Tag Archives: web design

CFOAS

The Conservative Friends of Africa / Scotland required a website for their new organisation. The site is designed using a WordPress theme which I customised by changing colours and layout.

WordPress allows clients to update Posts and Pages themselves, giving freedom to expand their own content. There is also an Instagram feed plugin giving recent posts from that social media platform.

Accessibility

The site was designed to pass most WCAG 2.1 AA standards. I especially paid attention to the colour and boldness of any text on colour backgrounds(blue or red), making sure it was highly visible to people with low vision or colour blindness.

Please visit the CFOAS website (external link).

Full length screenshot of CFOAS website with blue and red coloured theme and main picture of a closeup of a tree and leaves. Instagram feed with 8 recent post previews also shown on the page.

Glasgow plumbing and heating

Full screen view of T Cosgrove plumbing and heating website. Logo and navigation at the top with a prominent main image of fingers adjusting settings of a boiler.

A new website was created for T Cosgrove Plumbing and Heating based in Clarkston Glagow.

They offer a varied and comprehensive service and installation of all gas appliances and a plumbing service to cover most plumbing emergencies.

The website has a smartphone friendly design which is modern and accessible. My initial design had the headings with too light a colour which failed at WCAG 2.1 AA level, but this was fixed by darkening the font and now passes the WCAG 2.1 AA criteria.

Please visit Tony’s website(external website) if you are in the Greater Glasgow area and require any plumbing or heating services.

Ivory and Brass Music Lessons Website

Nicola Hopkinson of Ivory & Brass provides private music tuition in piano and brass instruments.

Nicola needed a new website and hosting package. A modern responsive website was the best option to promote her music lessons online.

After feedback from my client I came up with a suitable colour scheme for her website. Next we also looked at appropriate photographs for the site.

french horn

A full width piano photograph was chosen as the main image on the front page. My client then took some photographs of her room where she teaches and these were added into the site. Finally we added some appropriate stock images.

The final stage was to make the site completely fluid and responsive for all Smartphones, Tablets, Laptops and Desktop computers.

Once my client was happy with the website I transferred the domain to my hosting and uploaded the website to it’s new home.

Visit website

Ivory and Brass Music Tuition website

Technology Used

Adobe Dreamweaver
Adobe Fireworks
Adobe Photoshop

Shree Boutique Web Design

Shree Boutique Hair and Beauty Salon are based in Bearsden near Glasgow.

A responsive design was one of their main requirements to enable smartphone browsing clients to view their services easily.

New Logo

shree boutique logo

Adobe Illustrator enabled me to create a new logo for the business based on ideas they had suggested. Choosing the font was crucial and my client had a certain look in mind. I also had to use the pen tool to create the Shree icon.

The site was created using Dreamweaver utilising Bootstrap for efficient responsiveness. CSS3 was used extensively in creating the look and feel of the website.

Shree Boutique Hair and Beauty Salon Screenshot

Technology Used

Adobe Dreamweaver
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Fireworks
Adobe Photoshop

Sondh Associates Architecture and Design

I recently created a new website for this established Glasgow based Architect firm.

I used Adobe Muse to create the website. I found it fairly straightforward to use, but slightly lacking in customisation features. I had to export the website from Muse then open it in Dreamweaver and perform several html and css updates to each page before it was ready for uploading.

The software was great for Galleries and this allowed for a quick initial setup but once again lacked some customisation options that would have been very handy.

I now have room to expand the site in the future and create a responsive design.

Visit the website

sondh associates screenshot

The Scottish Rhododendron Society Web Design

The Scottish Rhododendron Society

The Scottish Rhododendron Society required a website to showcase there photographs and highlight the society membership benefits.

Their old website had confusing navigation which made it difficult to access pages in an easy way.

I wanted to feature a large slider on the front page to immediately showcase the Rhododendron  flowers.

This is another Wordpress based website which allows the members of the society to log into the website and post their own images and start discussions.

The Scottish Rhododendron Society

Technology Used

WordPress
Adobe Fireworks
Adobe Photoshop

Nova Blinds Milngavie

Nova Blinds Web Design

Nova Blinds

Nova Blinds are an established family business. They required a new responsive/fluid website for their Milngavie based Blinds business.

A Bootstrap menu was integrated into the Top navigation bar, giving the website a responsive touch-screen friendly functionality.

A Google map was embedded into their contact page.

The website was created using Adobe Comp, Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Fireworks.

Nova Window Blinds

AA Web Solutions

I am a self-employed web designer and my main website is  AA Web Solutions. The site will be updated within the next few months with a new design and content.

It is a few years old now and needs updating but it was one of the first of the new generation of responsive websites in the UK. Amazingly there are still lots of top ranked and prominent web design websites that are old fashioned non-responsive sites.

This is unforgivable in this day in age with the massive increase in Smartphone and Tablet web browsing.

I will keep updating this blog over the next couple of months with progress reports relating to my new web design for AA Web Solutions.

The Sustainable Web

Sustainable web design

i am interested in the concept of creating web sites which are less harmful to the environment. The most damaging aspect of some designs is the size and amount of images on a site.

Higher emissions of CO2 are produced by large image dominated sites, due to more loading and processing. If you must have images on your site then reducing the original size and optimising them for the web is essential.

Choosing a web host which uses sustainable energy such as solar or wind power for hosting your site can be another step towards your green credentials.