Brandon Passley » Portfolio

Ari Hest

Brandon Passley — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:01:24 +0000

Once again working with Matthew Williams, I built a custom content management system for the new Ari Hest website. I can’t claim work on any of the design or front-end flash work (I wish I could because it looks awesome). This content management system was a little easier than previous work on the William Fitzsimmons website, since it only required a simple news and tour administration and no video work. I did add a PDF tour flyer generator (which was also used for the William Fitzsimmons site) which allows users to download a flyer for any tour date. This is a great feature for colleges, or for those fans that just want to support the band and post their own flyers.

I’ve been listening to Ari Hest for a few years now and still haven’t gotten tired of his music. Make sure to check out his new site.

[ Visit the Ari Hest website ]

Ari Hest Screenshot

Parrish Hanna

Brandon Passley — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:56:12 +0000

Parrish required a personal website that created a stage for him to discuss and highlight his professional theories, thought processes and general experiences. Working with the brilliant Daniel Sauter (UIC Art & Architecture) again, the direction came out of a need to make, what would typically be a very boring and “wordy” site, into something much more interesting and innovative.

Therefore, we focused on typography and movement. The UI consists of a plane and a grid of every page laying flat on it. Any internal link the user follows does not load a new page, but rather moves the entire plane and grid to the appropriate “slide”. This movement is not only intriguing, but begins to create interesting layouts since a portion of each adjacent “slide” peaks into the browser window.

Development Notes
Because of the nature of the site, I built a custom content management system (CMS) with PHP/MySQL to work specifically with the difficult front-end layouts. One of the most interesting features no one would see is that Parrish only has to update the basic content in the CMS and the front-end will determine which of the three layouts it should use based on images, text, files, etc. The very cool sliding feature uses the MooTools JavaScript library. This would have gotten a little hairy without it.

Final Thoughts
A text-based website does not have to be boring.

[ Visit the Parrish Hanna site ]

Drawbridge Quote Manager

Brandon Passley — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:28:41 +0000

Drawbridge started as a way for me to experiment and learn with Ruby on Rails. It ended up turning into a fully functional online application that many users have found to be very successful. The idea of a quote and proposal manager came in a need to fullfill many requests for project quotes in my freelancing career. Drawbridge gave me a way to organize, track and manage quotes for all of my projects. If you want to learn more about Drawbridge, look at the tour to see many of the features. To get the best tour, sign-up for a free account and play around.

[ Visit the DrawbridgeApp.com site ]

William Fitzsimmons

Brandon Passley — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:35:07 +0000

I can’t claim any design work on this website, but I did build a custom content management system for the William Fitzsimmons website. Working with Matthew Willams on this project, I needed to integrate a system that allowed William to update his tours, news and videos quickly and easily. I built a custom CMS to do all of this, including integrating William’s YouTube videos into the open source JW FLV Media Player. One other great feature I built for the site was a dynamic PDF tour flyer generator (say that a few times fast) which allows users to download a flyer for any tour date. This is a great feature for colleges, or for those fans that just want to support the band and post their own flyers.

If you’re in the mood for folk-ish music to ease (or not ease) the soul check out William Fitszimmons.

[ Visit the William Fitszimmons site ]

UIC Art & Architecture

Brandon Passley — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 15:37:31 +0000

The website was started from scratch, the design and programming were collaborative, but each member specialized in some type of aspect. The project was developed over a ten month time period.

Team members: Brandon Passley, Graphic Design/Electronic Visualization; Jack Fisher, Graphic Design; Gene Parcellano, Graphic Design; Camille Mankus, Graphic Design; Anna Trzyna, Electronic Visualization; Santi Vitayaudom, Electronic Visualization;

[ more information ]

Design for Democracy

Brandon Passley — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 02:05:00 +0000

The events of September 11, 2001 have highlighted the importance of having good emergency and evacuation systems as part of Homeland Security. According to a RAND report, “Security and Safety in Los Angeles High Rise Buildings after 9/11,” ninety-nine percent of the World Trade Center occupants below the impact floors were able to safely evacuate the building (Archibald et.al. 2002).

This project was produced in 2007 at UIC for Design for Democracy under the direction of Elizabeth Tunstal and Marcia Lausen

[ more information ]

Rottone

Brandon Passley — Fri, 12 May 2006 15:41:39 +0000

Rottone was an experiment with natural color. Four colors were used (strawberry, orange, banana, grape). These four fruits were allowed to rot and images were taken of the process. Each stage produced hues of each color. This process was then documented in the form of a printers Pantone color swatch book. Each color has the correct CMYK color palette underneath, and a unique “Rottone” color coding.

This was produced at UIC in 2006 under the direction of Professor John Greiner.