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 ten 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 download my CV as a PDF or DOC.
Things At Home
Things At Home is a large, modern ecommerce store selling luxury homewares. They needed an upmarket website that would immediately project their friendly, approachable and eco-conscious ethos. Based on the Cubecart shop system, the site is a showcase of Things At Home's unique selling points, and has high levels of traffic and sales.
ThingsAtHome.com is currently in the user testing phase, and I'll be working closely with them over the coming months to improve usability and add more features to the site.
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.
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.
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.
James Russell - Portfolio
James Russell is a live music director and he needed a low traffic portfolio site to display his work.
The site is built on a simple CMS to enable James to update the site. It also features a Flash based video Carousel (which feeds from the CMS) that runs up to date clips of James's current work.
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.
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.
