Scott Interrante, who hosts our podcast Pop Unmuted, contacted me to adapt the Pop Unmuted Tumblr theme for his new podcast. Are We Even Friends? is a podcast hosted by two real-life friends, Scott Interrante and Emily Cottone, who discuss the popular sitcom Friends with twice-weekly podcasts focusing on two episodes per recording. Like the Pop Unmuted theme, the site for Are We Even Friends? is responsive and includes outgoing links to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow on Twitter.
web design
Kira Grunenberg, the music journalist behind the blog Throw the Dice and Play Nice, contacted me to move her site from Blogger to WordPress with a fresh design. After choosing the Watson theme, I provided theme customization to match her site’s color scheme, add responsive breakpoints for mobile visitors, and adjust thumbnail image sizes. I also provided content migration services to transfer the site from Blogger to WordPress, including redirects to maintain search result placement.
As the largest part of a series of updates to multiple digital platforms to help promote the band’s independently-released sophomore album, The Bridge, I redesigned the WordPress website for Graffiti6’s official website. The site is responsive for both tablet and mobile displays and focuses on Graffiti6’s discography, with custom post types used to build a discography of music releases and a lyrics section. The two sections are connected to link each song on a release to its lyrics, and in order to provide interactivity, I used Livefyre’s Sidenotes plugin to allow fans to share and comment on their favorite lyrics. (Read more on my implementation of Livefyre Sidenotes here.)
I completed this website redesign for the Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures department at Michigan State University. Objectives included the use of a fresh and bright color palette, responsive breakpoints for tablets and smartphones, improved navigation, and a more useful homepage layout. Previously created calendar widgets were also updated for efficiency by using CSS linear-gradient instead of images to build a zigzag pattern, and a custom web font (Asap) was included in headlines for a more modern, updated look. Theme built using WordPress’s Twenty Thirteen theme as a base.
Pop Unmuted is a pop music podcast on which I act as a co-host along with host Scott Interrante. I created a logo that encapsulated the bright, expressive sound of pop music while also containing an air of sophistication and authority to match the podcast’s goals for intelligent, theory-based discussion of the genre. I also launched a Tumblr-powered website to house podcast episodes and related content. Using Tumblr’s default theme Optica as a base, I edited the theme to suit our branding ideas, including muted colors, the “-x-” design featured in the logo, and a web font that mimics the logo. Logo and social media images are .svg files to ensure clarity on tablets and smartphones.
During my final semester as a Website Coordinator at the MSU Writing Center, I was asked to redesign the theme of the Writing Center website, using the original site design as a reference while removing unnecessary code and focusing on sustainability and accessibility. Beginning with WordPress’s Twenty Thirteen theme as a base, I recreated the original design, improving accessibility and simplifying custom code.
I was contacted by the staff at Impact 89FM, the student radio station at Michigan State University, to build a sister site for the growing sports vertical being covered by staff online and on-air. After creating the site using WordPress Multisite, I adapted the design of the original, music-focused website, including a scoreboard section for easy access to campus sports results and a front-page layout that improved structure and readability for the faster-paced sports content.
I developed a personal website to discuss my interests in music, web development, and social media using WordPress, creating a custom theme focused on responsive design and clean typography. I included a custom post type for Reviews, as well as custom taxonomies for Artists and Record Labels that extend across the various types of content on the site. Original written content resulted in 16,000 pageviews during the first year of operation.
Built using the Less theme by Jared Erickson as a base.
I created The Voice Internet Radio in January 2011 as a platform to share my growing and increasingly varied tastes in music and encourage new music discovery with a like-minded community of music fans. Using the XenForo software, I built the forum, then created a custom forum theme to match the logo I had already created. Content architecture highlighted popular areas of the forum, including a streaming radio station, artist news and updates, and links to free, legal downloads.