Julie Tran Law Launched

Attorney Julie Vien Tran just launched Julie Tran Law, a simple, professional and elegant web site with dual languages (English and Vietnamese) to promote her law offices.

What I have learned from our email conversations is that Ms. Tran is not only professional, but also very approachable, and I wanted to convey that on her web site. Right on the homepage, I have Ms. Tran standing in front of a faint (almost silhouette) but recognizable building of the Supreme Court. Her pinstripe suit suggests professionalism and her friendly smile gives visitors the personal connection.

The only problem is that Ms. Tran is a modest person and she doesn’t want the web site just to be about her since she will be planning on recruiting more attorneys. (Any lawyer needs a job?) So the homepage will be changed once she hired a photographer to take some shots to be rotate on the front page, but for now, I am glad we are launching with this direction.

As for the navigation, my initial approach was to have two separate sets: one for English and one for Vietnamese. When I combined the two together and set them apart using font size variations, the navbar looks much better. If users want to read Vietnamese, they can just click on the Vietnamese words.

Ms. Tran designed the logo herself and I made a suggestion to use a different typeface. I wanted the letter J and L to have a sense of balance with the middle T holding the two letters together to resemble the scales of justice. Bauhaus 93 has that perfect balance.

As for the coding, this site is structured in HTML5, the future of markup, with a dash of CSS3 for some visual effects and a bit of PHP to hold the pages together.