Nick Hand's Graphic Design and Web Design Portfolio

Alrighty, well I’ve had a few things on my plate lately, and I’ve been working on a new brochure for Wasilla Physical Therapy. The final product wasn’t exactly what I’d pictured, some things needed to be changed for certain reasons, and of course to please the client, but I think it ended up pretty nice, and definitely something I wouldn’t be afraid to show off! The box of 1000 came yesterday and I was so nervous that the printing company would do them wrong, just because you never really know, but I was glad to see that they turned out perfectly! That’s job number two from JakPrints that has turned out well, so I guess I recommend them, although the ordering process seems a little shotty compared to others I’ve see. But if the work is good, then that’s all I need from them eh? Take a look at the few pictures below to see a bit of the brochure.

Enjoy,

nick

Hola! Well I’m back from my vacation, and I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of things with work. Slowly but surely I’m getting used to it again. PlumbStudios is taking some time to get off the ground, mostly because of the upcoming summer, preparing for more freelance work, and some other factors that are playing into the delay. Right now it is just me and Chelsea Beachem, you can see her work at cheybea.com. With her ridiculous 3D skills and organization as well as her code-nazi-work-ethic, hopefully we’ll get some things going later on this summer pushing the studio.

Over the last couple days I’ve been doing a major overhaul on my hosting provider setup. I previously had my many domains scattered around between 3 different hosts, and this was troublesome when I needed to make changes. Not only was it annoying having them be split apart, but I wasn’t please with the service from two of the providers. So I rounded them all up and bit the bullet and switched everything over to one GridService account at MediaTemple. Their prices are just astounding for what all you get with a basic GS account. I can host basically unlimited sites on one $20/month account, as long as they are mild-traffic sites, and I can virtually never run out of storage space! So I’m pretty excited to have it all re-organized and in one place for easy management. Also I can use Rails, setup SVN, and their control panels are just grand!

Sorry to bore you, but it got me excited to get it all setup correctly.

I’ve had some recent stacking up of freelance work, but lately a couple have been pushed back further into the summer, so that frees me up a little bit on time. I’ll post a brochure I just finished for Wasilla Physical Therapy as soon as they get printed and arrive in the mail. I suppose that’s all I have for an update right now, I’ll keep you posted.

Later,

nick

Sorry for the delay in posting, I’m on vacation at the moment, so I’ve been trying to keep my mind off work as much as possible, although it seems that is inevitable. I’m starting up a design studio called Plumb Studios, and you can see the current look and feel at www.plumbstudios.com. I think it will be a great tool to use for more collaborative projects that may come my way, as I know some very talented people and this will serve to expound on a much larger nationwide client base.

Last week I was in the Bahamas, then Florida, and now I’m in Santa Barbara, California. I get back to Alaska late Saturday night, and I’ll make sure to put up some pictures from at least the Bahamas portion of my trip when I get home. I hope this trip gives me a kind of fresh new feel and makes me ready to come back and get some work done, because I have four small freelance projects that I need to get done when I get back, and of course I go back to work as well, so I’ll be pressed for time!

I’ll keep you updated on the progress of Plumb Studios for sure, and it seems the www.potterybyhand.net project is on hold at the moment, so check back!

See ya,

nick

The new www.valleyharvestchurch.net has now launched! It is in my featured work web section to the left, so go ahead and check it out. There are still some minor details to be worked out with functionality and such, but it is certainly a major overhaul and I’m so glad to have this up and under my name and have the old version gone forever! My next project will most likely be an e-commerce site for my mom to sell her pottery online. Sneak preview of that design is here:

Later,

nick

I told you I would be talking to my boss about being able to post up work that I’ve done for GeoNorth on my portfolio. We’ve come to a sort of agreement to be able to at least put up some work, and of course the projects are entirely under the GeoNorth name. Whenever I do post work I do for GeoNorth I will be very specific on what I did and what I contributed, and stress that the work is entirely owned and controlled by GeoNorth, LLC, my employer.

