Updates at Dancing Elephant Studio

With a new book in the works & her usual array of irons in the fire, Jenny Kostecki-Shaw wanted a light redux of border, logo, and header elements for her Dancing Elephant Studio site. Working with her designs and art elements, we delivered a new WordPress theme back in March (and we’re a bit late in noting it here). Check out Jenny’s upcoming Same, Same. But Different! in the books section while you’re inspecting the new looks.

Penelope Illustration, 2010

Friend and frequent collaborator Penelope Dullaghan wanted a fresh, ever-simpler redux of her minimalist and popular personal/professional/portfolio site. With her elegant designs in hand, we developed a lightweight custom theme revision that sharpens the focus on Penelope’s prolific and varied work.

Sidelight: As mentioned on her blog, Penelope is the featured artist in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Communication Arts magazine. Check out the interview and image collection in a bookshop near you!

The new Scott Hull Associates site

Scott Hull Associates is a respected representative for a varied and lauded stable of talented artists. When Scott and Co. needed a site that would deliver more control to each of the artists they represent, we worked from a beautifully simple design by our frequent collaborator, and Scott Hull-represented illustrator, Penelope Dullaghan. With Penny’s gorgeous look-and-feel, user interface collaboration by the brilliant Josh Sears, and lots of input from Scott, his staff, and their represented artists, we crafted a new site with a new look, powered by a multi-user site manager in the form of WordPress-µ.

It’s open-source foundation software that can empower many team members — and, with commenting and RSS syndication throughout, associates outside the team — to contribute and craft their corner of the site into their best face forward for the organization. We tried to build Scott’s vision of the most immediate, informative portfolio preview in the business. As each artist grows their sample work and their blog in the new format, we hope the site will be almost like a sit-down interview with an artist you might hire for your logo, brand image, or design project.

Each artist is master of their sub-section of the site, making the portfolios, blogs, and creative notes there direct, personal, and fresh. With so many striking personalities, styles, and subjects on display, it’s easy to browse the new Scott Hull site like a collection of awesome personal blogs, a comfortable yet vibrant and evocative atmosphere for prospective clients to get to know the artists they’ll work with.

Scott additionally contracted Utopian.net for training and support to help get the artists started with the new site and tools. We produced a number of custom screencast video tutorials for using the browser-based visual editor to keep portfolios updated, and other basic tasks. While similar to our progressing and publicly-available WordPress Video Guide series, these videos include details of the portfolio/gallery management features, admin panel extensions, and plugin functionality adapted or created specifically for scotthull.com.

Congratulations to Scott and everyone at Scott Hull Associates on the launch, and many thanks to them and their awesome lineup of some of the industry’s brightest talents for making this such a fun and creative project. We’ll continue to work closely with Scott and his team after the launch, too, helping to keep email, web traffic, and application data flowing smoothly throughout the Utopian.net-hosted Scott Hull Associates Internet presence.

Von Glitschka's Federal Bureau of Illustration

In Von’s words:

“I’ve seen a lot of case study sites. Most are kind of boring and far too serious so I wanted to avoid that when I created my own. The site is done as a tongue-in-cheek play off the metaphor of the FBI. There are a total of seven case files in the archive right now and I’ll add more as time goes on so if you subscribe to the RSS you’ll be notified when I post new case files.”

Entrance to Dancing Elephant Studio

Our friend Jenny Kostecki-Shaw recently launched her new book My Travelin’ Eye, took off on a signing tour, and produced a brilliant new website design for us to implement. Somewhere she found the time to send us an autographed copy of her new children’s hit (Thanks Jenny!), even while we raced the clock to develop her site for her publication date.

Work on the ambitious Dancing Elephant Studio site continues – Jenny and Patrick have a lot of cool work and experiences to share – but we were too excited to get our own copy of My Travelin’ Eye to resist mentioning it. While the new site offers the excitement of “more to come,” it already features a lot of info about Jenny and her work, and you can even buy your own signed edition of the book there.

Utopian.net developed a site concept based on Jordan’s show postcards, provided the programming and hosting, and implemented WordPress for easy updates of new tour dates, photos, and new sounds. Jordan’s new site launched over the weekend along with his new CD. Go have a listen!