May 02

My business site rebooted

2005 at 12.09 am posted by Veerle

It has cost some blood, sweat and tears but it’s finally there. The planning for a new business launch was drawn 2 years ago but work got in the way of executing them. Designing your own portfolio/site is always difficult. After 6 or 7 revisions you could say that we were our own worst client :-)

We decided not to go for an artistic or experimental looking site because such a thing doesn’t work if you have potential business clients in mind. Marketing managers etc don’t have the time to figure out where to click and if they don’t find something quickly you lose them. So that was our main goal. We also tried to make an interesting design Web Standards wise. Creating a website with more then just a white border, drop shadow, curled corners make it much more difficult.

It still not 100% finished to be honest. We have more work to put into our portfolio. We are going to add some more projects in the coming week. But I think the end result is just fine. My gut feeling tells me I am content with it and that’s always a good sign. I would like to say a big thanks to Andy Budd and Fabien for being my beta testers and consultants. You can see the end result on [url=http://www.duoh.com]http://www.duoh.com[/url]

Also check out [url=http://www.cssreboot.com]http://www.cssreboot.com[/url] for some more Web Standards oriented websites.


32served

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permalink this comment Pat Mon May 2, 2005 at 12.50 am

far far better than the previous one!! :-)


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permalink this comment Calrion Mon May 2, 2005 at 01.03 am

Yes, a great improvement.

Veerle, this is a great site that really suits your new corporate identity; I perhaps would have used a touch more whitespace, but maybe that’s just from looking at your wonderful stationery.

I especially like the ‘games’ page, the design is great, and the change of colour sets it apart from the rest of the site (and the subscription model is a GREAT idea). What is that script pixel font you’ve used for the buttons?

Once again, congratulations!


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permalink this comment noah Mon May 2, 2005 at 01.16 am

Yo. Good work :-)
Would ike to vote for it, but can’t find it. But maybe that’s just me.


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permalink this comment dotK Mon May 2, 2005 at 01.26 am

Hi Veerle,

Proficiat met jullie nieuwe site! Is dit ook zo een bloemetjes moment?


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permalink this comment Ive Mon May 2, 2005 at 01.59 am

Hey,

Congratulations! Nice redesign of the site, looks much more corporate than the previous design. You get my vote for it on both sites!

Once again a good work!


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permalink this comment Joost Mon May 2, 2005 at 05.52 am

Very nice concept, i like it; you got my votes :-)

Is it me or is the site very slow; the flash header doesn’t seem to load either.


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permalink this comment noah Mon May 2, 2005 at 05.57 am

it’s not you and it’s not the site. We earthlings call it monday :)


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permalink this comment Zeerus Mon May 2, 2005 at 07.00 am

I love the new design Veerle. It suits the business well and will attract a lot of visitors. I didn’t realise so much of it would be flash. The graphics are excellent too. You did a really good job with this one.


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permalink this comment Davy Van Den Bremt Mon May 2, 2005 at 07.28 am

One of the best sites up there! Quality design from Belgium (just like all of your other work).


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permalink this comment Soroush Mon May 2, 2005 at 07.42 am

Congrats and well done Veerle! It looks really great!


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permalink this comment Ryan Brooks Mon May 2, 2005 at 08.01 am

Smooooth. Loving it!


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permalink this comment Christopher Kennon Mon May 2, 2005 at 08.08 am

Hi,

I worship thee. Truly great use of flash and CSS. Cheers to hybrib sites.


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permalink this comment Zeerus Mon May 2, 2005 at 08.12 am

I voted for you, and evened out your score. You had a score of 0 after I voted. A second later your score was -1 again. People are voting fast for this. I can’t wait to compete seriously next year. Good luck with the contest itself. Also, I have played those penguin games somewhere before, though I can’t remember where. My sister visits the website all the time. I think it’s called Yetti Olympics, or something like that. Did you design those games for them?


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permalink this comment Veerle Mon May 2, 2005 at 08.17 am

Waaow thanks for the big support eveyone :-)

@Davy Van Den Brent, thanks and congrats yourself! You have done a super job yourself. Your design really caught my eye on the CSS Reboot site, it’s very nice. Then I saw it was done by a Belgian, that was another nice surprise :-) it’s nice to see more creativity coming from our country.

@Calrion I have used several pixel fonts : superaircraft, superhelio, supernova, superscript, superpoint, superphonic and supernova. But I forgot wher I’ve bought or downloaded these I’m afraid. I did a ‘Google’ but couldn’t find anything :-(


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permalink this comment John Athayde Mon May 2, 2005 at 08.34 am

Nice redesign! I like the minimal use of flash as elements (instead of the whole nine yards) as well as your use of CSS to do image swaps for nav items. Good stuff!


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permalink this comment TPK. Mon May 2, 2005 at 08.48 am

It’s obviously be seen that the new site is better than the old one, not just a few better, but it is a great improvement!

