I mentioned the deal in my last post, but we were able to get the new site for Promoto Promotions up and running over the weekend. Jason Merritt, the previous webmaster, was helpful in getting the full server access I needed and after that it was a matter of feverishly bringing the new design online.

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!