Hey Everyone
I will try and give you the best overview i possibly can in regards to the project, but this is the first real project that i have really taken seriously all the other sites i have developed have been flitters that i have thought up on the off chance and thought it would be a good idea, this site is something i am looking forward to doing from the heart and would love to have a designer that feels as passionate about the project as i am.
The Background
I am looking for a designer to work with me on a project i am doing currently and i would like to now give you a little bit more of an overview of what the design for the site entails and what i ultimately would like it to have in it.
If you don't mind me explaining what the site is all about then please carry on reading otherwise just skip to the bottom of this section.
The Howell's Nest was a little project i started when my girlfriend fell pregnant with our first baby, she already has 2 children but this was out first together the problem was my sister was moving away from the 10mins she uised to live from us to the now 2hours away from us, the only thing i could think of to help her stay in touch with the baby and the family was to build a website and this formed the basis for what is now going to become The Howells Nest V2.
The main page basically neesd's to be a portal style design harnessing all of the features the site has to offers into that one page but at the same time not making it look cluttered, the initial ideas i had come up with were to have little 'snapshots' of the recent changes on their for example, Recently Uploaded Video, Recently Uploaded Pictures that kind of thing, i would also like at the top a blog style news section where i could put little snippets or maybe that would snapshot for the blog module that i would add into project this is something we could talk about?
The current site is something i designed myself, it is not that good and really shows nothing of what i would like the new site to be at all, you can check it out at
www.thehowellsnest.com also their is a gallery which i have also skinned myself, this i need to be able to intergrate into the design as it is a fundemental part of what the site is about.
The style i am looking for is really fresh easy to navigate modern looking template. The colours i have used on my current site are a little outdated, i don't really want to use these again on the new design unless they can be made to look the way i want.
The System?
One of the things we have not decided on yet is weather or not to integrate this design into wordpress or joomla, i would be interested to talk to a designer & coder about this.
What Do I Want?
Attached to this post is a wireframe drawing i drew up while i was at work today, it dosent include everything that i want on the front page but it gives you a small overview of some of the things i would like included on the homepage.
The site needs to have a feel of simplicity to it, because some of the people that use it are not all that computer literate.
On the wireframe i have included a;
- Logo Section ( i dont have a logo)
- News 1
- News 2 I am not 100% sure if i am going to have this as 1 box or two but it will take the feed from the most recent blog entry and show it their for the user to see.
- A Menu Section
- A Video Section
- A Photo Section
- A User section, here i am going to have sectors of all the family made into a flash box so when u scroll over it it shows you the name of the family member and then u can click it to go to their profile like this - (I dont expect you to do this)
- The Footer, this will outline that all images etc are copyright The Howells Nest and all the usual bumf, the circle with a number 1 was an idea i had to maybe have an own flying off the edge of the screen.
What i have missed off;
- A login box
- A Graphic to let the user sign up to the newsletter
- Somewhere on the site i want a section like 'find us on' and then links to our Myspace, Facebook, Virb & Flickr accounts (Like they have here)
I have left alot of white space which maybe you can utilize, maybe we can talk about it in more detail on the telephone?
Color Pallet!
The colours i had thought of were like a fairtale type, maybe some yellows or purples but i would leave this down to you 100% i would however ask that if i dont like it we could change it?
The reason i ask for these colours is every member of the family except me is a girl so....i really like the start dust effect they use on
this site
Your Flexibility
I would like to leave 90% of the overall design down to you, i would however like to see any design you have done before we make a definite decision on positions and things.
My Budget
I have put aside $600 for this project, i am looking for either a full site designed or a full site designed and integrated but we could talk about this in more detail.
What i would like from you?
Could you please outline in this post what you can offer, and also a lnk to your portfolio and/or your recent work, any applications that fail to provide this will be ignored.
I would like to keep all of the contact through here until a designer and/or coder is selected as it will be easier to keep track of everyone who has applied.
I look forward to hearing from you and hope we can both work together on this exciting project
Many Thanks
Richard Howell