Blue Mouse Monkey Blog

Blue Mouse Monkey is thrilled to announce the launch of the new YourEconomy.org website. Your Economy, a project of the Edward Lowe Foundation, is an interactive resource center designed for users to explore and analyze economic activity in their own regions and nationwide. YE houses more economic data than the U.S. census bureau, and it can depict the dynamic journey of business communities evolving through time. However, the existing website was so complex and confusing that the YE founders had to train users in how the system worked, and they were compelled to manage a continuous flow of queries about usability.

Blue Mouse Monkey rose to the challenge to make the YE website user-friendly to a wide range of audiences, including the White House, state governors, economists, industry analysts, economic development experts, and the media. An intensive audit of processes, and analysis of user-experience requirements led to a complete redesign of the information architecture, user experience, look-and-feel, and written content. And the bright orange and yellow color scheme is a conscious departure from the stereotypical “blue for business” palette.

I was one of the first visual artists I know to get an art portfolio website. A student at PNCA did it for me as a project back in 1998. And he did a nice job, for what was available in web technologies in 1998. Then I learned how to make websites myself, and took charge of remaking my portfolio site. The second iteration used Frames (!) and what I thought at the time was an innovative horizontal scrolling navigation. Silly me. (This was before jQuery and all that good stuff, of course.) Then I did iteration #3 in Flash. Which was nice for a few years, but I won’t waste space on why Flash is no longer a good choice for making websites. Besides, the background was black (remember when that was sorta cool on a website?) and the images were small (remember when you had to take dialup users into account?). After a while I stopped mentioning my art portfolio site because it was getting a little embarrassing.

But this winter has seen the great makeover, and now I’m proud to announce the launch of iteration #4 of my art portfolio website, built in HTML5, and all clean and nice looking.

The Northwest Health Foundation wanted a new website to support their work in public policy advocacy. Built on the concept of a video magazine, each issue of Points of View covers a topic germane to the work of the foundation, with a short introduction and a collection of videos that reflect the point of view of the NWHF, along with the many points of view represented by their diverse community partners.

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.

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.

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.

Blue Mouse Monkey recently launched a new website for Ann Arbor metals artist Cherie Haney. Cherie was chafing under the constraints of a Carbonmade website and approached Blue Mouse Monkey for a completely custom solution. The new site is built on Cherie’s aesthetic of organic shapes in layered planes, using the colors of steel, rust, and mineralization. The store is scalable, and the content management system allows Cherie to update her trade show schedule and other information. Cherie is represented by over fifty galleries across the US, and this website will help promote her work even further.