Gourmet
It's been a long time in the making. We hired two new team members (doubling the size of the company), moved to a new office, (tripling the size of our office space), launched a bunch of websites, (quintupling the size of our portfolio) all since the last redesign of our own website. Finally, OrangeCoat's fourth website, OC4, has launched.
We knew our old site was a bit out of date and didn't show the full potential of OrangeCoat. We made jokes about cobblers and excuses about being busy. Photoshop mock ups were passed around -- changed and tweaked. Changed and tweaked. Whiteboard upon whiteboards were filled with ideas and specs. We created flow charts and outlines. We did everything but...
Everything but create the actual website. Well, we are the cobblers kids no more.
We quit talking. We quit tweaking and changing. We cut our specs in half. We focused our Friday energy on creating a website that shows off our personality and our expertise. We started designing pages, coding specs, and writing copy. In short, we started doing.
During this process of doing we discovered some wonderful things. Ideas sparked and the site improved. We hit on a theme we liked "Gourmet Web Design" and we infused the site with this theme. We liked the word of gourmet for countless reasons but chief among them was the idea that good web work, like good cooking, cannot be mass produced and commoditized. Both still required a craftsman's touch and a passion for doing great work.
In many ways, redoing our own site was great company therapy. It made it easier for us to pinpoint our company's simple philosophy, "Do quality work with quality people". It helped us to think about why and how we all work at OrangeCoat.
To create OC4 was both an extreme pleasure and a mighty pain. The end product helped to show our growth as a company. It was something that could not have been possible without Michael and Jim on the team.
OC4 is powerful and flexible. Simple and complex. Dynamic and timeless. It is OrangeCoat and thank goodness it's live.
We are going to be writing a bunch more about this project in the coming days and tweaking and improving on the site over the coming months. But right now, Cinco de Mayo needs be celebrated. Negra Modelos need to be cracked and we need to enjoy the small victory of launching OC4.
*A couple of notes about the photo in this post. It was taken by fellow Clemson grad and friend of OC Jim Ferguson. It's of Mac's Drive In, the greatest gourmet hamburger joint in all the world. OrangeCoat could only wish to run such a successful business for such a long period of time.
18 Comments
I've been watching all along as you've worked on the site, and I have to say I'm impressed with the new design. Great work!
Thanks for the kind words my late night internet friends.
Dave, Alan and Olivier, please notice that you're all included in our friends page. Thanks for all the support, we really appreciate it. We realize that the collective wisdom of our super-smart friends outweighs what we can muster in our little office, so if anyone notices things that are out-of-whack please don't hesitate to raise your hand.
Awesome work fellas, as usual.
Like you said, Mac's is a hamburger joint. Do not ever confuse it as a milkshake joint. It would be a decision that you would surely regret.
Lookin' good guys! Keep up the good work!
Beautiful new home, guys. The leap from OC3 to OC4 is far and vast. I've heard design is in the details, and you've shown that here.
Gorgeous details! I especially love how the links are all in orange, against the b&w -
Good work, y'all.
However, I am against the math problem solving throughout the new site - 1 + 3 is one thing, but this page has 5 + 12, which I actually had to stop and think about. Could be unfriendly to English majors and other arithmophobiacs.
Everyone,
Thanks again for the kind words.
Courtney,
Maybe we should offer an English major CAPTCHA too. Something like Moby Dick's author is __________ .
My remark is Ha! Sweet! Freakin A Man (said like that dude in Office Space),
Well done fellas. I like the tone, and my favorite is the orange coat hover surprise. Reminds me of foamee.
Talk to you more soon!
Matthew
Hey guys, looks great. Maybe I'll be motivated to develop my own small plot of Internet real estate so I can have a link on the friends page. Assuming we're friends, of course.
#header {
background: url(skin/header_bkg.jpg) repeat-x 0% 0%;
}
Mr. Up, I am a fluent speaker of CSS but our site has neither a "skin" folder or a file named "header_bkg.jpg." Is this some sort of secret code?
Yep. If you decrypt it you can figure out how to make your header gradient fade in when your users monitor is larger than a postage stamp.
I'm not sure I know what you mean. There are supposed to be two distinct contour glows to distinguish the logo area and the navigation menu. If you want to take a gander at the whole CSS file it's right here.
#hd { height:240px; width:100%; background:#1e1303 url('../graphics/hd-bg.jpg') 50% 0 no-repeat; text-align:left; }
I was simply trying to point out that your two header images don't fade out into your background color (#1e1303) and its a bit of an eye sore at medium to high resolutions. Although it seems to the naked eye that the designer took the time to match these two gradients on the left and right sides of the header images the developer failed to make an x-repeating 1 x 200 px image for the background instead of using a base color. This was obviously a huge project and during a launch of this size its easy to overlook aesthetic issues like this. Otherwise the site looks fantastic, congrats.
I'm really enjoying the new look guys. Everything is fluid and fits well together. Looks like you guys have come a long way and am glad to hear you guys have expanded your business and upgraded to OC4. If you guys are still having that summer internship I look forward to applying for it. :-]
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I'm giggling with madness and pride. I'm proud of you guys.