Ketchup
The New and Improved JaxzDesign.com
I haven’t been very active here lately and I had considered taking down the blog completely. I’ve decided to leave it be until the new iteration of JaxzDesign.com arrives. Speaking of which, here’s a sneak preview…
The new JaxzDesign.com will be purely design related so I have setup “Faith n Begorrah” for my personal posts.
Wedding Congratulations
Congratulations to my best mate Mr. Fiachra Ledwidge on his upcoming marriage to the gorgeous Gemma.
I knocked together a wedding blog for the guys here and some more stag party tee’s are on the way :o)
Video Stuff
I am now officially finished with wedding videos and I just recently sold my Canon XL2 and was lucky enough to get a great deal on a second hand, high definition Canon XH A1, a really amazing little camera. I owe ya Ian :o)
Most of my evenings lately are spent trawling the high definition channel of Vimeo.com an amazing video sharing website. I am selling my Steadicam JR, an great piece of stabilizing kit for cameras under 4 lbs. If anyone is interested get in touch.
I have also started work on a short film script, but it’s a long way from shooting. I still need to figure out the camera and get up to scratch with After Effects. Myself and the same Mr. Ledwidge above have done some rough screen tests so it looks like he’s on board for the main part. I can’t give too much away yet but if you liked Donnie Darko, The Nines, Vanilla Sky or Memento then you’ll probably like it. It deals with sadness, death, lost love, addiction, suicide, multiple personality disorder (Schizophrenia) and an interesting concept on time (with a twist at the end!).
Check out Eohon Films in the future for updates (website is designed and on the way soon!)
Next Restoration Project
A recent very sad happening, made me realise just how lucky I was to have my Dad still around and healthy so i’ve been spending as much time with him as possible. We’ve started the search for a 1960’s Ford Escort Mk1… our next restoration project. This has always been a project close to my heart and one that i’ve wanted to do with Dad for years. We finally decided to get started and we’re both now hunting down a decent Mk 1 rolling shell. The Ford Escort Mk1 was a beautiful car and in my opinion, is still today streets ahead of most modern cars in terms of styling.
I love the car in general but it’s also important to me because it was my Dad’s first car when he was around my age. My Dad is a bit of a whizz mechanic and when he was younger he got his hands on a Mk1 shell, cut off the arches and put on bubble arches, 13 wheels, bucket seats from a crashed rally car, he put in a 1500 engine with a 1300 head and the cherry on the cake… he gave it the paint job above. He drove the car for about 4 years himself before finally selling it on to get another mk1. I asked around and apparently it went on to bigger and better things with it’s next owner on the racing circuit. We are going to retrace Dad’s steps exactly and by the finish we hope to have an exact replica of Dad’s first car.
Work Projects: Present
Work wise things have been very interesting as usual. Just a few completed projects include…
Totally Dublin
Begley’s (scroll down the page for the final designs)
Highlife
Design Ireland
Work Projects: Future
The most interesting new project I’m working on at the moment is probably Rant R Rave so far it’s been a great project to work on. We are in the developed design stage now and beta is due early next year. MediaContact.ie is also due for launch soon.
Work Projects: Past
The boys in iFoods.tv seem to be doing very well, popping up on TV shows like Dragons Den and Ireland AM! Niall was also spotted on The Times website and they even made it onto Mulley’s blog!
Net Visionary Awards
I was pleasantly surprised when I was shortlisted for this years IIA Net Visionary Awards for the Web Designer Excellence category. So pop by and vote for me Tony O’Donohoe: Lightbox and my colleague Tomek Kaczmarek: Lightbox.
I’m also running for President… …so please give me your vote on election day :o)
Au Revoir Jaxz Blog
I have setup a new personal blog on a different URL so Jaxz Blog is no more (for the moment). An all new and improved iteration of Jaxz is designed and awaiting coding when I have time to get to it. I’ll stick up a preview of the new design in a few days.
JaxzDesign.com Ripped
You have got to be fooooookin kidding me!!
This loverly fella was brought to my attention by a London Web Design Studio, who he is also ripping designs from.
Formed in 2007, Personal Web Creation is a creative-thinking web development service based in Westland Michigan USA. We deliver highly effective, creative and compliant design solutions for your company or businesses Internet prescence.
He seems to have left out the fact that it’s someone elses creativity.
Photoshop Lightroom
Sweet little application from Adobe for Photoshop for all the photographers out there.
Golden Spider Winners
The Lightbox crew kicked some spidey ass at The Golden Spider Awards last night snapping up the Best Web Design & Development Agency award. There was tough competition for the award from Arekibo, Webfactory, Clearscape, Magico and Webtrade.
“Lightbox have demonstrated excellence by designing and developing high quality standards compliant websites for a long list of clients showing innovative and usability features. Some of their clients are amongst tonights winners.”
As well as winning Best Web Design & Development Agency three other projects which I worked on also snapped up awards with Newstalk.ie picking up Best News & Digital Media Website and iFoods.tv snapping up Best User Generated Content Award. Pix.ie also received the Best Social Networking Website award (Lightbox was responsible for designing the Pix.ie branding).
Pictured above Top Left: Tom from Lightbox Top Right: Niall and Seany from iFoods.tv Bottom Left: Michael from Newstalk Bottom Right: Marcus from Pix.ie
Some quotes from the Golden Spiders website…
Newstalk.ie have coined the phrase “listener friendly” when they launched their new website. Popular you-tube clips, the addition of a visual gallery of presenters and guests along with podcasts and opinion polls offers the user an option to interact with daily news, sports and breakfast shows.
iFoods.tv is a new way of interacting with food lovers worldwide which features uploaded videos, cooking tutorials, recipes. The site profiles two top chefs to help you bin the cook books and have online assistance 24/7 with its fun and interactive tools
Pix.ie provides community based online photo sharing for Ireland. Designed for simplicity, their site enables people to create free accounts where they can upload, organise and share their photos. Their host of features, applications and excellent navigation makes sharing memories a joy
Congratulations to the guys at Newstalk, those crazy iFoods kids and to Marcus at Pix.ie. Congrats also to the Cully and Sully boys (if you haven’t tried their food then leg it out now and buy some - very tasty) and to Grandad over at Headrambles (a great Irish blog).
Design Portal Listings
Thanks to the following design / css portals who have linked to Jaxz Design.com
Featured on Daily Slurp for 19th June 07
Featured on homepage of Coolsitecollection.com for Sunday 24 June 07 with a rating of 3/5. The archived listing can be found here
Listing on CSS Based with a rating of 4.5/5
A nice short review of JaxzDesign.com on Web Design Daily
JaxzDesign.com featured on Veanndesign.com blog on the Weekly Roundup. Jaxz Design.com was featured under ‘Attractive Websites’
“JaxzDesign - website of an Irish web designer based in Dublin. This site features a relatively clean and simple layout with a good contrast (i.e yellow and black).”
Featured in VeannDesign’s Sunday Weekly Roundup on June 17, 2007
Two and a half billion.org
Two and a half billion.org is an interesting concept developed by a good friend. It enables users to write and publish their stories online. Other users can then vote and decide on the most popular pieces which will then be published in a book, the sale of which will go to a charity (or charities) chosen by the Twoandahalfbillion.org users.
I have just completed the brand identity / website design and the CSS is now in development so for the moment check out…
The Logo and Designs
Bebo Account
Holding page
Stop by in July and check it out, post a few stories and contribute to a worthwhile cause you may even become a published author!