This week we launched a new official website for a great band out of Portland, OR called Typhoon. Their new album, Hunger and Thirst, is being released May 4th by Tender Loving Empire and they just returned from touring with Yann Tiersen, best known for composing the music in the film Amelie.

–Brad

-Brad Grenz

What is different about us? We believe in dynamic instead of static websites.  We make your website compatible to send and receive broadcast from other sites.  This allows all of your updates to be broadcast on any site who subscribes.  We automatically link all websites we create to the nwmoto.com network.  This allows your site to broadcast updates to the whole of the Northwest.  In our research we have found that the top referring websites to tracks on our network are other tracks through nwmoto.com news feeds.  We also set up your schedule page to broadcast as well.   This allows subscribers to have your schedule on their browser, website and blog.  Check out our current clients and feel free to ask anyone of them about our service.  Email me at whare83@hotmail.com or call at 503-339-7668.

and a whole bunch of stuff I can’t remember.

We are just finishing the site

These  have both been fun projects for me.  I love getting to talk motocross all day long.

Motocross is like my golf in the business world.  So if you need some web work lets go ride and we can discuss it between motos.

We will be updating this page more often because we have all kinds of news coming up.  We have also decided to show our prototypes to show people what we are currently working on.

See You at the Track

Wes 83

]]> http://www.dirigiblewebdesign.com/?feed=rss2&p=89 0 http://www.dirigiblewebdesign.com/?p=73 http://www.dirigiblewebdesign.com/?p=73#comments Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:23:51 +0000 Brad Grenz http://www.dirigiblewebdesign.com/?p=73 In the time since we launched the Promoto Promotions site we’ve had a few different projects on tap.

First, we created a new website for Gran Prix Cycle, a bike shop located in Albany, Oregon. We’re really proud of how it turned out. I think it’s a good example of what we can do for that kind of business. In addition to the basics like directions, photos and contact information, we embedded a view of their current inventory through a third party service they were already using.

I’ve also been working on a couple personal projects. The first is a blog I’ve created to house the Secret History of Indie Music. Basically, over the years I’ve had occasion to write these fictional band biographies for local musicians and friends. People seemed to enjoy them, but I never had a good place to put them. I don’t anticipate the site being updated all that frequently, if only because these things are pretty challenging to write. I basically wait for the inspiration to come for a particular band before I even try to start writing. As such, the magazine style design is a good choice for the site. And being the internet it’s also really easy to include photos of the bands along with MP3s of their music.

My newest project is called Gamer Blahhhg. It’s just a few days old yet, but I created it to be a satirical take on the videogame blogosphere. I’m still working on developing a voice for the site, but it’s fun to write for. Once I register a domain name for the blog I can start promoting it in earnest.

I did end up going through a few different header image designs. When we initially prototyped the site I knocked together a quick example logo that looked like this:

But Elaine, who own Promoto, provided an official logo which is pretty cool. She had an older design with a similar aesthetic, but the bike itself in that image was really old school. The newer version reflects modern bike design. I at first tried it on a panoramic image I stiched together from some old shots of a race:

Unfortunately because I didn’t want to cover up the racers on the track I had to place the logo to the right and it didn’t look to good. Next I tried flipping the photo, changing it to black and white and adding a gradient effect to blend in the logo:

But this still didn’t make me happy. I had been trying to reserve some of the space to the right of the header image for ad placement, but I eventually gave up on that and commited to a full width image, something I thought would simply look nicer. The final design simply overlaid a cool panoramic image salvaged from the old site with the logo simply overlaid to the left:

Doesn’t look like much shrunk down here, so visit the new site to see it in all its glory!

Also made a point of visiting an advertising client who Wesley had been meaning to check back with again for a while but could not because of his injury. It was a good 3+ hours in the car and I think he was a bit wore out by the end. I was suffering from a lack of sleep by the end there, too.

Still, a very productive day for us. We’ve got money coming in and the Promoto deal should go a long way to solidify our plans to create a network of track sites with which to promote the sport and sell advertising on.