Design for Websites and Apps

Below are some websites and apps I have designed, either for my current company Relocity, through the in-house agency at Schoos Design, or for my own clients at Hutchison Design Studio. In some cases I directed the design while working with developers. In other cases, I created and developed the sites single-handedly, including coding in Actionscript, HTML, CSS and Flash.

Relocity Website

Relocity is a company that is trying to refresh the relocation business, an industry that has not evolved to meet the needs of millennials and forward-thinking, tech savvy consumers. To reach this audience, the website needed to have a distinctive urbane, modern vibe. We also wanted to avoid the feeling of a "hard-sell", opting for an approach that simply evokes an upscale, creative lifestyle, peaking curiosity. For this reason, the home page of the website begins with a bespoke video that we produced to tantalize the viewer with artsy, slightly edgy images of life in L.A. Please click the image below to visit the original website and watch this original video.

Once the user's interest is piqued, however, it is time to deliver the core selling points of the company. This was a challenge, because Relocity's business model is unique, something that is new to most people -- How to explain a new service to the public without boring them with too much text? My approach was to include lots of imagery, including both graphic elements and original photography. The photography maintains a consistent artsy, edgy style that is casual and sophisticated. Likewise, the graphics are simple and stylish, creating a modern vibe. Below are several sample pages that suggest the range of visual elements used on the site.

In 2020, it was decided that the original Relocity website needed a refresh. As the business evolved, our services became almost exclusively B2B rather than consumer driven. For the new website, I helped I curated content, and edited or wrote all the copy.
VISIT THE NEW RELOCITY WEBSITE HERE.

Beach Nation Website

The design for Beach Nation's website is intentionally loose and casual, with an organic, distressed look appropriate to the beach-y brand (see Branding-Beach Nation).  The site is modular so that it can be responsive to all screen sizes and devices. It includes a CMS system with a back end so that the client can add promotional content and update calendar events, etc. The same CMS system updates features for the app (below).

The success of the website also depends on the extensive photography that I provided, including pristine design shots, promotional shots with people, and food vibe shots.

The Beach Nation App

The design of the Beach Nation app is based on the design philosophy and graphic from the website, with additional interactive features such as feeds from social media and push notifications that promote the latest deals. The app consolidates the branding across all platforms while providing an opportunity for expansion into more interactive features as the company grows.

Get the app at the Apple app store or from Google Play.

Bottega Americano Website

Bottega Americano’s branding was designed to accommodate the digital space equally as well as the printed collateral and interior design. The black-and-white color scheme is restrained and classy, allowing the client’s product (food and restaurant decor) to “pop”. Typography is classic and elegant, with just enough ornament to add interest.

Graphic elements are “broken out” of the "signature graphic" (see Branding-Bottega Americano) to serve as smaller graphic elements in the website and printed materials. They are used throughout as accent pieces, borders and space fillers, establishing a constant connection with the brand.

The website also makes use of photography that I curated and compiled into giant murals inside the restaurant. These romantic images of Italy create a vintage vibe that supports the brand. The fact that the photography is black-and-white also supports the color scheme.

To see more, click the image or visit www.BottegaAmericano.com.

Schoos Design Website

The Schoos Design website was designed to optimize SEO for the company by dividing the site into categories of work done by the firm and creating separate domains for each of these categories to capture traffic using keywords (i.e., "restaurant design", "residential design", "hotel design", etc.). A composite page (shown below) serves as the landing page, directing users to the different categories. The modular design also makes a pleasing visual composition and clarifies the structure of the company for users. I personally created all wireframes and artwork for the site as well as writing all the copy.

Click on the image or visit www.schoos.com.

Here are three early comps for the Schoos.com landing page, showing alternative layouts. Although these designs might be more artistic, we decided that simplicity and ease of use trumped artistic innovation (though I believe the final choice is still artistic).

Morimoto Websites

Several years ago, before the advent of mobile web devices, Morimoto restaurants asked me to create websites for their newer restaurants based on the branding Schoos Design had created (see Branding-Morimoto). I created the sites in Flash because the design concept needed to be similar to the existing sites for other Morimoto restaurants (which used Flash) and because the minimalist design was perfect for the modernist brand. Morimoto's ownership has been very happy with the sites and I continue to modify and update them to this day. Unlike many Flash sites that have long load times, I designed the Morimoto sites to load quickly with many nested "movies" that only load as needed. Once mobile sites became indispensable, I created mobile versions of these sites which consist of conventional web pages optimized for mobile viewing.

I personally handled all the coding and implementation of these sites, including programming in Flash Actionscript for the animated desktop versions and HTML and CSS, plus a some Javascript and PHP for the mobile versions.

Note: Morimoto's websites are currently being redesigned.