While I designed The Office of International Services Web site from scratch, Kevin gives The Office of International Programs a whole fresh new look.

The Learning and Teaching Center gets a brand new makeover. They wanted a site that is clean, hip, and fresh with some of the elements from Dean of Freshmen (also designed by yours truly). See if you could spot the designer in the photo. Enjoy the beautiful weekend, folks!

The redesign of Campus Life Office has just rolled off my G5. Fresh and clean is the key.

The spanking new Dean of Freshmen is now live. I chose upbeat colors to make it fresh for the freshmen, but the clean and elegance were also considered for the parents. In addition, I have used the photo on the homepage in a different direction. I originally had the photo appeared at the top, but its large size took up too much space above the fold. I didn’t want to reduce the graphic either because it would lose the effect was I was going for. As a result, I incorporated the image into the whole design by placing the attractive visual at the bottom. It’s a reward for those who scroll.

Vassar’s Department of Dance is reinvigorated with the power of minimalism. After assigned with the project, I went through the photo collection and awed by the dancers’ motion. I selected a few striking shots, knocked out the background, and laid out the homepage in an hour. The director of web development (my boss) once asked me, “How do you design so fast and still churn out quality works?” My reply was, “I know when to stop.” Through my experience, I find that the more I refine a design, the worse it gets. And in my refinement process, I tend to throw in more unnecessary elements; therefore, I just stop and trust my instincts when I feel I have accomplished my goal.

On the homepage, I wanted to showcase the strength and liveliness of the dance program. Flash was used to pull up random images and for the transitions to give a sense of rhythm. The dark grey background was chosen to increase the dramatic of the body movements. In the interior pages, I wanted to maintain the strong visual by incorporate images with type in the header but also allowing readability by turning the background to white.

I took a different approach on this project by coming up with the design before knowing what the clients (department’s represented faculties) have in mind. So in our initial meeting, I presented my design and their jaws dropped. They were pleased with the design as much as I do; therefore, the project flew through smoothly. The only section I haven’t been able to touch on is VRDT because other urgent priorities took over. Still, I am happy with the outcome.

Vassar’s Music Library has relaunched. I can’t take the credit for the entire design concept because the project was handed to me from a former designer. However, I revamped most of the visual elements and arrangements including the background graphical treatment, and coded the site. I also streamlined the navigation and reorganized the structure in order to “eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” Hans Hofmann.

By the way, don’t forget to drop by the graphics department to check out some of the recent banners I’ve done for 2006.

Last year the creative folks at Ao Trang contracted me to do a Flash presentation to showcase their white-dress photography. I browsed through the collection and was impressed with the aesthetic visual Hoai Nam has captured, especially with the focus on the sensuous body’s form. The silky-smooth ao dai flows like streams of poetry around the curvaceous figures. What sets Ao Trang’s work apart is how the simple, plain and traditional ao dai could produce such a pure, expressive and modern Vietnamese’s beauty.

Although I couldn’t take on a freelance work at that time, I always had the project in the back of my mind. So when the time is right, I contacted Ao Trang’s staff for the photos and offered a collaborative effort instead of a business deal so that we both hit the same goal, to display Vietnamese white-dress—one of our essential, cultural costumes.

After sorting through the exquisite set of photos, I needed a song that has both traditional and contemporary vibes in order to support the graphics. Went through my extensive collection and the track that jumps out at me is Thuy Tien’s “A Oi” from her Ngot & Dang album. The fusion of Vietnamese folk poetry and ambient futuristic sound, which gave the song an organic, eccentric flavor, is exactly what I was looking for. Thuy Tien’s idiosyncratic delivery added a rich, lyrical texture to the images. The end result is quite interesting.

With no further introduction, Visualgui.com and AoTrang.com are proud to present our jointed project: “Ao Dai Trang A Oi.”

Inspired by Pham Quynh Anh’s “Bonjour Viet Nam” and striking shots of Viet Nam’s landscapes, I put together a slideshow for my personal pleasure. I have read the translation and understood Marc Lavoine’s lyrics; however, I was not interested in accommodating the content of the song. I just needed the melody to complement the gorgeous images; therefore, no film-de-Coppola or war graphics are included. Furthermore, I have always wanted to incorporate French music into one of my motion pieces, and this song is just perfect.

As for the magnificent photos, I found them over at Vietnamese Meetup forum. I knew one day I will find a good use for them; therefore, I saved the images and asked for the photographers’ credits. The only guy that knows the authors is Andy who posted the photos. Although I didn’t get the authors’ permission, Andy said, “Donny, feel free to use [them]. I’ll update you when I locate the author(s) of these stunning sets.” I am going to take his words for it and hopefully the authors will be cool with it too since I am only using the photos for my own reflections of my homeland and won’t make a penny out of them.

The new, hip, and edgy German Studies is now live on the Vassar Web after a long delay. Coming up with the design was one of the most challenging parts of the project. The department’s chair knows exactly what he wanted, and he would reject any layout that didn’t hit the mark. In doing so, he has pushed me to think harder and to be more focused. After many failed attempts, I decided to break out my conventional approach, and let the design drives the site. So when I came up with the crisp geometric look, the contrast between muted and bolded colors, the contemporary typography, and the unanticipated rollovers (English/German), he was thrilled. The look and feel is what he has envisioned the site to be.

On the technical note, the site is CSS driven and XHTML structured. The secondary pages are half scalable when changing the browsers’ text size. The German’s quotes appear on each page was adapted from Clarksco’s Random Quote Generator written in PHP. Many thanks to my colleague Megg Brown for content review and hooked the site up to Adobe Contribute for the German department to update information without ruin the codes and design.

Web site of Development Office is finally relaunched. New visual features include random Flash slideshows, color codes for each section and heavy use of photos. The new structure is XHTML 1.1 validated and the new presentation is CSS driven. Go on and check it out.