Why not? The media rich device that is the iPhone, is also a good place for a media rich website. Besides, it’s less work  for the end user when they don’t have to zoom in to read everything. That’s right, the iPhone friendly version of reino12.com is here. Though this mobile version of the site is limited to the iPhone and iPod, it is only the beginning. There are plans in the works for an Android version, a Blackberry version, and your typical mobile version.

So why design mobile sites for phones? If you don’t know the answer to this question, then you probably have never tried to navigate through  a site with a small handheld screen. Rather than strip the entire site of its graphics, its a better user experience to use the graphic capabilities specific to the device.

With a little php and css modifications, you have yourself a smaller yet powerful website in the palm of your hands.

Here are some sample pictures:

Icon displayed in phone

iPhone site advertisement banner

]]> http://ciosfx.com/2010/02/26/iphone-site-for-kingdom-of-heaven-ministries/feed/ 0 http://ciosfx.com/2010/01/27/nuevos-comienzos-new-beginnings-design-concept/ http://ciosfx.com/2010/01/27/nuevos-comienzos-new-beginnings-design-concept/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:32:39 +0000 admin http://ciosfx.com/?p=140

Before the entry to the new year, I was asked to design for a campaign about New Beginnings (Nuevos Comienzos). It was to take place throughout all of January. New Beginnings, is about a fresh start to a new year, a reinvention of one’s image and lifestyle. In order to communicate these ideas I felt it was necessary to use Earth. What a new beginning looks like on our planet as a metaphor for the start of a new year.

In the seasonal aspect, new plant life comes in the spring. Its is the turning point of life. Dormant plant life comes back to life and animals come out of hibernation. Imagine green meadows of grass under a bright blue sky. This was the image in my head when I started this design. In fact, it is from that image that I extracted the color scheme from.

I thought it would be interesting to include a plant leaves somehow in the design, but the question was how to do it with out making the design look too busy. I tried many things with pictures, until I decided to draw a leaf myself. After playing around with it for a while I came up with two leaves that formed a V.

As for the font choice, I went with SF New Republic with a few tweaks of my own. The reason I decided on this font was the roundness of the characters. If you take a distant look at nature you won’t find a perfect square. Often you will find that things have curves more than they have sharp edges and points. Just take a look at the shape of the planet. For these reasons I felt that a round font was a good way to portray the earth.

The final addition to the design was the image of the tree branch. Do note, this is a stock image. I chose this particular image  because of its simplicity. It had that message of new plant life that I was looking for. So with a little color adjustment, the image fit right in.

The many uses this design was given: Newsletters, invitation cards, Power Point presentations, and video introductions.

It’s been a while since my last post. For this new year I figured, why not start talking about what I have been up to. I am honored to have been chosen again by CCE to design their website. Though the old design was good (not just because I made it) and suitable for them at the time, but there comes a time when re-invention of one’s image is necessary in order to move forward. I must say that this was not just a redesign of their web site, but a revamp of their web presence and capabilities.

Let me start off by mentioning that over the past years CCE has grown a large amount. The organization went from having branches in a few cities in Massachusetts to having  8 branches in different states. I mention this to give you an idea of why a more suitable website was needed to accommodate the growth.

At first glance you may be able to notice a projected style of elegance. The use of a solid color in the logo was a better fit than the original blue and red design of the logo. I found that a dark blue radial gradation in the background really made the logo and text pop in the Flash intro.

The Flash intro was created to guide the site user to the corresponding branch in their city or state. Once in the section of the site specific to the city or state, a slideshow is displayed showing information specific to the branch that was selected through the intro page.

The site also includes automatic user registration. In the registered area of the site users are be able to view content available only to them. In the registration process users are also offered a subscription to the CCE Newsletter. Joomla is my CMS of choice to accomplish all of this and more, it’s truly an amazing tool.

There is also a flash sub-navigation below the slideshow area. A more interactive approach to selecting a destination while viewing information about it.

Overall this redesign was intended to give CCE an elegant, more professional face by keeping things simple and improving web capabilities.

Visit the new CCE site at emanuelinternacional.com

Not too long ago I was able to complete a theme design for a month-long campaign that Kingdom of Heaven Ministries is hosting. The theme is “El Favor de Dios”, for my non-Spanish readers its: “The Favor of God”. After much thought, I was finally able to come up with a concept I was comfortable with for this theme. The question I kept asking myself was “what symbolizes favor?”.

This is one of those words that can’t be Googled for an image (I tried, and all you get are party favors, you know… party hats, souvenirs, etc.).  In my research I did find that favor is mostly associated with one giving another a gift.  Perhaps because one is being graceful with another, meaning that by receiving  a gift one has found favor by the giver. Now that is deep stuff!

OK. Well, back to the concept. The gifts I portrayed in this composition, if you will, are as follows: a) Growth. b) Prosperity. c) Productivity. and d) Multiplication. Pictured below you can see different variations and sizes of the theme design on the left. To the right is the stock photography that I used for this composition. By the way, I use stock photography for two reasons.  Reason one, I am not a photographer (or at least I don’t consider myself  to be one).  Reason two, if I was a photographer, I really don’t think I’d have time to set up a photo session for each projects. So there you have it, I’m not cheating. I’m being productive!

Getting back on track, lets not lose focus now! I found that the plant growing from the coins was an excellent example of growth. The coins, of course represent prosperity. The picture of the city is a panorama of New York City. I used this to represent productivity, because New York City did not get to where it is by being passive. It developed into the great city we know today by being productive! Lastly I used images of crowds to represent multiplication (crowd images are not shown below because they were too many, I didn’t want to strain your eyes!).

One thing I had in mind since the beginning, was the color scheme. When I converted the image of the city into black and white, and after some adjustments, I felt it was really the right choice. As for the red, it goes with an ongoing theme about the blood of Jesus that Kingdom of Heaven Ministries is using. Also, in case you don’t know your color theory, red is the most powerful color in the spectrum.

I hope this article has given you a good understanding on the importance and power of symbolizm in design. Please feel free to leave a comment, I would love to hear what you think and I’m sure others would too.