Case Studies
Select from the links below to jump to the case study for that particular site.
Bald Mountain Medical Pharmacy || Florida Keys Preconstruction || Ancestry Helper || Statistical Surveys, Inc. || The Gosselin Group Inc. || CDL Candles || Camp Run-A-Pup || The Office Grapevine || Western Michigan ARMA || TTL Images Photography || Lake Orion Family Dentistry || Robert Edwards || JoHo Technologies
Bald Mountain Medical Pharmacy
The website for Bald Mountain Medical Pharmacy is a brochure site to service local patients in the Lake Orion, Michigan area.
Bald Mountain Medical Pharmacy required a simple site to showcase their personalized services in a esthetic manner that showcases their attention to individulized services as well as promote an image of a pharmacy that is technologically advanced.
The site combines a technical/medical feel, as well as promotes their old fashioned service by having a retro-style ad to let people know about their free home delivery services. Please feel free to visit Bald Mountain Medical Pharmacy.
Florida Keys Preconstruction
Florida Keys Preconstruction is the #1 website resource for information on Florida Keys real estate, development, and preconstruction in the Florida Keys, located in Key Largo, Florida.
FlKeysPreconstruction.com required a highly optimized site, both for search engine purposes, but also for the variety of visitors. The web design matches the parent company's site, but has been modernized and expanded upon. Adding more functional navigation, a high amount of search engine optimization, and a full CSS layout, allows for a more efficient website, and also one that is very esthetic.
Holly Hight, the owner of Island Equity Real Estate and FlKeysPreconstruction.com, has been a client for a long time. Working with her on this project was a great pleasure. By allowing Merlee Designs to have creative freedom over the changes to the parent design, both visually and in technology, we have achieved a greatly enhanced website. Please feel free to visit Florida Keys Preconstruction.
Ancestry Helper
Ancestry Helper is a website for individuals and families looking for help with researching and documenting their family history. Located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, they offer custom genealogy research in addition to the preparation of full family trees.
We created a very simple and elegant site, including beautiful classical and historic photographs to highlight the genre and services provided by Ancestry Helper. The colors choices are soothing and classic and help emphasize and reflect the ancestry theme. Because of the site’s limited textual content, it afforded the use of a larger masthead/header, which helped provide a very visual look and feel.
This was a fun project to do design-wise, as it needed such a classical look. Please feel free to visit Ancestry Helper.
Statistical Surveys, Inc.
Statistical Surveys, Inc. is a provider of market data solutions for the Marine, Manufactured Housing, RV-Motorized, RV-Towable and Trailer Industries in Grand Rapids, Michigan. When determining the style of website for Statistical Surveys, Inc., the client wanted a high imagery site, that focused on their primary services, while not being "boring" as their business is data and numbers.
By going with a Flash home page, we brought some animation and bold graphics to the forefront, while having an interactive menu available to allow the visitor to navigate easily throughout the site. Each primary section of the site, Comany, Marine, Housing, RV and Trailers, is customized with its own color scheme and graphics. This clearly defines the section that the visitor is in and makes for some variety within the site itself. Because Statistical Surveys provides data and reports, we also provided them with a matching template that could be used on their secure section to present the data in a uniform fashion.
This was a great project to work on, as the team from Statistical Surveys were clear about what they wanted, were on target with their deliverables, and eagerly participated in the creation of this site. Please feel free to visit Statistical Surveys, Inc.
The Gosselin Group, Inc.
The website for The Gosselin Group, Inc., a civil engineering firm in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is very customized, and was designed to meet the Owner's specifications.
Deb Gosselin, president of the firm, wanted a subtly feminine, yet technical design. Working with an existing logo, we determined a contrasting color scheme, and brought in elements of a civil engineering style, along with some angles and curves to reflect the logo throughout the design. The colors are soft and soothing, bringing a feminine touch to the site without being "girly".
We continue to provide maintenance services for The Gosselin Group, Inc.
CDL Candles
CDL Candles is a new start-up that was looking for a unique and professional image to go forward with right from the start. The company makes candles by custom order, allowing the customer to customize their candles to their own tastes.
The design for CDL Candles stemmed from a very traditional and elegant look and feel. As their products are hand-crafted and of exceptional quality, this had to be conveyed through their marketing materials also, and their forms, logo, and literature could not look "home-made". The almost Victorian theme and simple elegance of a primarily black and white color scheme is reminiscent of the days in which old-fashioned craftsmanship were common, not a rarity.
We started with a logo, which ended up being old-fashioned and almost Victorian, giving the essence of old-fashioned quality and craftsmanship that goes into each one of their products. From there we went into creating the print materials - business card, an order form and a brochure - to further enhance their professionalism and dedication to quality.
The website as a start, is small and intimate, with plenty of room to grow as does their business. The design again incorporating Victorian swirls and lines to co-oridinate with the logo.
This project was a full identity branding package, and included along with the logo and the website, a business card, flyer and brochure design as well as a print and electronic order form in Acrobat PDF. We continue to provide web site maintenance and design services for CDL Candles, not to mention becoming one of their most loyal customers!
Camp Run-A-Pup
Camp Run-A-Pup was a fun project, and was a little outside of my usual experience to date. Camp Run-A-Pup is a dog day care in Chicago, Illinois, that is not your usual kennel. The pets are treated like pets, and the place is really run like a camp for dogs!
The owner's husband hand sketched the dogs sitting on the picnic table for the logo, and sent the sketch to me via snail-mail. From this sketch, I scanned the image and digitized it, bringing it into a vector format where it could be worked with, and worked with it we did until we had a logo. From there, the website design came along. What made this project unique in my experience, is that the owner did not want a "professional and business/corporate" look for her site. She wanted it to be fun and cartoonish, while still looking like it was done professionally. I think that we accomplished that look and feel, giving her a site that is functional, meets the efficiency and usability standards that a professional web site requires, while still having a fun look and feel!
