I recently had the pleasure of working with the fine folks at Thorn Technologies on a custom Wordpress theme for their client Technology Specialists (TSI). TSI is an information technology company out of Annapolis, Maryland. They specialize in providing local, state and federal government agencies with technology solutions for their businesses.

The task at hand with this project was first and foremost a clean, professional new look for their corporate website. The second requirement that they had was the site had to be easy to update and add new content. We found that using Wordpress as the platform for the site would work perfectly for TSI’s requirements. (more…)

Holy Cow! It has been a long time since I’ve written any new posts on the site. I don’t know if any of you are still out there, but if you are I’m sorry it’s been so long. I know we all get busy and have a hard time finding the necessary time to write new posts, but I’ve been SUPER BUSY! The blog design/development business has really taken off and I have a lot of finished projects to add to the portfolio and a lot to show off. I have been working on a lot of projects simultaneously, and two of them are fairly close to 100% completion…but I’m not ready to close the book on them quite yet.

My latest project just finished up today, and I must say it is a huge improvement over the previous design. The sports blogging community has been kind to GrandmasterB and in turn, I have been turning out some of my best design work. Jesse from PistonsNationBlog.com contacted me around mid-June to work on a new theme design for his site. Before I go much further, I must mention that this theme is not a GrandmasterB original. Jesse purchased a template theme called “Bright” from ThemeForest.net and I added some of my flair to the design to incorporate his new logo and color scheme.

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The crew from Go Media are at it again as they just released their 13th collection of “stock” vector artwork. I use the word “stock” lightly, because their work is anything but! This latest release is chock full of great stuff and includes a total of 137 high quality, detailed vector pieces in seven individual themes. As always you can purchase the entire collection for set 13 or choose to purchase them in their individual packs, but you’ll pay almost $34 more if you were to purchase all seven packs separately. This set includes some very interesting stuff; I’m very interested to see the “Flow” pack in action as it’s got some really cool geometric shapes in flowing patterns…very cool stuff.

I’m not 100% sold on the 3D Skull collection, but I’m guessing with some tweaking and some experimentation they could be used very cleverly to create some cool artwork. The entire set has some really cool stuff in it which includes:

• 3D Skulls (mentioned)
• Robots
• Bound (Vines, Ropes, etc)
• Flow (mentioned)
• Too Sexy (sexy silhouettes – also seen on “Speed Network”)
• XTreme Sports
• Apparel

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In my Week in Review post for October 20th, I mentioned that I had been working on a “secret” project for a client of mine and that we would probably be launching the site on or around November 3rd. Unfortunately, we didn’t make our November 3rd launch…but November 11th is just as good. The project as you might be able to tell was a redesign of Cuzoogle. Cuzzy had been talking about redesigning his site for awhile now and giving it a more updated look. We both sat down (cross-continent) and came up with an interesting layout that would allow for him to put in his necessary ad spots as well as something that looked fan-freakin’tastic!

While this project wasn’t a completely custom theme; we did start off with the basic layout from the Simple Red Theme from Easy Wordpress that Cuzzy had been using. The biggest challenge in getting everything looking as it should were the widgets that Cuzzy uses for advertising. They took some tweaking, but they all fell into place like they should. The new theme is in between Evolutionary and Revolutionary when it comes down to it. Since the original theme had a lot of good quality stuff already built-in, we didn’t need to revolutionize the theme…however, the design elements added were HUGE improvements over the old version.

This is a quick breakdown of all of the new added features… (more…)

For awhile now I have wanted to review some of my favorite websites that I frequently visit. This review is my honest and truthful opinion. If there’s something I love or hate about the site reviewed I will let it be known. I have not been paid by the reviewed website’s owner for this post.

iDesign Studios is a web design and development company owned and operated by Selene Bowlby. Selene’s original intention for her site was to use it as a showcase for her portfolio of previous work. From the moment that I first visited the iDesignStudio’s website I was impressed with the overall look and design of the site.

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