Webvanta is a new tool, just lunched this fall. Geared to designers who know xhtml and css but don’t want to deal too much with the back end, Webvanta provides a comfortable environment for dynamic site development. Chris Haupt, Webvanta’s Chief Technology Officer, came to show my class at Art Institute how easy it is to take a xhtml / css template and build a build a dynamic website around it with Webvanta in just a few hours.

Having spent a lot of time working with WordPress, it is exciting to see some other options and see how other tools can handle dynamic content. Webvanta hold a lot of promise. It is a hosted CMS, so it is a bit different from the open source CMS options out there. Check out the Webvanta website.

Also, it is a good idea to point out that they have a design contest starting up. Build something in Webvanta (for free) before the end of the year, and you could win a nice MacBook Pro, or an iPod Touch. You can follow them on Twitter for more info.

I am excited to announce the new website for award winning author, Kim Chernin. Kim has a fantastic new book coming out in September 2009 called Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere at Home: A New Vision of Israel and Palestine, which is available through Amazon. I recommend picking it up. Kim has been lovely to work with, and I am very excited that she is publishing again.

Also this is the first site I have made where I collaborated with students from Art Institute in Sacramento, where I am currently teaching. Major kudos go to Kate Poole and John Slingerland who worked with me on this site. Kate came up with the initial design and John did some of the conversion of xhtml into the wordpress theme.

Please find out more about Kim by visiting her site.

Earlier this spring it was my pleasure to help Joe Black develop his new website for the consulting business he is getting off the ground. After many years of experience in the Human Resource industry, Joe has some great ideas that will help companies find the right people for their teams.

It was a pleasure to be able to work with Joe on his site, which has a very nice simple and elegant design. Please visit the Strategy Capabilities site here.

I have a great deal to post on MeadDesign. The first in a series of posts about work I have been doing is about Kalexo. What is Kalexo? Funny you should ask. Kalexo is a startup in silicon valley that builds really amazing collaborative software. Need to work with a team remotely on a project? These are your go-to guys.

The Kalexo Teamwork software combines task management, file sharing, text chatting, voice chatting, screen sharing and tons more. I have been helping them with bits and pieces for the last few years, kind of on the periphery, but I am really impressed with how useful and cutting edge the software is. I strongly recommend you check them out.

Joesph Rockman and I have been working on the Channel Qi site in fits and starts for over a year now. But now I am proud to say in the past two weeks we have pushed through and made it a priority. Now it is open to the world. Joe is great to work with. I really appreciate his calm and accepting demeanor. If you are in the New York area, I would recommend connecting with him about the services he offers.

Joe’s web site is managed through WordPress, like many of the others I have worked on. He will be adding and updating content himself as he sees fit. It is still in its infancy at the time of this writing, but I have confidence that Joe will make it shine over time. Visit ChannelQi.com!

I am please to annouce the new BlueLux Photography web site. I have worked with photographer Robin Richie over the past few weeks to develop this simple, elegant web site for displaying her beautiful photography.

Robin specializes in photographing bands and is wonderful to work with. If you are in the Sacramento area and need some photography work done, I highly recommend contacting her.

Robin’s photography can be found at blueluxphotos.com

I am proud to welcome Addie Juell to the growing family of websites designed and built by MeadDesign. Addie is a talented photographer in New York City looking for a nice simple, elegant website to display some of her commercial work. It was a perfect match for MeadDesign. Visit her site here.

The website features nice use of Lightbox 2 by Lokesh Dhakar. The coding for the website is nice clean xhtml. It was a pleasure to make and Addie is great to work with. If you need a photographer, be sure to give her a call.

I just finished building a small website for Gerry Washington at Teleports International Corporation. This is the first site of static pages I have built in a long time, but I think the design is really striking and I hope that the site helps Gerry and his team reach their goals.

I noticed while building this site that Dreamweaver really has come a long way as a tool for building web sites. I generally use it as a fancy text editor most the time, but there is a lot of untapped potential (at least, untapped by me!) lurking under the hood. Building a static web site rather than just a template to be used with a content management system encouraged me to play around a bit with some of those other features. Although, I can’t imagine having to build a huge site manually, page by page. That is just crazy.

Well, I have the honor and privilege of presenting Al’s web site. Al has been absolutely wonderful to work with. He has jumped in with both feet and it has really been a very positive and productive experience for both of us, I think. After a few attempts to find someone to help him build a site he could control, he found me. My eternal gratitude to Mary Beth Barber, with whom I work at ADAC and who introduced me to Al. I could tell I would enjoy working with Al from the moment he called me on the phone. He has one of those voices that grabs your attention and draws you in. It must be part of his training. When I read the poetry on his web site, and really anything he writes, I can hear his unique voice so clearly. Thank you Al, I look forward to working with you more in the future!

I have been so busy, I have not had time to post some of my recent work. So here we go, before the holidays I did quite a bit of design work for Sabine’s production company called WinterGirl Productions. Besides the logo pictured here, I also designed a postcard, flier and the beginnings of a web site.

Sabine is a film maker and is currently working on this wonderful documentary called Breaking in Two, which has support from an organization called Women Make Movies. Sabine is great to work with. She has a great sense of vision and an amazing work ethic. I look forward to our continued efforts to build out her web site.