WCities came to onwired looking to add a fresh look to their travel and city guide website. They were in need of an eye catching, highly functional design that would catch global attention. Naturally, they chose OnWired.
Our UI team ironed out a crisp, comprehensive layout, and (our magicians) the designers, turned around quick designs and icon sets. Voila, they loved it!
“We really love your design!!! This is perfect!!”
And with that we say…
“You’re very welcome.”
We had the pleasure of working with a man who knows the true meaning of “GO”. Jim Garman, the owner of GoRealty, needed a website to match his unique approach to real estate. You see, each of Garman’s clients hold a special place in his heart (like this guy) — and what better place to put this on display than the internet!?
He needed one main site for his business and 12 more sites for each of his agents. We knew just the right formula, of course. Our design team rolled out two custom themes, one for the GoRealty.biz and another to duplicate across the other 12 agent sites. Jim loved them both:
“You nailed it. #1. Go Go Go Go GO GO.”
After hours of hammering on Wordpress our developers returned to their home caves and Jim got to show the web-world his passion.
“PEOPLE LOVE THE SITE!!! Thank you guys so much. Seriously, it looks incredible.”
Hedrick Child Care knew they needed a Web presence, but weren’t sure which way to turn. Luckily…or maybe fatefully; no, luckily fate stepped in. Little did we know our very own OnWired accountant was Hedrick’s accountant too! Small world, eh?
Mickie Hedrick came to us looking for two Web sites: one for Hope Valley Preschool and another for Durant Road Preschool. She needed colorful, child-related designs that would appeal to young parents but not break the bank. We based the two sites off one wireframe, but crafted two unique looks. Mickie was pleased.
“You have done an amazing job and I am thrilled.”
With the sign-off on designs we started pumping out and polishing code. To help Mickie out with the update process, we rolled the two sites into Wordpress, supplied a little training, and away she went. Mickie was very pleased at the end results and happy to hear she will be able to make changes to her site anytime she pleases.
“I love my sites! You did a great job and the personal service I have received from everyone has been outstanding.”
We’re just glad we could help another business leave its mark in the Web world.
The night was sultry. A cacophony of ringing exploded inside our headquarters. It was the phone. Integrated Laboratory Systems (ILS), a provider in research and testing services for toxicology, pathology, histology, and environmental and information sciences (whew!), had decided to put the fate of their website in our hands.
They needed a professional design with excellent usability and enough edge to set them apart from their competitors. Our designers spent hours doing their very best detective work, tearing apart the existing site, analyzing the data, and deducing the best way to proceed. Then they leapt into action. After days of toil, they had solved the case.
Next, the design was shipped off to OnWired’s developers, who were already hard at work in their secret lair. Their first step was to kill Joomla and get ILS into something more suited to their needs. Enter ExpressionEngine. After a few tweaks here and a few hacks there, the new site sprang to life. Then, with keyboard-callused fingertips, our developers flipped the almighty DNS switch and introduced ILS’s new web presence to the world.
It had been nearly a half-decade since our fearless leader, Tony Chester, designed TCS. Back in those days — when Flash’s unorthodox usability was ruling the roost — designs stuck in conventional “uncool” HTML began embracing whacky content architectures. Looking back, it was a dark age for web design.
Thankfully those evil usability dinosaurs have long since expired (for the most part), so TCS circa-’08 could get in today’s swim.
Bill Murray and Barney Oakes, the ringleaders at TCS, wanted a total refresh. To get with the times, they wanted a CMS platform that would allow them to maintain their own content, in addition to being able to blog and share articles. We delivered a design that suited their customers over ExpressionEngine, all while maintaining their existing identity and color palette.
Today our friends at TCS are enjoying their sparkly new website and blogging their hearts out. And, as with every customer, their happiness is our happiness.
You guys are great! Thanks for being such a valuable partner!
In the latter part of 2008, as the economy shifted from bad to worse, we noticed a rapid increase in job resumes. We knew we couldn’t house every job-seeker who came through the door, though the building list of applicants struck a soft spot in our hearts.
In January, once the hustle and bustle of the holidays was over, we kicked up the idea to start a new creative job website internally. Unlike other job websites, we wanted our service to be targeted to more than just designers and developers. After all, we figured the economic crisis at hand was a community problem — and how else would the copywriters, SEO specialists and social media experts of the world find jobs?
Your Web Job was born.
We took three weeks to flesh out a good identity for the brand, and another month to develop a proper back-end for the service. After over 40 work days and 250 combined hours of work time, Your Web Job successfully launched to a warm ovation in mid-March.
We get lots of sales leads. Some are serious people with serious budgets. Others are not-so-serious people who are just shopping around for the best deal. And then there are others that just make us scratch our heads. Here is one such email:
“I need an ecommerce site so I can sell lgbt jewelry.”
Ok. Color us stupid, but we had no idea what LGBT jewelry was. At first, Tony thought that if you rearranged the letters a bit, LGBT might be some sort of text-message abbreviation for “low budget”. One quick search on Google, however, and our eyes were opened: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender. Not at all what we were expecting. It turns out that Kristy sells wedding and commitment rings (very nice rings in fact) to the LGBT community, which should be quite profitable now that Ellen and Portia have legally tied the knot.
Kristy wanted a simple, classy ecommerce site that provided her clients with easy access to her catalog of ring designs. After seeing some of our initial design mockups, Kristy had this to say:
“Yesterday when I opened these I was dancing around my office. I guess it’s a good thing I work by myself. I really can’t say enough great things about you guys.”
