most of the time to answer those questions is to work in design. In the case of Courtney Summers’ websites, we wouldn’t call it work.

Unique

We’ll always advocate that there’s room in this business for guys like us who build custom websites. Courtney’s design is a perfect example of why this is: functionally it does everything she needs it to, and design-wise it’s unique and stand-out and perfectly her own. Those things are hard to get when you look at some of the cookie cutter services and products out there. Not everyone knows PHP and CSS and Photoshop, and that’s where we come in.

V2

This theme is a version two. It’s an evolution of Courtney’s previous site that we did together. There are refinements, elements were removed and elements more appropriate for what she needs added. It’s still familiar to those who visit regularly and yet different enough to perhaps excite them about the new UI and what it offers readers. Complete re-designs are for the desperate, the misguided, and those who like whims and whimsy. Evolution is for those who see the purpose, branding, and identity of a website as something that does not need to be torn apart to be improved.

We had a great time working with Courtney again and look forward to seeing her grow and develop as young author with a bright career in front of her.

Dale and I have been working pretty hard over the past few months on a pretty exciting project. Vision Critical, recently announced as the fastest growing company in British Columbia, decided to completely revamp their website and chose BraveNewCode to help with the process.

In terms of scope this was a pretty aggressive project for us. From start to finish, it took a little over two months including inception, design and development but we’re extremely happy with the end result. The new Vision Critical website is far more user friendly, both from an end-user and content creation perspective. There’s also a fairly substantial media component to the website which was a lot of fun developing.

There were a few key challenges when it came to cross-browser compatibility, as this website leaned heavily on current web tools which required some magic to pull off among the commonly difficult browsers (cough IE!), but we did indeed find a few rabbits in our hats and are proud of what we’ve delivered.

It was a great experience working with the talented team at Vision Critical, and we look forward to seeing what the next year holds for them. So on behalf of Dale and myself, a big congratulations are in order for Vision Critical. So congrats on your new website, and thanks for choosing BraveNewCode to be an integral part of your process.

It’s been an uncharacteristically long time since we’ve done an overhaul of MatthewGood.org. Over the last few years we’ve worked on over a half dozen versions of the popular Canadian musician’s website, and in the process Matthew has become a part of the BraveNewCode team, now contributing his design talents to future projects.

In this most recent re-design of his website we’ve added a couple key innovations which serve its long list of registered members well.

The first major addition is the ability to switch the main view of the website’s entries from the default listing of excerpts over to a full post view, something rarely employed on blogging platform-based websites due to its intensive code requirements. This feature degrades gracefully for those without cookies or javascript in use.

The next feature was the custom addition of a modified “My Favourite Entries” plugin. We added to the plugin and built it to work with MatthewGood.org’s community to add the ability for logged in users to save those entries they’d like to revisit or remind themselves of in the sidebar.

Design-wise Matthew ponderously selected every detail of its presentation, and (as always) it has resulted in a pixel-perfect design, which is clear, concise, and innovative. MatthewGood.org remains one of the progressive and unique homes for quality blogging on the web.

The whole project is chalk full of small but thorough improvements, changes, & feature enhancements. It is (in our opinion) arguably the best all around version of the site that we’ve collectively worked on to date.

Jessie Farrell is an emerging Canadian Country talent whose gorgeous voice, playful personae and infectious music took the CCMA’s by storm this year, garnering her 7 nominations and winning 3 awards for herself.

We recently launched her new website for her, and are proud to have worked for such a talented performer. When initially contacted we jumped at the opportunity to create a unique site for her that allowed us to explore some new ground in design and development.

The site features a large header banner which immediately sets the tone for the layout, something which we wanted to be both memorable while also user-friendly, with a clear navigation list up top and a place for important updates/information to be shared.

The rest of the website follows an easy to understand layout, with a combination of pinks, browns, and dirty blues to give a modern chic mixed with a classically country feel.

We worked quickly to get the site launched for Jessie before the CCMA’s, and are proud of the end result. We still have more work to do on the site, and will be adding a few new features for Jessie in the near future, including multimedia features and an integrated store.

Jessie had this to say about our work:

I just wanted to send you a note and thank you so much for meeting the deadline before the CCMA’s and doing such a great job!

Thanks for creating such a clear, stylish, and effective design.

Thanks again!

Jessie

You’re welcome Jessie! And thank you for the opportunity- we look forward to our continued work on your website to make it even better.

Recently we received some nice mails from a couple of our clients, and we couldn’t be happier to find out that they were ecstatic about what we’d done. As a company we don’t expect to hit home runs with every chance at bat, but we sure do try to make it a reality.

Jay Grandin (JayVideo) came to us with some great visions of how he wanted his web project to look like, and really, our goal was both to bring them to life and expose him to technologies that allowed him to leverage himself exposure without spending a wad of dough. Here’s what he had to say:

“One year ago, I didn’t know what an RSS feed was when I contacted Dale Mugford to build me a personal site. Since then, I’ve worked with BNC on a number of custom WordPress themes, and have whole-heartedly recommended them to numerous others. Along with a killer site built within days to the very pixel of my Photoshop mock-up, Dale walked me through social media 101, teaching me how to be savvy in the social web and on my site through a series of video screen casts. Brave New Code has gone from a one-man show to an up and running web studio in the year I have know them, and I have no doubt that they are on their way to great success.” -Jay Grandin

Thanks so much for the praise, Jay, we are proud to have worked with you and wish you continued success!

Secondly, Leah (GiantAntMedia) dropped us a nice mail as well, which highlights something we offer that we pride ourselves upon than other developers don’t- continued assistance:

“From the perspective of a start-up, Brave New Code was an invaluable component to launching our business on the right foot. We lacked the expertise to get started on our own and were on a very tight budget, but worked with Dale to find a solution that was scaled to our economic situation. As a symptom of trial and error, BNC has made numerous adjustments to the site to adapt to our needs, and to ensure that we remain excited about the product.” -Leah Nelson, Partner, Giant Ant Media

Okay that’s enough vicarious tooting of our own horns. it’s nice to know that our clients feel strongly enough about our work to both write and let us know, and more importantly, put their own reputations on the line to recommend us as a company to others.

Thanks again, guys.