We make the most of your imagery
we design.all-sorts is a small, dynamic web-design consultancy near Wellington, New Zealand.
We pride ourselves in providing quality web development & ongoing support to our Australasian & international clients — for very reasonable prices.
Websites for Architects…
Image-rich websites.
How are we more suited to your project than our competitors?
We’re cost-effective!
Our solutions leverage the power of Open-Source software technologies, and we pass the resulting savings onto our clients.
We’re small, professional, efficient:
We’re a tightly-knit team of two: we can grapple with a complex task with focus and clarity.
We design and build it ourselves.
Many web agencies simply divvy up your project to a group of people, each hopefully bringing a particular skill to the table... not so with us.
One contact: your web-specialist is your
graphic-designer is your
interface-designer is your
programmer.
We understand the problem…
We understand how Architects and designers think, have a deep interest in Knowledge Management and Information Design, and have oodles of nous in the design and development of all things web.
Meet Gary
Meet Gary. He’s an Architect with a passion for functional design, enjoys making things, and has bucket-loads of experience.
His job is to:
- liase and collaborate with you on your project
- choreograph the site’s graphics and typography
- develop it’s information-architecture and structure
- write and meld all the XHTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and MySQL coding required by the design
Architecture website Architecture website Architecture design website design design design method method method function function function Modern Modern Modern modernism functional functional functional integrity bauhaus seidler critique aesthetics javascript CSS XHTML Textpattern mySQL jQuery Apple Macintosh Apple Macintosh Apple Macintosh Apple Macintosh geek lefty liberal standardsCompliant W3C blueprint 3d CAD video style stylesheet DOM QuickTime Safari InternetExplorer Firefox web internet browser standards interface UI GUI computers technology science productDesign graphicDesign practicality make build art sciFi building programming coding structure theory plywood economy efficiency drawing typography fonts pixel jpeg gif png noFlash create creative gumption tenacity sceptical Architecture Design methodology Function Architecture Design methodology Function Architecture Design methodology Function confident confident confident confident abstract knowledge appropriateness button link menu navigation structure structure structure
inquiring analytical thoughtful confident flexible playful creative strong intuitive humorous flavourful experienced charismatic tenacious sensitive confident confident confident confident confident
Meet Gary
Meet Gary. He’s an Architect with a passion for functional design, enjoys making things, and has bucket-loads of experience.
His job is to:
- liase and collaborate with you on your project
- choreograph the site’s graphics and typography
- develop it’s information-architecture and structure
- write and meld all the XHTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and MySQL coding required by the design
Meet Ingrid
Meet Ingrid. She conjures up many of our best ideas and handles much of our research, putting her degrees in Information Management, Social Science, Psychology and Arts (Majoring in Linguistics, English and German) to good use. She also helps-out with the pixel-pushing – lately all of her spare time and energy is dedicated to
Baguette, our irrepressible mutt.
Together Gary and Ingrid:
- design and formulate a design response to your brief
- prepare a ‘paper-prototype’ illustrated document to help you visualise and understand the design
- take your comments on-board and prepare a ‘working-prototype’ website for you to peruse
- finalise your site’s design and behaviour together with you and complete the build to your satisfaction
- provide support and advice into the future – we don’t cut-and-run.
all-sorts websites. never bitter. often sweet.
Content is the key.
When you get down to the nitty-gritty, websites have one primary function: to deliver content effectively. Our job is to ensure that the design and structure of your website meet this seemingly simple requirement.
The content needs to be indexed by web search-engines; the programming of the site and its Content Manager need to be machine-readable to facilitate this. Accordingly, we hand code our sites in standards-compliant, semantic HTML which (amongst other benefits) ensures that they are search-engine friendly. Our publishing tool of choice, Textpattern, is a mature, robust and flexible Open Source content manager: a web application designed to help overcome the hurdles of publishing online, and to simplify the production of well-structured, standards-compliant web pages.
Each design is formulated directly from your requirements — we won’t fob you off with a regurgitation of the latest fashion trend.
We enjoy this stuff too much to ever repeat a design: you can be confident that your website will be unique, designed for (and around) your message.
Experience counts in web development…
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Take our elevator to the top…
or continue with our news…
News
09 Mar 06
Harry Seidler dies
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.
03 Mar 06
A busy few months…
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 designs.
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.
05 Feb 06
To scroll or not to scroll…
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?