ONStor decided to give their website a retake. The home page had gotten cluttered and their primary need was to edit content on the fly, which the Mentorware CMS provided with very sophisticatedly. The basic branding and site layout remained the same on the home page. The inner pages underwent a major restructuring with most of them now having a structured right hand side as well as left hand side column. The right hand column provided with a convenient associated file download for each inner page.

The first thumbnail gives a brief insight to what the website looked like before we redesigned it. The thumbnails below give different looks the home page has hosted. Eventually, these images were all condensed into one Flash clip that rotated marketing messages. Other marketing collateral included newsletters and e-mail campaigns. Catch the real-thing at onstor.com

Edit: July 31, 2009 – ONStor was acquired by LSI Technologies. Here’s an updated take-a-bow-styled image that ONStor now boasts on the home page. The website might get dissolved into the LSI brand, in which case I’ll post entire-page screenshots.

ChangeUp: LA is an intense, community event with the goal of making great strides toward improving the effectiveness of five non-profit organizations.
In one weekend, a few dozen design, marketing, and web professionals meet with representatives from organizations. The organizations present their design challenges (a new brochure, updated branding, a website refresh, etc.) and the participants form groups and work to complete projects… all by the end of a weekend!

North East Trees (NET) is a community-based nonprofit organization. The founder, Mr. Wilson’s pledge to plant a tree a day for the rest of his life, and his parallel commitment to helping local youth find meaningful employment in the green industry, have resulted in a non-profit organization delivering effective training and environmental restoration programs to under served communities in the Greater Los Angeles Area.

A combined effort by Jay Stakelon, Joshua Jabbour, Liz Hale, Rob Gale, Sarah Kalbeitzer, Saurabh Dutta, and me. After (the almost neverending) discussions, designers went to their drawing boards (or Photoshop windows, in this case) and created one mock each within an hour and a half. At the end of the 2 hours, we had 4 very unique mocks. Here’s a quick rundown on the four options, in no specific order.

High-fives and cheers followed. Four mocks in 2 hours! We picked the best from each of the prototypes and went headstrong into development. Photoshop windows closed and each one of us sprung up our own fancy coding tools. It was indeed an enriching and satisfying experience. Goes without saying that I got to work with some very bright minds and talented skills. Here’s the final website mocks. You can always just visit the site and get the complete experience.

Virident started up in 2006 and their website was (and probably still is) in it’s juvenile states. However, they needed to boost their image and make their website scalable to accomodate a lot more information. This involved moving to a 960-pixels-wide layout, using a robust CMS (the Mentorware proprietary CMS in this case) and simplifying their existing content. A resource library was added to further structure the site.

The project run featured an exciting design review where I was given creative freedom to do what I felt right with the home page. Four options were given (click thru the thumbnails below) and the final mock-up was a mix and match of these options.

The Virident website was deployed about the same time as the ONStor website making these few weeks with 12 to 15 hour days. Left me with a huge sigh of relief and more grateful for the consequent weekends thereafter. Catch the real thing at virident.com.

Reaching a milestone in their run, Mentorware decided to give their web presence a revamp and redesign the information on their website to reflect their corporate focus. The site was initially based out of a template, but has evolved into something unique and focus-driven.

The site still continues to evolve as Mentorware is poised to make some major launches in 2009. Work in progress here. The first two images are ‘before’ images.

Designing one’s own site is the biggest challenge a designer can face. I’ll elaborate more into the concept and evolution of the funny name and logo a little later, meanwhile, here’s the graphics for you to indulge in.