Blue Mouse Monkey Blog

Formerly the Community Health Priorities project, this site has been given a fresh new look as it has morphed into The Conversation, the blog of the Northwest Health Foundation. The blog encourages Oregonians to participate in surveys, share feedback, read news, peruse resources, and apply for grants. Since its inception 2008, participation has climbed steadily, and the site returns data that the Northwest Health Foundation can bring to the state legislature.

Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch

Suzy Vitello and I are distantly “related” in the literary world by virtue of our involvement in separate writing groups that sprang from the ur-group, Tom Spanbauer’s Dangerous Writing. While we’ve never sat at the same writing table, we’ve chatted at parties now and again, and we’ve worked together in our other lives — in the world of communications, branding, and websites. Suzy is an editor and copywriter, and I’m a web designer, and we have delightfully collaborated on many projects together over the years.

And she edited the text on my Parts Per Million website!

And I got to redesign her new author website!

And she interviewed me on her blog! Check out Writers and branding: an interview with Julia Stoops for our discussion on the importance of author websites, the effect of DIY technologies, and the impact of art, teaching, and creative writing on my branding and web design practice.

Two Crows, by Gary Franceschini

On Wednesday January 4th at 7:00 pm I’m reading a piece of Flash Fiction — i.e. a short short story, less than a thousand words — at Blackbird Wine Shop (4323 NE Fremont).

The full lineup of readers is Joanna Rose, Sherri Hoffman, Jackie Shannon Hollis, Julia Stoops, Kitty Evers, Jean Hart, Scott Sparling, Steve Taylor, Sonya Zalubowski, Mary Milstead, David Pickar, Yuvi Zalkow, and Stevan Allred. Many of my favorite writing friends. My story is Morning Commute and it imagines a world in which the skies have become so crowded that birds have to wait their turn, by species, to fly.

Looking for an image to illustrate this post, I came across this one from Gary Franceschini’s sketching blog. It’s perfect for the story! This is exactly how I imagined my crows, full of personality.

Author Suzy Vitello needed a complete website makeover. Her old site was built in Flash, which has become problematic since the iPad and iPhone do not support Flash viewing. Suzy Vitello’s new site uses lush background imagery to showcase her two novels and her extensive involvement in the Portland literary world. (Image by Brooke Shaden, used with permission.)

Now it’s time to present a personal project! Parts Per Million is a novel about a group of Portland environmental and media activists. I’ve been working on it for a decade, finished it this year, and am in the process of seeking agent representation. Check out the site for photo galleries, excerpts, illustrations by Ryan Alexander-Tanner, and more.

The Blue Mouse Monkey team: John Redder, Shelise Gieseke, Jimmy Thomas, Julia Stoops

2011 has seen some bittersweet personnel changes at Blue Mouse Monkey. In July Jimmy Thomas, developer extraordinaire and my office-mate for 3 1/2 years, moved to Japan, where he’s persuing a new life teaching English. To live in Japan was a long standing ambition of Jimmy’s, and I wish him well. But I miss his generous good nature and most excellent CSS skilz. We made some wonderful websites together.

And this December saw the departure of John Redder. For the past year John has provided incredible insight and support with process analysis and improvements, and project management. I’m still amazed that we “hooked” John at all — he brought to my little company experience and expertise from a higher plane, and I feel so lucky. Blue Mouse Monkey is a better company for John’s efforts, and we are sad to see him return to the bigger pastures from whence he came.

But all is not lost! We have some excellent new freelance developers in our stable, and in-house, our studio manager Shelise Gieseke is expanding her role and ably stepping into John’s role as project manager. With new, streamlined systems in place, we’re even better positioned to take on larger and more complex projects. I feel really ready for 2012.

We’re pleased the announce the launch of the website for Minnesota photographer Anders Bjorling. Anders travels the world to take beautiful shots in his native Sweden, as well as Iceland, Africa, the Galapagos, Ecuador, and elsewhere. The site was built with scalable portfolio pages, so with the CMS (content management system) in place, there is no limit to the number of images Anders can add.

Blue Mouse Monkey is pleased to announce the launch of the website for Portland artist Marlana Stoddard Hayes. Her interest in living communities leads her to explore the relationship among various nested systems found in the natural world, and she uses elements of nature in her painting practice, such as spore prints from fungi. The site is starting small, but with a CMS (content management system) in place, Marlana can add new portfolio pages over time. Marlana Stoddard-Hayes is represented by Butters Gallery.