I have been designing websites since 1999. I've also co-founded and helped to run a couple of web-based enterprises, I Want One Of Those.com, a gift and gadget website, and LizzieDoyle.com, selling larger-sized ladies' clothing.
As a consultant, I have used my comprehensive range of experiences to assist various startup companies (in fields of retail, entertainment and services) with their website and e-commerce business strategies.
I have also done some writing professionally, writing product content for the I Want One Of Those website and catalogues, and was hired as the Creative Writing blogger for Birmingham's 2008 New Generation Arts Festival, raising awareness of creative writing events and courses, and of the festival itself.
In 1999, we set up a web design company, 2AM New Media Design, our first project being to design a showcase for our abilities in Flash animation. The website is now long dead and buried, but here it is thanks to the miracle of reanimation.
The website was built in Flash, but the realism of the character's walk was achieved with Poser, from which an eight-step animation was created and copied with Flash. The only non-Flash graphics were the thumbnails used for each website still.
This German company, with a base also in Switzerland, came to us to freshen up their design, as at the time their website was heavy, wordy and archaic (in internet terms anyway). We used some of the design motifs on their packaging - typically central-European minimalist but elegant - to inspire the design of the website, and also reshot a lot of the product images, which had been grainy and unflattering.
The design remained for the best part of a decade, but has now been ditched to accommodate the family of international companies they now run. Sad, but again here's what we did.
Founded by myself and two other guys in the dog days of the summer of 99, this was originally intended as a side project but was soon the main focus of our energies as it quickly became clear that this was something much bigger than we'd imagined, and grew dramatically, despite the dotcom crash happening only two months in.
My first design lasted three years or so, when we brought in some big guys with suits to freshen up the whole thing. We also built it using several e-commerce technologies, starting with off-the-shelf software such as J-Shop and Actinic, before moving into more advanced custom-made technologies using asp and jsp.
We were 'acquired' in 2004 and I moved on a couple of years later with a lot of sleepless nights but reams of web, business and life experience behind me. See Wikipedia page on I Want One Of Those.
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I'd been involved with the eponymous Liz Doyle for some years in an advisory and cheerleading capacity for her various internet business exploits but it was in 2006 that we launched Lizzie Doyle, a website selling clothing for larger ladies. Like I Want One Of Those, it was set up with a minimum of funding (just a few thousand) but quickly began to prove successful.
I designed this with the usual suite of software - mostly Macromedia (now Adobe) Dreamweaver and Fireworks, and using open source OSCommerce software for the sales and back-end maintenance.
Currently on a sabbatical, Liz aims to return with a vengeance within the year to relaunch the site, which is otherwise still operational and selling but on a lower gear than before.
I helped my local tennis club raise their profile - online at least - with an update of their creaking website. The aim was to freshen up the design, but more importantly make it far more relevant to the members. Rather than an online brochure which prospective members could look at for information then never see again, the aim was to introduce a forum through which members can talk to each other ("Fancy a match this evening?"... "I've got a new tennis racket but sadly also tennis elbow - anyone want to buy it?") and build a community outside of the club night meetings.
With more regular updates, and content provided by members as much as by web administrators, the website has now become first port of call for information for members and prospective members.
A design engineer by academic background (studied Mechanical Engineering at Edinburgh University and Industrial Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art), I slipped into graphic design in the late 90s and then into web design, co-founding a web design company then the e-commerce website I Want One Of Those in 1999. This took up a large part of the following years, after which I co-founded Lizzie Doyle Clothing.
For the last 15 years I've been a tour manager with ACIS, taking American high school groups around Europe. I'm enrolled on the National Academy of Writing in Birmingham, and was the Creative Writing blogger for Birmingham's 2008 New Generation Arts Festival. I'm currently working on a historical novel based in 17th century Vienna. But hey - who isn't?
I spent the last decade in London, but am now based in the East Midlands, on the threshold of Rutland, commuting to London and Birmingham whenever I can. If you have any questions or requests, please don't hesitate to get in touch, unless it's about Viagra or Nigerian inheritances. I'd need to think about that.
Email me here.
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Copyright 2008-9 Mike Morrison
