This is some fresh design work that is being converted to a WordPress template for a high-profile sports blogger. Should be a blast at launch!

Summer Vacation is the Best!

Volan took a week off for a quick jaunt up the coast terminating in Bar Harbor, Maine. As it was my first trip to Maine I was not entirely sure what to expect.Needless to say I was rather pleasantly surprised with the sheer beauty of everything and everyone we encountered on our trip. I highly recommend this trip to anyone interested in a week of awe inspiring views and incredible seafood. Perfect.

Proper food served simply

As most things happen in my life, it was a coincidence that I stumbled into the world of Frankies Spuntino, et al. I have been a spectator of the phenomenon that is web entertainment and 3 years ago that lead me to the vice broadcasting system. I had completely forgotten about it since the show that I really love – High Shredability – has been on hiatus since early 2009.

Well as luck would have it, last fall I headeded over there to see if there were new episodes and I came across their show Munchies and an episode on Frankies Spuntino. Being one who is in constant experimentation mode I was delighted to see that they are making home-cooked stuff that people-in-the-know are flipping out about. The Frankies attitude about simple things done correctly really inspired me.

Proper food sparks controversy at home

Today in the New York Times the Frankies restaurant Prime Meats was reviewed an given 2 stars based on the fact that they don’t take reservations and don’t accept credit cards. I am delighted to hear that someone else doesn’t think that food should be a false-luxury. By false-luxury I mean you go to the place for the thing and don’t incur any costs (until a month or so later). I love the concept of ownership and to me nothing screams ownership like handing over a sawbuck or 10 at the end of a transaction.

This is where the controversy lies. Certain people don’t agree and think that this is an act of pretense or ostentation. I think it is in-line with the current state of civilization. Who is to say that you need to give away 3% of your transaction so their companies accounting department has 5 more minutes to cook their books. If you read the review you’ll see that the wait staff is dressed in the garb of a long-past society whose desire for the earned and the durable were paramount.

Pretense be damned, I’ll bring cash.

We’ve got a great relationship with the geniuses at Wit. If you need some great ad work done, these are the folks to call. they’re about to have a great new website that has been a long time coming.

Growth feels good on Dekalb Ave.

Volan Studio is really excited to have moved in with one of our clients – Alee & Press. The new space is cool, but we are still trying to get situated since it was such a busy April.

One of the best things about the new office is the scent of Edward’s key lime pie baking across the railroad tracks. Wow it is tempting! Also loving San Francisco Coffee being less than a block away. Great local coffee is so great and so accessible now!

I’m really proud of the site and I promise to update it way more often than version 1.0. I’m intending to blog quite a bit. Since turning 30 my memory is not quite what it used to be (I know, ha ha I’m not old…) so I’m having to rely on more tools to keep my life straight and I feel like this is a great method for keeping it all in line.

Designing For the Non-Profit World

Metropolitan Counseling Services (MCS) was at a crossroads in 2009. Growing and Changing to adapt to the new economic reality they needed a new site that could do the same. Bringing their clean aesthetic into a simple, cohesive look seemed a simple task.

Updates, Donations, and Workshops – oh my!

While MCS is busy providing quality, affordable counseling and psychotherapy to adults in the Metropolitan Atlanta area, they don’t have time to stop and take a day to make updates to their website. The hard-line decision to redesign the site came from the desire to present the info in a simple cohesive way that was simple to update internally. WordPress seemed the obvious choice. With a few modifications and a comprehensive theme we were able to get them on the road to self-sufficiency in no time.

Visit mcsatlanta.org

Pesto Freshness on the Web

Working with the folks at Hope’s Gardens was a real treat – literally, we ate a bunch of the best pesto on the planet much less available in Atlanta. Starting from a home-made site that had some decent content and a bevvy of great press we were able to grow the web presence of the artisan pesto company into a very useful tool for their customers.

Crisp, Artisanal, Modern

Drawing on inspiration from modernism to garden freshness we designed a look and feel that is as much garden as it is art. We did a bit of in-house photography to round out the strongly cohesive look. Paypal integration is on it’s way once the shipping issues associated with a decidedly fresh product are completely ironed out.

Visit hopesgardens.com

Make It Fast, Make It Simple

This project came out an old relationship and the focus was speed and efficiency. We designed a template for this site in just a few hours and were able to roll it out into a customized WordPress theme in matter of hours. Getting Contractors off the ground quickly was the real task on this project and we did it with flying colors.

We Started With Nothing But A Few Adjectives

We designed this company from the ground up. They had no logo, no concept, nothing. This was a fun project because it was a real “bang-it-out” setup. All that we were told was that they wanted to be modern and geared toward contractors. We decided to leverage the easily identifiable contractor-grade colors and a simple expressive font to achieve a truly rugged, memorable design.

Visit contractorsflooringoutlet.com

Best-in-Class, Ideal Client

When you have the best-in-class tool for removing tumors you are really eager to get the word out about the process. That is exactly what Denver CyberKnife was looking to do and we were there to help. Offering a robust content management tool (WordPress as a CMS) seemed the logical path since we were working with a very tech-savvy group with extensive web experience. Luckily it has paid off, over the past year they’ve been keeping the site up to date and serving their clients with current information regarding this miracle technology.

Here’s to Clients Knowing What They Want

First impressions are a simple enough process, in this instance our first impression of the design and layout was (with little changes) the final product. It was a joy to work with a client who had such a clear vision and grasp of the underlying technology that gave us the freedom to create a simple experience that is as rich as any we’ve offered before.

Visit denverck.com