EricLindberg.com
The Specs: Eric Lindberg, an award-winning freelance photographer and writer, needs a web site to showcase his photography and sample articles.
Client requests:
- Clean, simple, elegant design
- Content should download quickly so clients aren't wasting time waiting for images to appear
- Photos need to be large and high-quality so clients can appreciate the beauty and detail in the images
- Eric wants to update the content himself
The Solutions: Center the design around a custom image player on a simple black background. I kept the design elements to a minimum so as not to distract from Eric's content.
- We chose to optimize for a screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 allow ample space for large, detailed images. The player is still viewable at 1024 x 768 resolution, but some scrolling is necessary to center it on the screen.
- All images and captions are dynamically imported in order to optimize download speed. As you open the image player, notice that the first image displays very quickly as the rest of the images download.
- The thumbnail images at the bottom of the image player serve a dual purpose:
- As the full-sized images download, the corresponding thumbnails can be clicked providing a means of quickly navigating through the content.
- The thumbnails start at 50% opacity. As each full-sized image loads the corresponding thumbnail appears at full opacity giving the user feedback about which images are ready for viewing.
- Since all images and captions are dynamically loaded from external files, Eric can update his content by simply uploading new image files and text documents.
Technical Notes:
- The image player was built in Adobe Flash CS3 using Actionscript 3.0.
- The logo was designed in Adobe Illustrator and is fully scalable to allow for high-resolution printable versions.
- Each photo was compressed to high-quality JPEGs with great attention to retaining the image quality while minimizing file size.
- All photo captions for each category reside in one ASCII text file. The player dynamically imports the text and parses it to appear under the correct image.
Eric Lindberg says:
"Joe designed and built an excellent web site based on my requirements. The layout, design, and navigation features are stunning. Joe is detail-oriented, innovative, and reliable in his work. I am very happy with the results and highly recommend Joe without hesitation for anyone considering creating a new web site or rebuilding an existing one."
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