all-sorts website solutions

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We’re getting stuff done!

Summer has at long last made its appearance and we’re busy little bees whilst we’re trying to stock up on warmth and sunshine. So here is a quick up-date on some of the things that have kept us off the streets lately:

• We’re excited about Rice Daubney’s new site which is a collaborative process involving us making their design a reality. Watch this space.
• The Hanover Group Intranet is expanding to smooth administrative tasks with: Get Stuff Done – created to manage staff requests from general office maintenance to travel arrangements.
• With the first anniversary of Harry Seidler’s death coming up, we are busy updating Harry Seidler and Associates with Reflections on Harry Seidler (in the articles section). Hours of fascinating reading in there…
• We’re also working on a website for our little Cornish Rex girl’s breeder, Beryl Colley who creates extraordinarily lovely, healthy, affectionate, funny and intelligent Cornish Rex cats.

Finally, the renovations of the shack are progressing slowly but steadily Currently we’re focussing on waterproofing the outside deck before winter strikes.

Michiel Gerber architect wanted a site to showcase his work. We pulled out the stops and came up with this simple-yet-expressive little number…

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*Zaphod was also known as Zaph, Schminty, Za-a-a-aph, the Breeb, Box, Zaphini, Zox-Box, Pod, Yin, Plodhops, Franscina, Henry-Mancini, the-Heber, Bambalini, Mowglee, Mr Populär, very fine Chicken, that fucking cat, very fine whine, Liebling, Pitt-Bull-Terrier, Artsebarsky, Chief Roboticist of the Ponds Institute, Mannesman, the Komplaina, Robert de Hero, Kleine Rotte, Bog-Breath, the Boyfriend, Frederick de Friendelick, Hasenfuss, Schmint, Scminterini, Chicken-with-legs, the Man from Del-Schminty, Henry Rancini, day-nurse, night-nurse, the Liefheber, Schminterriffic, da Funky Homosapien, Doktor Tschekov, monuglavic beanie, to name a few.

After 16 years of close companionship we buried our dear feline friend Zaphod under a birch tree in the garden. It’s a spot where the view is fantastic and the sun hits it for a long time.

Zaphod, named after Zaphod Breeblebox for reasons partly due to his Devon Rex heritage, is sorely missed.

Click the image to play a short video of the Schmint circa 2002

Ouch. We’ve had an extremely hectic 3 months:

• the purchase of a little 1930s cottage/shack (with its very own ‘goat-track’ for access from the road) with stunning views over Wellington harbour and the Lower Hutt Valley. Needless to say, our move into our new home-cum-studio was fraught with difficulty…
• the clean-up of our new acquisition (it was a pig-sty): how can such a tiny place hoard so much junk?
• the design and fix-up of said cottage (still in-progress): I’m revisiting my old high-school word-work skills!
• new website for Elephant Training
• the addition of audio interviews and articles about the late Harry Seidler – see the ‘Articles & Writings’ section in the Harry Seidler Associates website
• a design refresh of a site we first designed 3 years ago, HASSELL We’re also currently completing the Chinese language version
• we’ve started the redesign and development of another 2003 website of ours, Rice Daubney
• we’ve just about finished one of our ready-made designs for City Kickboxing in Auckland
• further development on Hanover Human Resources Intranet
• new design development for Hanover Legal Intranet

Like I said, ouch.

Melbourne architect Graeme Coop’s new website Detail Architecture has just gone live. It is a typical example of one of our ready-made solutions…

For the moment Graeme is limiting his site content to overview information only; he plans to add case-studies of his work when he finds the time.

Renowned Australian architect (and esteemed client of ours) Harry Seidler died peacefully at his home this morning. His death followed a massive stroke last April.

We were privileged to live for nearly 10 years in a penthouse apartment of Ithaca Gardens, one of his 1959 designs in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney. Harry and his wife Penelope lived in the apartment between 1960 and 1967, and its interior still retains their early customisations and personal touches. The apartment itself was very special to the Seidlers, but Harry was not all that effusive over the rest of the building; he commented that he only liked the folded-concrete roof of the garages…).

Damn, we loved that place! It had expansive-yet-intimate views over the naval dockyard in Garden Island, and panoramic views across the rest of Sydney harbour. It was not a large place, but always felt very special – its interior design had the ability to throw one’s focus out towards the view; a simultaneous liberation and compression of horizontal space (architectural/verbal diarrhea I know, but thats how it felt)… Everything was beautifully put-together and considered – very simply and deftly with minimal fuss – a trademark early Seidler work, with many of the tricks learnt from the Rose Seidler House reused and improved.

Harry Seidler was a keen force of Modern Architecture, his buildings melding form and function with simplicity, verve and wit.

Our built environment is wa-aay richer for having known him.

It has been nose-to-the-grind-stone here for many months now: preparation of a (sorely needed) upgrade to arteDomus, purveyors of fine stone and bathroom related goodies, a range of intranet work for Hanover New Zealand (Human Resources Intranet, Executive Intranet with company dashboard Gantt-chart-goodness), finalising the detail design of the home studio I’m designing in the hills of Wellington, and last (not least) v2 of our $500 base-level website design (you’re in it now, find out more here.).

Next on our plate (apart from continuing the above stuff) are a couple of ready-made websites for Melbourne architect Graeme Coop, of Detail Architecture + Planning, and Wellington accountant and financial advisor, Michael Young, Young Associates.

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Some people love the scroll-bar, others no-like… c’mon peeps! The scroll-bar really is your friend…

The other day a client commented about our working prototype design; something like “Great! Love it. But we do not like the scrolling you have to do to see all the images…”.

This is a tricky issue; we design our sites so that they work across multiple device types — from mobile phones to boardroom wide-screens. If you have a lot of stuff to show on each web page, something has to give to be able to fit it all on the screen.

There are 3 ways to deal with the issue:

• Use Javascript and/or web-server trickery to deliver images & text sized to suit the device: expensive and a hassle to maintain.
• Break-up the text and/or imagery into smaller chunks so that a scroll-bar is typically unnecessary. This works well for some content, but puts a burden on the user — they’ll have to click somewhere to navigate through the content. Not too much of a biggie, you’d think… until you consider how lazy most people are when they browse the web. If they’re simply browsing your site to see if you’re offering what they’re looking for, they won’t click too many times – no matter how easy you make it for them.
• Group all like-content together, and let the scroll-bar do it’s damnedest. The scroll-bar is the quickest, most-intuitive way of accessing (a-lot of) information on a device.

Many trendy web designers push a mantra of no scroll-bars – but forget about usability. Why make it difficult for people to find your information?