Having designed the Jayz Corporate Identity a while back, and then styling his previous site, it was a welcome experience taking it another step further with this latest re-brand. This re-design focused much more on personal branding, something which I think I need to pay a little more attention to myself, but which Jayz does really well.

So what do you think of the Jayz new look?

www.strictlyhalaal.com

The first of them, a site which hasn’t launched yet but is pretty much completed is www.strictlyhalaal.com, which serves as a listing/directory site for “halaal” certified businesses.

Strictlyhalaal.com uses a few great free plugins:

• GD Star Rating allows for users to give each listing a rating.
• Collapsing Categories Plugin created that cool expandable category list on the homepage
• Ad Minister allows you to created widgetized ad spaces to add dynamic ads or content

Next up is Learningcurve.co.za

Learning Curve is a dedicated education technology supplier, representing premium brands such as Adobe, Apple, Dell, Autodesk and Toonboom. This was the first time I have setup an e-commerce website using WordPress and proved to be quite a challenge to begin with but also turned out to be a really valuable learning experience, no pun intended.

To power the e-commerce side fo things I used the wp-ecommerce plugin, which is a really powerful yet free plugin system allowing you to turn your WordPress site into an online store in a few clicks. Customizing the online store’s appearance was a bit of a mission for starters but it’s worth learning the ins & outs of this plugin, developed by the boys at www.instinct.co.nz.

I can’t unfortunately divulge the sales figures for the first 2 months, but lets just say I was more than pleasantly surprised. It’s great to see your work directly benefiting your client’s bottom line, especially immediately after it’s implementation.

Last but not least is Duomarketing.co.za

This is the first time I make use of a Woo Theme to develop a client site. I’m very impressed with what the guys at WooThemes are up to, and even more so when I took a little lookie under the hood of one of their themes. The theme options part is really well done, some of the code still boggles my mind a bit, but it allows the user to easily switch stylesheets for a change of colour and style.

The widgetized areas on the homepage works out quite well also allowing you to add pages into certain block of the homepage layout. The cost of the premium theme definitely adds value to the mix as it allows the client to aquire some really great features for a fraction of the cost of cutom development.

I’m still at wireframe stage but would appreciate some feedback from anyone out there with regards to the little mockup above and also how you think I should improve on my site based on the current design & layout.

So I need to know about:

Colour, Graphic Elements, Layout, Usability, Readability, Functionality and last but not least, Content, the area I think probably needs to most focus.

I signed up on the network a while back in the testing phase but only really started using it in the last few days and I have to say, Linkedin needs to take note of some of the features in Salambc.com’s network. Salambc’s profile’s work alot more like a facebook and creating and joining groups is alot easier than Linkedin.

They’re described themselves in the following manner:

The Salam Business Club is the world’s first social business network especially for the Arab, Asian and Muslim business world with members from 170 countries around the world. Join the hottest Internet startup and find old friends, colleagues, valuable business contacts and new markets for your products. Extend your network and connect with decision makers, freelancers, entrepreneurs and the managers of the future.

I’d love to know if their backend is custom built or running on an open-source platform. Have a squiz at Salambc.com and sign up if ur interested in networking with Muslim/Arab Friendly business professionals.

An aquantance of mine criticised the special focus of this social network saying no social networks should be specifically for certain groups. I had to dissagree, as  person with a specific set of values and ethics, I’m interested in networking with others who share my values and on a business level I’d like to network with other business people who appreciate that there are certain types of business practices I cannot promote, joining Salambc gives me this opportunity.

Salambc is not exclusive though and even though it encourages doing business in an islamically acceptable manner, it invites all interested to join. If you do join though, know that there are rules to any game, so promoting business which does not conform with Islamic Business rules is not allowed, those being interest based financial services, gambling, alcohol, anything of an adult(XXX) nature or any unhealthy products or services.

I take my hat off to theses guys and wish them every success going forward.

Praxia Positions itself in the following manner.

“Our mission is to help our clients realise the full potential of their network, communications and computer hardware and software.”

Saeed of Praxia Technologies approached me, firstly to refresh his web presence and put something up there he could manage himself. This has become pretty much a standard request for web design projects as no-one wants to have to call up an html coder each time they want to update a page on their site.

As usual I recommended WordPress, due to it’s quick and simple framework and user friendliness, especially for Praxia’s simple CMS(Content Management System) needs. I found a template which suited their requirements and went about giving it a complete facelift. Praxia’s logo also needed a change and I was happy to oblige as logo design is one of my favourite areas of focus.

First Things first – Establish a new Brand

We started off with the logo design so we could base the site’s look & feel on the Brand and create a nice consistent looking online presence.

After exploring various directions as I usually do with logo design projects the client was split between 2 logo options and we had some back & forth discussion on the pros and cons of each direction.

We settled on the more practical option, the other being the 3 dimensional X element. The focus on the X stems from their original logo and was maintained to keep some kind of consistency going in the re-brand.

Next comes the site in WordPress

We decided to re-use the 3D X element with each component of the X representing a specific business unit as the client still liked the element and wanted to maintain it somehow.

Because Praxia is an IT Tech company focusing every element of a clients IT Tech needs they wanted to go with something which links well with the technology they use. A few stages of design drafts and the client was pretty happy with the look though felt something was missing, and with the inclusion of the brushed metal background we’d settled on a design which the client was very excited about.

To see the final coded result visit www.praxia.co.za. Let me know what you think.