This project was a full identity branding package, and included along with the logo and the website, a business card and brochure design. We continue to provide web site maintenance for Camp Run-A-Pup.
The Office Grapevine
It's kind of funny how this client and I got together. It was due to a contest the owner put out for naming her new company, and I tossed my idea out there. As they say, the rest is history. That one email earned me a couple of great bottles of wine and a fantastic new client!
The project for The Office Grapevine was a great experience, as this was a full identity branding package, including a logo, web site design and development, stationery and forms design. I became very personally attached to this project, and was intimately tied to the design and its outcome. This one was definitely a labor of love, and we are very happy with the results.
The logo went through several iterations during the design process before it was narrowed down and solidified into the final selection, and that dictated and became the hub for the rest of the design. The web site fell into place around the logo theme and colors, and has a great sense of elegance and flair that is both creative and professional. Because of the highly graphical design, minimal extra design elements were added, and font usage was kept to a minimum, even the Flash menu is very subtle and not too 'flashy' so as to not overwhelm the visitor.
We continue to provide web site maintenance services for The Office Grapevine.
Western Michigan ARMA
Benefits of the redesign of the Western Michigan ARMA chapter website:
- The code has been rewritten utilizing CSS to perform more efficiently, and has reduced the lines of code by an average of 70%. For example, the original home page had 277 lines of code and was 19kb, while the new home page has 76 lines of code and is 4kb. This greatly enhances the speed at which the page loads, and also reuses various common parts of each page.
- Each common element that is used across multiple pages has been rewritten to be used on an object basis, which means that, instead of including the same piece of information in the code of each page, each page simply references an external file which houses the common object. This allows for more efficient use of bandwidth, and also minimizes maintenance activities. For example, the menu on the left hand side of the screen is a separate file called menu.html. Each page of the site calls the menu.html file to include its contents into the parent page, instead of that code being physically written into every page. Needless to say, when updating a menu link, it is much more preferable to update in one file versus every page of the site.
- Because of the new coding structure, the site will be more search engine friendly, as well as be more accessible to those with disabilities.
- The menu system has been moved from a dynamic menu at the top of the screen, where each individual link was accessible through an hierarchical system, to a text based list of links on the left hand side of the screen where every page in the site is visible without having to search for it.
- A significant reduction in hosting costs.
- A significant improvement in our website statistics.
TTL Images Photography
In the creation of a full-Flash website for TTL Images, we started with a template which we then fully customized to meet the client's needs. The choice of flash for this particular project was crucial to visually display the /portfolios of the photographer in a highly creative and artistic manner, while still being able to maintain acceptable load times. Flash provides excellent compression for images and also provides security, allowing the owner of the images to feel comfortable in posting their work to the internet without worrying that their images will be downloaded by unauthorized persons.
To maintain the affordability of the site, it was not recreated in an HTML version, although the main page has the META data on the page for the search engines, and there are linking pages which are purely HTML to allow for reciprocal linking. Additional HTML pages can be added in at any time, so the website is fully expandable, and creating a static version is always a possibility in the future.
Along with the website, we also created a logo for TTL Images.
Lake Orion Family Dentistry
Creating the website for Lake Orion Family Dentistry was a large project as the site consists of over 100 pages, and the majority of the content was taken from scans, print materials, or was written in-house; along with the fact that the graphics for the layout of the site were created from scratch to match the print materials.
The purpose of the site was to provide exceptional customer service by providing a 24/7 source of information to both existing and potential customers via the internet in a one-stop location. By offering detailed descriptions of services, products and patient information on numerous dental situations, Dr. Allain has set himself apart from the majority of dental practices. When searching for a dental provider online, having these facts at your fingertips are crucial to making a decision, as is the convenience of having additional information and contact options for current patients available as well.
We continue to provide maintenance services for Lake Orion Family Dentistry on a regular and ongoing basis.
Robert Edwards, Project Manager
While the website for Robert Edwards is not classified as a business website, it is a tool that continues to be useful on an individual basis. Robert is a project manager in the information technology field, and having a website readily available where he can guide prospective employers to view his /portfolio of projects, his resume and any other information that he may choose to have posted has been critical to his career.
This continues to be my favorite site. Perhaps because I had complete artistic and creative freedom in working on it. It was an enjoyable project, as there is a little bit of everything. The flash splash page was fun to work on, and because it is a site that will not be visited repeatedly by repeat customers, was feasible to do. There is also a flash banner, which while subtle, adds a dynamic movement to the page to highlight the gray colors. While I would typically advise against a graphical menu system, I opted to use one here because the menu items will not be changing often. Again, feasibility based on the requirements of the individual.
We continue to provide maintenance and hosting services for Robert Edwards on a regular and ongoing basis.
JoHo Technologies
The website for JoHo Technologies is smaller in scale than some of the other websites, but consists of the basics required to have an internet presence for your business. This website was created on a completely virtual basis, meaning communication was entirely done via email and telephone.
The site has a self-managed news application, which allows the owners to be able to login to an administration page in a web browser where they can enter news items. Once submitted, these news items will show up in the news section on the home page. The banner on the website is flash enabled, which allows for the animation in the background, the animated menu buttons and the sounds which occur as you roll over the menu buttons.
I struggled a bit with a concept for the site, as it revolves around information storage and management, however, I woke up in the middle of the night with an idea of a light tracing over a circuit board as a visual of digitized information. Hence the background on the banner.
We continue to provide maintenance services for JoHo Technologies, Inc.