Below is a snapshot of www.buyalaska.com. A government funded project that is based on keeping as much money as possible in Alaska’s economy. The concept is to spend money in the state at local businesses instead of buying everything from amazon or ebay and having things shipped in, while our money is being sent out. Many products you can find here in the state and strengthen our state’s economy rather than going outside.

Click the image above to see www.buyalaska.com. The site was built structured on RubyOnRails framework. The design process obviously was, a process… going back and forth between the client, my boss, myself, then back around again, through a process of probably 6-8 redesigns. The frontend design work and mockups was my work, every bit of beautification etc., and the entire backend development and database creation/design was done by GoeNorth’s development team.

The site has turned a pretty good bit of media as well, we’ve been featured on the Channel 2 news two times, a few different articles in different newspapers, and are being pushed through a pretty good government representative as well. This is/was the first project I took from preproduction to completion here at GeoNorth, and I think it turned out pretty nicely!

Ciao,

nick

Ahhhh sweet success! The handouts for Valley Harvest Church have arrived from the printer, and I have to say I like how they turned out. They are themed to the new brand of VHC that is also found on the web site redesign that will hopefully be finished this or next week! Take a look at the pictures below to get a feel for how they turned out

Enjoy,

nick

Over the end of the summer and the last few months I’ve been putting together virtual tours and flash slideshows for Garden Gate Bed and Breakfast in Palmer. I purchased a new HD Video Camera for the project, and I’m pretty glad with how it all turned out. I didn’t do any of the web design or layout choices, merely the slideshows and all the camera/footage/editing of the videos for the rooms.

Head on over to GardenGateBnB.com to check out the videos, they are currently streaming so if you have a slow connection the videos may be glitchy.

Ciao,

nick

Sorry about that. This past week has been quite a hassle back and forth with www.gate.com for my domain expiring, and their ‘auto-renew’ process not taking effect. So excuse after excuse, we are finally back up and running, hopefully to not have any more issues.

The Valley Harvest Church site has been put on slight hold as I’ve been finishing up another project I’ve been working on for about 4 months. I’ve been making a virtual tour of Garden Gate B&B. As soon as her new site is live ( I did NOT make the new site, please keep that in mind ) I will link it here, and you can check out the tour videos.

I setup lighting etc. for the shots, used my new Sony HVR-A1J HighDef Video Camera, and a nifty slight of hand, as well as some hours in Final Cut Express and After Effects, then published them through flash with small slideshows of images from each B&B room before the tour video.

So, as soon as those are live and up for viewing, I’ll link it up here so you can check them out in all their HD (destroyed by compression for web!) glory.
Another Day,

nick

I’m currently working on a redesign of www.valleyharvestchurch.net. I made the site when I was 11 years old, and it is in dire need of a facelift, so I’m taking that under my work belt and creating something I can be proud to call my own. Here’s a sneak preview:

The site will have a dynamically loaded photo album coming from the church’s flickr feed, as well as the event calendar syncing up with GoogleCalendar to bring the latest updates on upcoming events. Also the main ‘article’ on the homepage will be stealing the most recent post of a WordPress blog setup so the pastors/leadership will be able to merely log in to the WordPress admin site and post a new article there, without needing to know anything about html or web page editing!

I figure it’s a pretty nifty little setup, and certainly a 1000% improvement on the current site at www.valleyharvestchurch.net.

So look for this to be finished up hopefully by the end of January, then I can enjoy adding this nice piece to my portfolio!

lates,

nick

Ahhh the fall of 2007. So much has happened this year! Graduating college, getting a job as a graphic designer, building a room in the garage … Right now I have so many opportunities available for what can happen in 2008, it’s pretty exciting to see how it will play out. Business opportunities should open up more as I’m back home and hopefully get more and more known around the valley for my work. I’m going to attempt to squeeze in more personal pieces, maybe move back into some more traditional work rather than 100% digital. My photography will be picking up for sure, as I just acquired a Sigma 10-20mm Wide Angle lens, and I’m pretty stoked about that!

Hopefully everybody had a fun yet safe New Year’s, but for now it is back to the grind ya’ll, so get back to work!

addio,

nick