The new website at Nick on Wine has certainly been one of the most exciting projects at Blog What? Design. Let me tell you a little bit about this “intoxicating” website…

Mr. Passmore was referred to me from one of my previous clients. The concept for the website he needed was simple yet precise. It would be a website that would showcase his articles and… his life.

“His life?” you ask? Mr. Passmore is one of the premiere wine critics in the world. His articles are featured in publications such as Forbes, BusinessWeek, and many, many more.

The task presented to me was certainly exciting. Mr. Passmore provided me with a selection of photos he wanted to incorporate into the site. As you can see, three of those magnificent wine photos are featured at the top of the design, and a few more around presented around the rest of the site.

Next came the color scheme. What better colors to choose than burgundy and champagne? Mr. Passmore already had a great, modern logo designed, so I grabbed these colors right from his business card.

The features of Mr. Passmore’s site suit his needs perfectly. The focal point of Nick on Wine is ”Nick’s Wine of the Week.” Each week, Mr. Passmore publishes a new article showcasing a wine of his choice. I was able to make use of WordPress’ custom fields, and provided him with a dynamic template and form in which he could enter his rating of the wine, food pairings, etc… Each new “NWOW” is featured on the front page, while the previous wine is archived.

Another aspect of Mr. Passmore’s career is his corporate wine events. To showcase this, I featured a page-link at the top with a promotional bit of information he provided me with. Alongside the explanation of his services is a lovely photo Mr. Passmore during one of his events.

Nick on Wine also features Mr. Passmore’s latest articles and a chance to comment on them, along with his own wine blog.

The final (and one of the most humorous) aspects of Nick on Wine is the gallery page. Mr. Passmore needed a static page which he could edit easily and constantly with photos and captions of his choice. I installed a few more plugins to WordPress’ TinyMCE editor which allowed him to create a table to drop any number of photos he wished.

So, looking for a great wine to accompany your meal tonight? Need to supply a corporate “wine and dine” event? If you’re an expert or a novice, looking for a great deal or the top of the line, Nick on Wine certainly has something to offer. Blog What? Design had a pleasure designing and developing Nick on Wine, and we know you’ll have the same pleasure reading Mr. Passmore’s articles as well!

Here’s the latest addition to the portfolio! Crunchy Mustard!

Crunchy Mustard is a personal blog of mine and Christian’s along with our friends Yurij and Ryan. This blog was launched a few months back and features a wide variety of absurd news stories and findings.

I decided on this excellent graphic from Simon Oxley because of its absurd nature and the way it fit into the theme. I put a fishbowl around it and voila: a strange blog logo (but a perfect fit!) was formed.

The aquas and greens fit together naturally; they’re reminiscent of a pond scene. The blog is run strictly off WordPress with your basic features in the sidebar. These include: an about blurb with some pretty funny author photos, the top commenters for the month (along with a link back to their blogs!), your basic blogroll, search spot, category display, and meta section with RSS and login “stuff.”

Our extra cool features include: a small sidebar chat room (it pops with each new message!), and a display of recent readers via mybloglog.  Not found in the sidebar are these great plugins: ajax comments for the permalink pages, and a special “dofollow” feature to allow our visitor’s sites to be crawled by Google!

And the summer is off! It’s been a busy one so far at my end. Currently, I’m blogging to you all via laptop from the Catskill mountains at which I am attending a Ukrainian dance workshop. We’ll be performing at the end of the week for around five to seven thousand people. Woah!

Anyways, there are quite a few projects I am balancing and tying off the loose ends for. These sites include:
Nick On Wine - written by the extremely distinguished wine connoisseur Nick Passmore who has written articles for Forbes, Business Week, and many other publications.
Andrew Stuttaford - currently we’re finishing up and revising hundreds of Mr. Stuttaford’s archived stories (He has written for National Review and The New York Sun among others).
Twirlin’ - An awesome steppin’ site I’m working for my friend and colleague Tyrone.

Plus, I have quite a few projects to catch up the portfolio! So far, it’s been quite a jam-packed summer and it seems it won’t let up much anytime soon. Come September, Christian and I will both be returning (and starting) college. (Fordham University and Barnard College at Columbia University respectively.) Our plans are not yet set in stone, but we will certainly be taking on only select projects come the school year to allow for not only school work, but our own online projects, and *gasp* a social life!

Itching for a design? Stay tuned to see when our schedule will next open up!

View this latest portfolio item over at… our portfolio!

I had another excellent time working with my friend, Tyrone II at SEMTAN Media on the redesign for The Moderate Voice once again. The original concept was actually presented by one of the contributors to TMV (it’s quite a large blog!) and I took the idea and ran with it.

To really pick up on the new age of media, I chose vibrant blues to match bright blue sky. I used heavily contrasting colors to make things easy to read, and styled your basic “Arial” font to look like a totally different one! To really make the design “click” I used famfamfam’s AMAZING silk icons. (Check ‘em out!) I also created simple header 2 tags for the sidebar, so that Tyrone could throw in any sidebar headers he needed with out fussing around with lots of code.

The left sidebar displays the “meat” of the blog (dynamic page listing, login spot, author features, categories, blog roll) while the yellow (right) sidebar caters to the chunk of ads TMV has displayed. This really allows the reader to separate the two, and to migrate over to the ads only if they’re interested (while still pulling in some income for TMV!)

The code I set up allowed Tyrone to drop in quite a few different plugins as well. Take a look!

Here’s a post I put up on Crunchy Mustard a few days back and received some great feedback for. Hope you enjoy this cross-post!

There’s a new project over at Successful Blog, and I thought I’d give it a shot. It’s a group writing project and the question is: What’s Your Blogging Metaphor?

Blogging has always been a hard thing to explain to the generation before us. “Web 2.0” and “blogosphere” are things they just don’t know about. Rather than ignore this fact, I’ve come up with the perfect metaphor for blogging.

Blogging is like a county fair. You know… funnel cakes, completions, and all. Everyone gathers around - your family, your neighbors, kids, grand parents, friends. Each person brings something unique - money for amusements, pies to sell, or BBQ equipment to compete with.

All of these different attractions at a fair make up the diverse spectrum of topics in the blogosphere, or the entire “blog world.” Although food dominates at a county fair, Aunt Suzie’s pie represents a gadget review blog while Uncle Tom’s secret BBQ technique represents a fiery political blog.

Aunt Suzie proudly brings her pie to the table. She takes look at every other ladies’ pies (even though she knows hers is the best) and shares recipes, comments on the shape and style of each crust, and new ideas for next year. Think of this small congregation as a blog. Whether its a gadget or a pie, there’s constant review, commenting, and chat going on.

Now Uncle Tom… he’s a little more competitive. You see, he represents the fiery world of political blogs. Uncle Tom knows he’s got the best BBQ recipe, and he’ll fight to prove it. The men gather ‘round and openly critique each others’ rigs and styles. No holds barred: review, commentary, and discussion still occur. Although none of the men want to admit it, each of them are learning new techniques, styles, and ideas during this event.

Catch the underlying theme here?

In both of these examples, discussion and feedback are the defining point. This is exactly what a blog represents. The blogosphere represents a world of discussion and commentary… just like your local county fair competitions