2009
Mr. Meade approached me through the head of the Graphic Design department. He requested a unique website that would knock the other law firm websites out of the water, but also did not want to pay an arm and a leg for a web design firm. Most of the other law sites were all designed and maintained by one company. As a result, they all looked exactly alike.
The above image is the original wireframe I brought to the table. I wanted to try and fit all the pages into the three column format, but in the end it didn’t work out. The home page fit very nicely into this format, though.
The mock up pictured above was the first draft of the site. Mr. Meade explained to me he wanted the site to be clean and professional with large pictures, well-organized content and quick ways to get in contact with The Meade Law Firm. I was tasked with placing all the content on the home page without it looking overcrowded and messy. I employed the grid mentioned earlier and kept to strict rules about where content should and shouldn’t be. I offered two different versions of the site, one red and one white. The red page was widely accepted because it was bold without being too overpowering.
The mock up pictured above is the design we finally all agreed upon. It wasn’t my first choice, but I’m still happy with the way it turned out. A few things changed in the way the main points of interest were presented, but I think this option is just as viable as the previous instance.
The final site design can be found at http://www.themeadelawfirm.com and looks much the same as the image above. The biggest hang up with this design was the compatibility with older versions of Internet Explorer and the overlays of content above Flash. In the end, it all worked out. Mr. Meade is very happy with the result.
During the process of designing this site I experimented with jQuery, CSS 3 font embedding, multi-column paragraph layouts, Blueprint CSS and the finer points of z-indexes.
The Meade Law Firm on Behance.net