Joe Mesot - Web Developer.

Masterpiece Video Productions

Suzanne DeWolf is a freelance videographer specializing in the video taping and editing of weddings and special events. She asked me to update her website and add a contact form so that poeple could contact her from the website. Since the original site was made in 2000, it used a table based layout. I redeveloped the site using a CSS based layout (keeping the current design the same per client request), fixed some minor coding errors to ensure W3C Validation, and added a contact form with a PHP script to process the data and send it to her email address. As an added bonus I worked in some Google Map integration so clients could find thier way to her home.

Perfected Love International Fellowship

A friend of mine in Florida came to me with the desire to develop a website for his Christian fellowship ministry. One of his members worked up the design which he then handed off to me, I then worked the design into a custom Wordpress theme over the course of about a week.

Gate City Blind Bowlers

Gate City Blind Bowlers is a national blind bowling league consisting of fully blind, partially blind, and sighted bowlers located in Greensboro, NC. The league came to me and wanted to make a website that would be accessible to all of the members of the league. Some of the partially sighted members wanted a more graphic layout, while the non-sighted members wanted a layout that could be read correctly by screenreaders. The league also wanted the ability to add and/or update content whenever they needed.

I initially offered to go with Wordpress, but the main site admin was not comfortable with such a robust system (being fully blind) and wanted somthing much simpler to work with. I redeveloped the structure of the site with accessiblity in mind, first and foremost, then I created the simple graphics and layout for the partialy sighted members. I also created an administration registration and login page that requires a special code to register along with implementing the TinyMCE text editor for editing the content of each page. Each page's content is loaded from a database via an AJAX call through PHP, and then saved back to the database. They are not able to add any more pages to the site, only update and/or replace the content that is there.

1^st Civil Affairs Battalion

A friend of mine in the Texas State Guard wanted to create a web based portal that his commanders and soldiers could use in order to facilitate adequate means of disseminating information throughout the unit. I first suggested a Wordpress installation, but my freind was not looking for anything as robust as Wordpress. I then showed him the system I made for the Gate City Blind Bowlers, and he decided to use the same system for the front end of the site.

In order to get information out in a secure manner, he decided to go with the Simple Machines Forum (SMF) system. The system allows for easy integration with a standard front end website, and, with a little customization on my part, I was able to tie together a complete login system based on forum member groups for the front end administration with my custom CMS.

I designed the unit crests in the header from a photograph that my friend gave me in Adobe Illustrator as vector images, then saved them out as JPGs. The remainder of the site is simply done with images created in Photoshop and optimized for the web. I wanted to go with CCS3, but due to lack of browser support when the site was built I decided to just go “old school”. The member login area uses some simply jQuery to create a sliding effect.

Tortoise Games

Tortoise Games is the brain child of a friend of mine. He is in the process of developing his first video game using the CryEngine, and he wanted a means of communicating the development process to each of the team members and to the public as well. I immediately went with Wordpress and an SMF combination.

The site is a custom Worpress theme in HTML5 and CCS3 entirely designed by me. The content is lacking as my friend has done absolutely nothing with it since I built it for him, as he is still in the process of finishing school.

DC Family and Youth Initiative

DCFYI is a non-profit organization in Washington DC that helps to find mentors/sponsors and adoptive parents for youth in DC and the surrounding area. The site is hosted with Adobe's Business Catalyst service.

The design came to me from a designer and I researched solutions for the clients needs for a CRM/CMS combination. We tried a few and eventually settled with BC from Adobe. The development was fairly straight forward and BC has solutions to handle almost any need. I did have to create alot of custom functionality in Javascript in order to get all of the clients custom forms and CRM specifications working since BC is primarily an e-commerce platform.

LendLogix

LendLogix is a portal to a lender services platform. The site is a custom Wordpress theme that is responsive for moblie devices (tested on iPhone, iPad, and Android), and done completely in CCS3. I wanted to minimize the number of images since we were going for mobile support, so CSS3 seemed to be the best ooption.

The entire desing was done by me in Photoshop, and the site development was completed in just under a week. There are a total of 14 images on the entire site, and it loads realy fast. I am pretty impressed with it, and the client was speechless, but I think there is a little too much blue going on.

The class assignment was to use the actual drawing tools in Photoshop (Pen tool, Brush tool, etc.) to draw a tree. After the tree was drawn the assignment was to add leaves, which I used a little creative styling to add my leaves. I also included a gradient fill for the sky, and a texture fill for the ground. The overall idea is that a tree is growing out of the asphalt, or perhaps it isn't really growing at all...

This is the first course project of three course projects. The assignment was to create a sports poster, but the poster had to convey the idea of motion. All of the "people" in the image are custom shapes that I created from actual people (and one of them is actually a picture of me) indside of Photoshop. Once the custom shapes were created I palced multiple copies of the left and right flying side kick images and added a motion blur to the copies. I also used the new 3D features of Photoshop CS4 to create the sparring mat underneath the two competitors.

The assignment was to create an image, than add some text to the image. I tried several different ideas before I came to this one. The instructor owns his own graphic design company, and mentioned that he only used Windows PCs. So I came up with this image off of that littel bit of information. His reply to my assignment, "... I am a PC!". The image uses several layer blending modes and adjustment masks to achieve the starry background. I then went for a "Star Trek" look with the text and applied some more adjustment layers to them as well. Then I simply added a Mac logo in the center.

This is the second course project of the three course projects. We had to "research" an area of interest, and then create a travel poster for that area. Rather then go with the boring vacation spots idea, I decided to take a bigger approach. I "borrowed" a fimilar slogan, and put a rather unique twist on it.

Again the starry background is a combination of layer blending modes and adjustment masks, similar to the previous image. I then found an image of Earth from space and a "spacey" font to use for the poster. The contact information is also a poke at some more familiar internet terms and names.

This is the third of the three course projects. We had to research a Broadway play, and then create a cover for the popular "Playbill Magazine" for that play.

I choose The Phantom of the Opera only because it was the play I was most familiar with. Having never seen any Broadway play, I wans't sue where to begin this assignment and this was the toughest one of them all for me. It took me a long time to come up with an idea for the cover, and one that hadn't been done already.

I started with some croped mask images and the wreath from the play, added a foggy background and the text with transparency. It took me along time to find the actual Playbill font for the heading, but I found it. Then I did a simple back cover summing up the three main emotions and ideas of the play.