Claudio Mendonca » webdesign

BRGems Webdesign Project

Cláudio — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:10:29 +0000

BRGems is a classic company in the jewery industry. This website was created so their clients would be able to view the pieces online. Unfortunately the website is not open for the public, so you will only be able to see the login page.

Adore – Website project

Cláudio — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:59:28 +0000

Adore is a gourmet space in Belo Horizonte, for classes, parties, and other food related businesses. This website was created on a partnership with Zoo Comunicação, a great agency in Belo Horizonte. The final design of the site ended up a bit different from my original design, but it conserved it’s core features.

Visit Adore

Casa Mari – Website Project

Cláudio — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:40:15 +0000

CasaMari is a nice buffet in Belo Horizonte. They provide a great work for company events, parties, delicious eatable gifts, and much more. It’s always a pleasure to work with this client, since he is one of the most high end tech enthusiasts, and he is always willing to learn new and cool ways of communication.

This website is build on the wordpress platform and uses the amazing Thematic Frame. I designed the layout and and Kate Mag did a great work in coding it.

Visit CasaMari

Websites for the masses

Cláudio — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:41:20 +0000

Website design has always been a difficult thing for me in Brazil. For several reasons. The main reason until now, is that most of the brazillian customers are not willing to spend a “bigger” amount of money to develop a CMS and the coding behind a dinamic website, that will cost 2.000 to 10.000 Reais ( 1.000 to 5.000 US$ ). This happens for a reason. In Brazil, thigs does not work as in US, that the web presence of a company is responsible for a good share of the companies income.

Brazillian professionals are known for their skills to get a good technology and make it cheaper, without loosing a lot of it’s quality. So the idea is: Not all of our clients need a fully customized website, with a revolutionary layout and navigation methods. In fact, most of them just need an almost standard website, easy to use/update. Most of my clients, would be more than happy to know that I can offer a cheap option, semi-standard website, for less than half the price they would pay for a custom website.

For this kind of option, we can’t afford to pay coders, so the option is to use some free CMS, like blog tools ( wordpress, for example ) or more complex tools, like SquareSpace.com. They developed a powerfull tool to create websites, based on templates. The great thing about SquareSpace, is that their templates are very customizable, and they have a good amount of templates at your disposal.

For the hardcore user that knows a bit of coding, you can access the CSS to have control over it directly, or you can control the CSS and some (X)HTML funcions through a graohic interface.

Their interface to create websites, is complex, but doesn’t get even close to the complexity of codes. An advanced PC user can create his own website with a bit os knowledge of Photoshop and how sites work.

It is a paid service. A very affordable paid service.

Thank God most of my clients aren’t advanced PC users.

If you know other great tools to create websites please put them in the comments section.

IE6 No More

Cláudio — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:59:09 +0000

I have always been a mac user, so I don’t have much experience on Windows based systems, but I do know that most of Microsoft software look crappy for me. Word, and Powerpoint are my nightmares at work. Mac versions of powerpoint and word are crap. On browser subject, I just safari and firefox. I do agree that Explorer is a largely used browser, by the simple fact that it already comes with windows. IE6, is a dinosaur among the browsers and should be eliminated. I do agree the initiative of IE6 No More, but I also think that one of the main objective of these kind of movement is to communicate with the IT freelancers, that assemble those PCs. Instead of just instaling windows for your client, take a few more minutes and download, install firefox or chorme for them, and remove IE from the Start menu, so they will automatically use Firefox or Chrome. This way, we gradually will get rid of the crappy software.

This will help because the informed user, who purchases his own computer and installs his own OS, etc. knows what he is doing, and is constantly updating his software. The casual user ( moms, and grandmoms ) that not always know how to use a computer, have to rely on the IT freelance technician to install their OS, and plug the cables, etc. So, this message should also be meant to the IT freelancer.

IE6 No More