As usual, we turned to ExpressionEngine to power the back-end of the site. Aside from being a high-powered content management system, it was extensible enough to implement a great shopping cart system.
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In 2007, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill approached us about redoing the website for Kenan Flagler Business School’s Executive Development program. This was just a small part of a larger redesign initiative being done by UNC, but we were more than happy to take part.
The old Executive Development website was plagued with information overload. There was far too much going on and no clear indication of where the user should click. Luckily, the UNC team already knew that and was working on streamlining the content. It’s truly a joy working with clients who understand good communication on the web.
After our very first round of graphic design work, Barbara Perkins, Director of Marketing, had this to say:
“You have hit the creative mark in my book.”
After Barb’s sign-off, we got busy slicing and dicing, turning our Photoshop comps into a fully-functional site with a lovely .NET back-end. The fine folks at UNC have been so happy with our work that we’re now doing some email marketing and pay-per-click advertising work for them.
Michael Muise, an internet professional, needed a spankin’ new logo for his Drop the Mike blog. Mike wanted a play on words logo with a sleek, professional look. OnWired handed Mike a few logo mock-ups and, of course, Mike chose the best of the bunch to display on his site.
He’s even got his own post about his logo hunt here.
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In late 2007, we were approached by Chris Johnson, product manager for Remodulin, a pharmaceutical product for treating pulmonary arterial hypertension. For those of you that didn’t go to medical school, that’s high blood pressure in the lungs, apparently a not-so-pleasant medical condition. Their website was suffering from old age and needed to be revamped — stat. We were more than happy to put on our scrubs and perform a little cosmetic surgery.
Note: We’re not doctors, but we play them on TV. You may have seen us on NBC’s Extreme Corporate Makeover: Homepage Edition, yet another lame reality show inflicted upon America by the writer’s strike.
Once we made the initial incision, we discovered a new and exciting world of regulations and limitations regarding the marketing of pharmaceutical products. We wanted to give Remodulin’s site a facelift, a tummy tuck, and some porcelain veneers, but we were thwarted at every turn!
For the facelift, we decided to include photos on the site of active people enjoying life, but that was much more challenging than it sounded. People at the beach? Can’t be near the water because it presents risk of infection. People skiing or snowboarding? High altitudes are out. Someone on a bicycle? Overexertion is bad. Happy family? Can’t include children. After a few hundred options, we finally settled on some photos to use.
Then came the tummy tuck. Instead of an old-school static website, we set up ExpressionEngine, our CMS of choice. A company that specializes in marketing for pharmaceutical companies provided the initial copy for the site, which we quickly loaded into the templates.
We thought we were done and we could send the site to the recovery room, but then the text revisions started rolling in. We truly had no idea how intense the review process for a pharmaceutical site was. Let’s just say that we had to pull out the crash cart, charge the paddles to 300, give the site a zap, and then get it stabilized in the ICU.
Thanks to Dr. Chester and his surgical team, Remodulin.com made a full recovery, went home, and had its new look revealed to the world on live national television. Chris was overjoyed with the finished product:
Special thanks to the crew that designed our website, Onwired. You have done and will continue to do a great job.
Our work was so well received that we’re already in talks with United Therapeutics, Remodulin’s parent company, to work medical miracles on another site.
Michael Simpkins at Networks and Web Applications recently contacted OnWired about a new logo. His technology firm does everything from server installation to networking to web design and development, and it needed a bold, confident corporate identity. OnWired had just created a logo for one of Michael’s other ventures, Death Care Web Sites, so we jumped at the chance to do more work for him.
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Networks and Web Applications, a technology company in Pennsylvania, spun off a business venture focusing on a very specific niche — the death care industry. They offer web development services to cemeteries, funeral homes, and death care suppliers, so they needed a new brand identity that would encompass the entire industry. Just in time for the International Cemetery Crematory Funeral Association convention (yes, it’s real — I couldn’t make that name up if I tried), Death Care Web Sites was born, and OnWired was happy to provide them with a shiny new logo.
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One fateful day, we received a phone call from Steve Wappel, the man in charge at StarQuest Dance. He said “Take a look at my site. You’ll know why I’m calling you.” We looked, and yes, we knew immediately.
StarQuest’s site was designed in 1994 and hadn’t been updated since. It was screaming “old school,” all the way from its bubble letter logo to its 1985 neon color palette. You almost expected to see a photo of a grinning Ed McMahon on the home page. But alas, we were denied that little bit of guilty pleasure.
After a couple of long talks with Steve, we realized he was working hard to modernize his business’s image. StarQuest is one of the premier dance competitions in the country. At the competitions themselves, everything is cutting edge — high-end video production, impressive sound and lighting rigs, and laptop-wielding judges. Steve realized he needed to bring that high-tech image to his site as well. On top of a full redesign, he chose a customized content management system along with some really cool functionality.
StarQuest’s target market is teenage girls — a very different audience than our typical corporate client. Upon receipt of our first design concept, Steve sent a simple three-word response:
Needs more whimsy.
After a few rounds of revisions, we delivered a design that was sufficiently whimsical. We then turned to Expression Engine, our CMS of choice, to do the heavy lifting. Thanks to some creative thinking, we were able to integrate both YouTube and SlideShowPro into Expression Engine’s already impressive functionality to provide StarQuest with powerful customization capabilities.
Heck, it was so good, we became a featured showcase on ExpressionEngine.com itself.