Dreamten Studios

I recently discovered Martin+Osa (www.martinandosa.com), a new retailer developed by American Eagle that is reminiscent of Banana Republic and J.Crew. Although somewhat less trendy than their competition, their clothes are very classy and the customer service within the store is better than I've experienced anywhere. What really made me fall in love with the company was their website - particularly the slick and usable layout on their clothing detail page.

One of my biggest hesitations about shopping for clothes online is the fact that most online clothing retailers don't show large/detailed enough images of their clothing, or in the event they do, the site uses annoying pop up windows and/or tacky JavaScript-based image magnifiers. I was very pleased when browsing the Martin+Osa site to see that neither of these methods are used, but instead a nearly 1000 pixel wide image of the product is used as the background and subtle transparent layers of text are placed over top.



Each product has a number of tasteful photographs to see various perspectives and detail, and the images are instantly loaded using JS/Ajax, so no page refresh is required. Choosing different color varieties of the same product instantly loads a new background image and set of thumbnails, again requiring no page refresh. Finally, when you add an item to your cart, an animated JS shopping cart layer pops open to let you know the item is in your cart, and you again, never have to leave the page or refresh.

It is refreshing (no pun intended) to see a clothing retailer pushing the envelope and raising the bar for online clothes shopping.

The Enclave of McLean is a new luxury neighborhood consisting of four custom homes being built nearby in McLean, VA. Award winning home builder Madison Homes asked Dreamten Studios to design and develop a showcase website for this exclusive neighborhood which is set to be completed in July 2008.

Click here to view the project.

When it was time to design business cards for Dreamten Studios, I had a vision of a translucent plastic card that would stand out from traditional paper cards and convey our signature style and passion for design that go into every project we deliver. Our business cards have been featured on numerous sites including Faveup, PSD Tuts, and Freelance Switch.

Well it looks like someone really appreciates my work... a little too much in fact. Enough to literally steal the graphic off my home page and off of one of my clients pages to use on their site. Check out the live site here - http://www.jhschilderswerken.nl/ - or view the screen shot below:

Finally, after many months of design revisions and concepts, I've relaunched the Dreamten.com website. The website sports an all new design and template built on the WordPress platform. Everything from this blog, the pages, and the portfolio section are woven into the WordPress system, making updates easier (and more likely) as well as improving site features and functionality. The goal of this was to place heavy emphasis on the work and portfolio, since this is what most visitors and prospective clients are interested in. It took awhile before I finally created a layout that blended a modern feel with ease of use and clarity of information.