Over the weekend, we launched the beautiful new design for Catherine Caine’s newest website, CashandJoy.com.

Instead of just showing you the awesome design, I got on Skype with Catherine and asked her some questions about how the process worked for her, what she brought to the table, and what we were able to create together.

Catherine and I have known each other for less than a year, and I already care deeply about her and her wonderful, meaningful work. I think you’ll fall in love with her too. (Plus she’s got an amazing Australian accent, which is such a treat to hear opposite my boring-to-me Michigan accent.)

Interview-y goodness

Design showcase

Here’s Catherine’s design, so you can see the bright, eye-popping colors and get a feel for the energy of her work and her website. She also has a spiffy new Twitter background, which you can see in action here at her profile.

CashandJoy.com Design

P.S. If you click through to her website, scroll all the way down to the footer for a special graphic surprise.

One of my favorite people in the whole entire internet asked me to design his Twitter background, and also needed tweaks made to his existing Thesis design. (As if I would tell him no, haha.)

Charlie Gilkey of Productive Flourishing has a very simple yet meaningful design aesthetic, and it is translated very well into all the areas of his online life. His website sports a lovely and understated design based on Thesis, and his planners (which I love and use near-religiously) are a perfect example of something being simple, yet able to handle complication without being confusing.

(In case you can’t tell from my description, Charlie is one of those people who is very picky about what he wants, because he KNOWS what he wants – but is very zen about the process of having someone else create it for him. For me, this is the perfect kind of client to have.)

Charlie Gilkey’s Twitter background

Twitter background for @charliegilkey

Charlie uses the colors green, brown and orange to signify his personal blend of growth, change, and grounding. It’s all very organic, and it was a joy to work with vibrant colors like that. (I’m a color junkie!)

Tweaks to his existing Thesis theme

The next thing I did for Charlie was create a customized post gutter (similar to Copyblogger’s post gutter and Illuminated Mind’s post gutter), that includes related posts, bookmark and feed links, and the TweetMeme button.

post gutter @ ProductiveFlourishing.com

As you can see, it is understated, yet full of great, relevant information. This way, any of Charlie’s readers can share or save the post link, subscribe to his blog feed if they haven’t already, or keep scrolling and leave a comment. A post gutter like this invites more interactivity, without jumping into the reader’s face with lots of loud colors, spinning graphics, and sparkly purple unicorns (okay, that last one was just silly).

Oh, and that post in the screenshot? It’s the one he posted on Martin Luther King Jr. day this year, called The Change-Maker’s Creed. I recommend you give it a read, because it’s completely awesome and bears reflection.

I’ll bet you need some design work too.

If you need a Twitter background design, WordPress work, or Thesis work – you can leave a comment here and I’ll reply. I’d love to have your business. :)

My trusty minion (okay, he’s not actually a minion, we just like to call him that) Michael Beckwith and I finished a really fun job recently for Amy Crook at Antemortem Arts (fine art and custom painting!).

She had a new design, and no real desire to code it to WordPress – so when I found out what she needed, I offered my services. Until the end of 2009, I am still offering WordPress theme coding (from your own design) for $250, which is, quite frankly, a STEAL.

(As of January 1st, it’s going up! To $325! If you need this service, get your deposit in by December 31st so you can keep the awesome current deal.)

Here is a screenshot of her lovely awesome design:

www.antemortemarts.com

Amy does lovely art, and the holidays are coming up, so go look at what she has. One of her beautiful paintings would make the perfect gift, don’t you think?

I just finished up a recent project, which was taking Martin Whitmore’s website theme and creating it all over again using Thesis.

Martin’s awesome and lovely webmistress, Megan (the Idea Blueprint Girl), hired me to recreate Martin’s theme in Thesis because, well, their WordPress installation was from way back in the dark ages, and they were getting spammy code and horribleness as a result. If they upgraded WordPress, it would break the theme; and if they just put in Thesis as-is, the site wouldn’t look nearly as awesome as it was supposed to.

Several days ago, Megan and I teamed up in an emergency fix-this-crap-right-now session, and I upgraded WordPress, uploaded a shiny new copy of Thesis, and made all the custom CSS changes in less than two hours. Woo!

A few minor tweaks later, the site is all done! Now, I can’t really show you a ‘before’ picture, because it looked almost exactly like it does now. For real.

Here’s the site:

martinwhitmore.com

And if you don’t know Martin’s fantastically NSFW zombie comic stylings? You’re so completely missing out. Plus, dude, you can buy tshirts.

One of my recent clients, who was a total joy to work with, is the lovely and talented Kim Wood. She launched her new website, Unconventionalist, at the end of September this year, and I was fortunate to be her designer!

I created a new logo, and a website design based on Thesis:

A spiffy Twitter background:

And fantastic double-sided business cards:

Kim lives in a totally different time zone than I do, but we were able to communicate very effectively through email for the entire process. You should visit her website and find out how to manage your business without losing your soul.