Green Beginnings Gift Basket Company (GBGBCo) needed an online storefront in order to sell their variety of “green”environmentally friendly gift baskets for infants, toddlers and mommies.

I chose the “Zen-Cart” open source store software to create the site as it was not only simple to design for to get them up and running quickly, but also very robust and full of all of the features they had requested. Plus being open-source, there is a plethora of tutorials and support available not only for me to develop the site, but for my clients to utilize and maintain it after I had completed it. GBGBCo also needed a logo in order to brand their website and basket tags and business cards. With the logo and site design, they wanted something that stood-out from other cookie-cutter shops, but had a simple, clean and high-end appearance. Click here to view the website of my very satisfied client and purchase some of their fantastic products. Visit Website »

Below are a few logo designs I’ve done recently. With both designs I’ve added my origianl thumbnail ideas so that you can see the processes that went into creating the final look.

Model Builders

The first I did a while back for Model Builders, Marc Havican/FilmMkr’s website. He wanted something very 3D looking and glassy. After I sent him the initial designs we went on to create the final version by mixing a few designs together. The Logo was created as a vector file  in Flash, but taken to Photoshop for the glassy effects.

Scale Model HQ

After seeing the Model Builders logo above, a friend of Mr. Havican’s contacted me regarding creating a logo for his website. He loved the glass look of Marc’s and wanted a similar finish. He already knew that he wanted the words formatted as seen below, scale above model and next to HQ, but the rest was up to me. I asked if he was interested in any imagery with the logo and he mentioned several modeling tools that he wouldn’t mind seeing. I sent him the thumbnails and he chose the one with the airbrush as the Q’s line. He wanted to see the HQ in a serif font though. So after a few more revisions with the font and colors, the logo was finalized as seen below. He (and his wife) were very happy with the result. While seen here over my background color, this logo will be placed over a black background I’m told as soon as his site is completed.

Interested in a logo design? Contact me for a quote!

Scale 1/20 is the Maschinen Krieger blog of Lin.K, a top-notch Ma.K modeler and friend of mine living in Japan.Lin.K needed a website to post news from the Ma.K world as well as show off his own creations. I created this design based on the box-design of the 1/20 Raptor model kit from Wave. After the design was approved I turned it into a WordPress theme and set everything up for him on the server. Since Lin.K isn’t a web designer, WordPress is the perfect tool to allow him to manage what should become a large website. View Site »

A while back I promised to help a friend of mine, Matt Tomczek with his website. He was going to throw some ideas and art together and have me create a template for him to put all of his content into. Many months went by while waiting for him to have the time to do that. Last week I was playing around with some WordPress theme designs and showed him a retro computer based one I was working on. He loved the idea and asked if he could have it for his design with a few changes such as changing the main color from a blue-green to orange.

We decided that a WordPress-based site would be perfect for his needs and he came up with the title RmOS ver 1.0 (Robot modeling Operating System). WordPress is a blog-tool, but is very customizable in order to make it fantastic for almost anyones web needs. It allows the site owner to easily add and edit content without having to know much at all about web design. (Not that Matt doesn’t know his way around some HTML. ) Visit the site »

Mig Productions is a company whos modeling products I use a lot and love. When I found out a few years back that they had a forum I joined up to learn from some of the best modelers in the world. That forum and their old hosting provider however didn’t work so well. Frequent crashes and errors made many users frustrated. I promoted my services to the owners and eventually they contracted me to find them a new host and improve their forum. I upgraded them to the latest version of PhpBB (version 3) and modified a theme to suit the style of the rest of their site. So far these past few months the site is working great and everyone is very happy. No more crashes and far less spambot sign-ups. I remain an admin and assist them with any forum related issues they need assistance with. View Site »

After doing quite a few WordPress sites with custom themes for friends and clients alike I now feel confident enough to make a few free themes for public release. My second is titled Saturn5 and is a funky, techy, Wip3out Pure design inspired theme. This theme makes use of transparent PNGs for some interesting semi-opaque effects on the background image of a Saturn V rocket engine.

Theme Download and Information
You may wish to customize this theme further so here is some information to help you accomplish that as well.

Download Saturn5 (saturn5.zip 797k)

Header Font: Bring Tha Noize

Screenshot:

Preview this blog using the Saturn5 theme »
Return to original FichtenFoo blog theme »

WordPress Theme Design Service:

Want a custom theme designed? Plans starting at $300! Click here for details.

After doing quite a few WordPress sites with custom themes for friends and clients alike I now feel confident enough to make a few free themes for public release. My first is titled Voice of the Worker and is a decayed, cold-war, soviet, constructivism styled theme. This theme makes use of transparent PNGs for some interesting semi-opaque effects on the background paper.

Theme Download and Information
You may wish to customize this theme further so here is some information to help you accomplish that as well.

Download Voice of the Worker (voiceoftheworker.zip 797k)

Header Font: Soviet

Screenshot:

Preview this blog using the Voice of the Worker theme »
Return to original FichtenFoo blog theme »

WordPress Theme Design Service:

Want a custom theme designed? Plans starting at $300! Click here for details.

This is the local modeling club which I belong to. It is the Three Rivers Chapter of the International Plastic Modelers Society. The old website was in need of a redesign to make updates and communication between club members easier. To accomplish this I used readily available tools such as WordPress for the bulk of the site which gives multiple people the responsibilities for updating the site as opposed to just one individual, ‘Gallery’ to give the members a place to exchange photos of their own modeling work and from various events, and phpBB Forum which gives the members a place to converse outside of the monthly meetings.

Premier Medical Associates needed a revised website to replace their old one and it’s outdated information. This was a fairly straightforward project using mostly CSS and Dreamweaver templates to build the bulk of the site. This will allow for easy updating by PMA’s staff. Visit their site »

Technology Infrastructure Solutions needed a new site design that was easy to navigate and got their whole company message across. As requested, I designed and implemented this site based on the design of their new company identity and brochure.