Time for another update on how life as an Independent Consultant is going. This one is about building the company web site.
Bringing a Company Website to Life
Today I’m hanging my shingle out (yeah I know that phrase is used for mostly law firms … so I’m overloading it for Independent Consultants). Maybe it is better to just say, I got my company website up and going: http://www.jasonhaleyconsulting.com.
The site has gone through a few design iterations and is now looking good enough for version 1 … though the content needs another iteration or two … that’s for later.
Colors
The image to the right is what the site’s first iteration looked like. The color combination (something I always struggle with), was inspired by a couple of things (both where suggested to me by Alex Busce):
Once I got the first iteration up and going … I thought it looked ‘ok’, but sort of cookie cutter - not necessarily the look I wanted. After getting some feedback from friends and family, I decided to put more time into the look and feel before announcing the site.
Update: After working on the site for awhile ... the brown starts to give me a headache ... so that is going to change soon.
Tabs
The image to the left is what it now looks like (or at least, as of the writing of this entry). The tab style for the links was inspired by one of the jQuery UI themes, though the color combination was taken from the color scheme designer colors. I created the gradient images in Paint.net. There are still a few things I want to change about the look … but they are all minor.
Logo
The (current) logo was inspired by two things: David Chappell's logo and the Museum of Find Arts logo. I first created the logo in Paint.net, but then recreated it in Expression Design – which was a better design experience than Paint.Net in this case.
After a couple of iterations on the look and feel (and spending quite some time on getting the colors I liked) … today I noticed that my friend Ben Day’s color scheme is close to the same one I ended up with … maybe I should have looked at his site before starting.
Images
I purchased all the images for the site from iStockPhoto for less than $20 and still have a couple I haven’t used on the site yet. Nice that they offer the ability to buy credits and not have to get a subscription. The original cloud image used in the first header was actually one of mine … to bad I didn’t keep it:)