The Tall
Designer
Hi. My name is Miles. I am The Tall Designer.
I make web sites for a living, here in Brighton and up in London too. This site is all about me and my work, with a few examples of what I do.
I have eight years experience working within the web design industry using a wide variety of technologies. I have worked on front and back end systems, developed CMS's and conducted usability studies.
If you'd like to get hold of me just give me a call, or send me an email and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. You can also look at my CV online or download a copy..
Tiscali Consumer
During my time as a web designer for Tiscali, my primary project was the day to day running of the Tiscali Business site.
I also spent a large proportion of my time with the company working on the Consumer portal. My input on this project was varied and wide ranging, including email and music campaigns, the web site's marketing and sales pages, cross promotions and general site content.
Love Miss Daisy
The LMD site was created to sell classic and antique clothing to the boutique market. The site is based on the Cubecart ecommerce system, a mature and developed shopping cart that allows editors to control shop content, administer sales and complete orders.
The site has featured in a number of fashion magazines and has been an imediate success with it's target market.
Firecat Masquerade
Firecat was built for an artist and business owner who wanted to update his existing site. The brief called for a design that would suggest finery, opulence and decadence while using the existing assets.
My client suggested the “Griffin and Sabine” book trilogy as inspiration. From that starting point, I developed the aged, distressed look and paper based metaphor to create a functional and accessible - yet visually appealing - site.
The site was featured in the December 2007 issue of .Net magazine. The article isn't available online but I have provided a scan of the page I feature on.
Mobile Holistics Brighton
This project was for an holistic therapist who had just launched her business. With limited funds to promote her venture, she was looking to the internet as her main tool to attract clients.
Her site, Mobile Holistics, is a great representation of the service she offers and the overall ethos of her business. It's simple and user friendly, giving potential clients clear information and answers to the most frequently asked questions.
The Mobile Holistics web site also makes it easy for visitors to book an appointment online and make a payment using PayPal.
Sadly Nicola has had a change of circumstances, so the site is now offline, a copy stored on my own server is avaiable to view online here.
Tiscali Business
While working at Tiscali as a web designer, I ran and developed the Tiscali Business site for two years between 2005 and 2007.
The site is both a sales portal for potential Tiscali Business customers and a fully managed extranet system, encompassing fault reporting, ordering and billing. It is simple for Tiscali's wholesale business customers to view their bills online, manage their accounts, report a fault and order or alter new and existing services.
Bristol ePetitioner
Building this site was part of my role as a web designer at Public-I. Bristol City Council had a basic internet petitioning system which allowed members of the public to be a part of the democratic process. They asked for an entirely new system to replace the older, outdated one.
I delivered an improved system that was faster and easier to use. It is now straightforward for visitors to understand the site, submit their petitions, and track their progress with the council. For the council administrators, there is also a back end system - accessed via username and password - which is used to manage submitted petitions. A council officer can accept, reject, or ask for amendments to a petition, as well as help a petitioner to get their submission included in a local council meeting.
The graphical look for the site was designed by Bristol's in house design team, I created all XHTML, CSS & PHP for the site as well as implementing user testing & final snagging.
Public-I plan to release the source code as open source.
NHS West Sussex Health & Social Care
While employed as a web publishing coordinator for the NHS, I designed, developed and ran seven public sites providing information and assistance for patients. I also built ten intranet systems and numerous other internal structures.
Each of the NHS sites needed to be compliant with very high web standards and be accessible and user friendly for staff and patients alike. I therefore understand the importance of designing web sites and systems with the end user experience as priority.
Ensuring that these websites were compatible with all the current and past web browsers was a paramount concern, as was the need to be clear and concise when writing any copy. These considerations continue to be a key aspect of my work.
The WSHSC web site has recently been updated to reflect organisational changes within Sussex NHS, so their website has been redirected to Sussex Partnership NHS Trust
The Tall Designer
This web site is my portal on the world, a portfolio entirely designed and coded by myself, and I have strived to make use some of the latest technologies in web design. For example, you will see absolutely positioned XHTML, CSS and DOM Scripting (swapping out the text and images for each site). I have also used Hcard to make my contact details easily available to both people and machines, and grid layouts to balance the overall look and feel of the page.
Everything on the site will gracefully degrade, so whatever you're using to look at it, you'll still see all of the information and links.
I want this site to be a fast, accessible and cleanly coded site, and to be visually impressive without being overtly showy. More than that, I want it to speak for itself as a showcase of my talents. I think this site successfully achieves those aims.
