Jason Duerr - Portland Oregon Graphic Design, Web Design » Web Design

Vitesse Moto Website

Jason — Sat, 01 May 2010 06:57:05 +0000

Vitesse Moto is a fashion-forward motorcycle boot design company base in Nice, France.

Vitesse started from a blank sheet of paper with a single purpose in mind: design performance motorcycle boots that you will want to wear everyday when you are riding and after you step off. The single most important goal is to get more riders to wear boots.

The site had to reflect the streamlined look of the identity, but still have enough flavor to tell a lot of the brand story on its own. The site is multilingual and ties into a storefront dedicated to each language and/or region. (Currently French and English, expanding to other languages as translations are prepared.)

I had the opportunity to break out some of the French I haven’t used in years to do a bit of translation. They weren’t perfect, but it helped move things along. Okay…they were pretty terrible.

Smith Teamaker Website

Jason — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 07:15:05 +0000

A new tea venture from Steven Smith, the creator of Tazo and Stash, Smith Teas are handcrafted in Portland (really) and have succeeded in converting me to a bit of a tea drinker. The site does a good job of representing the brand’s basis—heavily rooted in centuries-old tradition with a keen eye on simplicity using the absolute best ingredients available.

A noteworthy feature is the Batch Lookup. Each box of tea is marked with the batch number which is linked to an online database where the customer may look up the origin and harvest dates of every ingredient in the package.

Everything is built atop WordPress and Magento (eCommerce) with a dash of custom PHP to manage the batch lookup system.

Polara Studio Website

Jason — Sat, 02 May 2009 01:10:08 +0000

Polara Studio is a commercial photography studio in Portland, Oregon that’s been in business since 1993.

After some identity magic from the inimitable Steve Sandstrom, the previous iteration of Polara’s site was…lacking. With such a large body of phenomenal work, one of the most difficult tasks proved to be selecting representative images to showcase their range without drowning visitors. The design is ultra clean and simple but still edgy.

I made use of lots of jQuery on this one. The lightbox that displays the full size photos is about as streamlined as it gets. Though it still has a few tricks hiding in there (keyboard shortcuts and the like).

Columbia Forge Website & Identity

Jason — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:27:16 +0000

Through initial design explorations, it became apparent that the existing logomark for Columbia Forge and Machine Works would be a limiting factor in the creation of an improved design concept.

A company that’s been around as long as Columbia Forge and Machine Works deserves to be represented as such. The existing mark didn’t convey any of the experience and expertise that comes with time. The updated mark utilizes key imagery from the existing mark in a more polished and clean way. This pairs with more unique type that strengthens the overall look and lends a bit of heritage to the mark.

The design concept for the website incorporates the refined logo as part of a more unified identity with strong type and striking photography.

Cycle Oregon Website

Jason — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:43:55 +0000

Cycle Oregon is a week-long recreational bicycle ride held annually in different parts of Oregon. Nearly 2,000 participate each year and are supported by vans, meals and facilities. Proceeds from Cycle Oregon are donated to charitable projects in the communities that host the event along the route.

There’s a lot of information packed into this site. Before this teardown and redesign, it was a pretty involved hunt to find anything. It’s still quite dense and deep in spots, but locating the information you’re looking for is a much more pleasant experience.

A number of photographers participate in the ride and they take loads of gorgeous photos. The approach here was to utilize that photography in a striking and beautiful way while keeping the layout incredibly clean.

VIV Magazine Website

Jason — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:09:24 +0000

VIVmag is the world’s first fully interactive digital magazine for women.

The previous site design lacked focus and wasn’t meeting the immediate goals of increasing awareness of the magazine and gaining new subscribers.

This design has a clear subscribe call-to-action and explains how the magazine is different than other publications both from content and technology standpoints.

This site is to be in place for the duration of eROI’s larger project of implementing exclusive web content for subscribers as well as community-driven elements to maintain engagement with readers between issues.

Allianz Life Websites

Jason — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 23:33:46 +0000

Allianz needed to redesign and combine all of the public-facing websites for their North American business units.

The new look and feel is consistent – yet flexible – through the use of a modular grid system and tightly focused style guidelines. The result is a vast improvement in brand consistency and usability.

Production involved integration with both new and legacy .NET functionality and CMS while maintaining consistent builds across multiple staging, QA, production and failover environments.

I was initially contracted to redesign their public sites, but took on subsequent projects working in conjunction with the Allianz in-house team including Flash development for interstitial pieces and online video presentation, DVD interface design, and design of a comprehensive e-mail marketing system.

NSF International Website

Jason — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:55:43 +0000

NSF International has been the world leader in standards development, product certification, education, and risk-management for public health and safety for more than 60 years.

Minneapolis agency Olson+Co orchestrated a sweeping brand refresh and awareness campaigns.

I was contracted as lead designer on the project to consolidate NSF’s multiple and wildly inconsistent websites. A strong brand reinforcing design is carried through the entire site.

A Flash-based interactive CD–Safetytown–was produced as part of the same the same consumer awareness campaign.

I concepted, storyboarded, illustrated and worked with another developer to develop the functionality of the CD, parts of which have also been leveraged as web content.