But respectfully, I think that the new site is not very contrasted and feel desaturated, but that maybe the new trend of website nowadays :)


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permalink this comment Kim Siever Mon May 2, 2005 at 08.50 am

I never saw the old one, but this one looks nice. Well done, Veerle.


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permalink this comment e-man Mon May 2, 2005 at 09.41 am

Veerle, as ever a bang-up job, two thumbs up!
A few comments on the written content though:
Front page: We participated in the May 1st Reboot not only for the creativity but also the--->to set ourselves an unavoidable deadline.
On this page:
http://www.duoh.com/portfolio/web/detail_page.html?project_id=77
there’s this sentence:"Be--->By using our own products we know that...?? This ends rather abruptly.
On this page:
http://www.duoh.com/services/index.html
this sentence “In this world, plenty of numerous visual experiences,” sounds rather strange, plenty and numerous are synonymous so using them both is exaggerated. I’d suggest something like: “In this world full of visual experiences”.
On this page:  http://www.duoh.com/about/index.html
the sentence “since ‘small’ in this case is equal to ‘more efficient’ and ‘more flexible’. And since it allows to offer a full, tailor-made service.” would look better in English like this: “since “small” in this case equals “more efficient” and “more flexible”, allowing us to offer you a fuller, tailor-made service.
Sorry, I’m a translator I can’t help it ;-)


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permalink this comment Veerle Mon May 2, 2005 at 10.02 am

@TPK, you could be right about the contrast, I certainly look into this, thx.

@e-man thx for your remarkable eye on the text it’s much appreciated ;-) I’ve fixed them all, but did change a little on the last sentence and I hope this is still correct English. 


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permalink this comment Zeerus Mon May 2, 2005 at 10.15 am

Hi Veerle, I just noticed something that you should think about converting. Even though very few people still use old browsers, some people won’t be able to view pages with the .html extension. You may want to think about .htm in the future, unless you have the website set up on some type of CMS that automatically makes them .html. I learned this a while back, and even though nobody uses browsers that old, it has just been my common practice to use .htm


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permalink this comment Superteddy Mon May 2, 2005 at 12.13 pm

Really nice Veerle. Havent seen your previous site, but i must say that i really liked this one..
Two tumbs and a vote for you.

Cheers,
Bernt S


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permalink this comment Jackie Mon May 2, 2005 at 01.43 pm

Veerle,

that Flash movie displaying the history of your logos on the home page is really cool.  Brings the viewer right into the today version of your web site!  Good luck with the Reboot contest.  I hope you win.


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permalink this comment iwanttokeepanon Mon May 2, 2005 at 01.54 pm

I’ve already expressed jealousy for the artistic “right brain-edness” talent.  Love the new site.  The use of the logo and quote bubbles integrate seemlessly btwn website and print materials.  Very very creative and definately not stock cd templates.

Also, cudos for toning down the flash elements in the website.  The game room can show off that muscle w/o dominating the whole site with it.


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permalink this comment tmcraig Mon May 2, 2005 at 06.26 pm

Excellent transformation Veerle, I find your work so inspiring.  Keep it coming.


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permalink this comment chrispian Mon May 2, 2005 at 06.46 pm

I haven’t posted here before, but I’ve been reading for a long time. I just want to say congrats on a fantastic new look for the site. I also really liked what you did with the letterhead, cards etc. Very nice job. I’m jealous ;)


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permalink this comment lazymouse Tue May 3, 2005 at 01.31 am

I have to be honest, I didn’t think I was going to like the new design because I wasn’t sure about the new logo on your earlier post.

But when I clicked on the link to the new site, I was really surprised, I love it!

It’s really neat and it’s one of those sites that I know I’m going to enjoy browsing.

At the same time it’s one of those annoying sites ...... it’s one of those designs I wish I had thought of myself!!

Great work Veerle, this is one for my favourites, next to veerle.duoh, of course.

steve@lazymouse


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permalink this comment Creator Tue May 3, 2005 at 08.01 am

Hey,

Nice design!

Een knap staaltje deze website!
Maar in de route beschrijving staat er “100 verder aan de linker kant” ik dacht dat het rechts was ;-)


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permalink this comment Henke Tue May 3, 2005 at 03.56 pm

Hi Verlee,

I was wondering why you don’t add a print css style sheet?


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permalink this comment Kenneth Thu May 5, 2005 at 02.29 am

@Creator: Veerle heeft geweldig veel problemen met links en rechts, ‘t inderdaad rechts :-)


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permalink this comment px Thu May 5, 2005 at 08.20 pm

*awe* Will I ever be as good as Veerle and her team?! ARGH!!! So Inspiring!

chica, you rock!


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permalink this comment Rob Thu May 12, 2005 at 07.48 am

Looks great! Now see if you can get it to validate ;-)


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permalink this comment Veerle Thu May 12, 2005 at 08.37 am

@Rob, well it ‘did’ ... but apparently after adding some new PHP scripting code a small error sneaked into it and messed it up. I’ve fixed it now. Thanks for the alert :-)



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