Web

PLEASE NOTE: My personal site is not just unfinished but badly out of date! This ‘Web’ section in particular is now almost totally irrelevant. The material on it remains until such time as I can create a new site for myself (I plan to start again…), but the Huddersfield Singers and Foundation RISC User sites are both now defunct. So, rather than paying attention to what’s mentioned here, please take a look at some of my more recent work. I’m currently responsible for the following two sites:

Orchestral Concert CDs
Orchestral Concert CDs’ site was my first attempt at pure XHTML and CSS3. I’m actually rather pleased with it. As well as designing the site, I was also responsible for creating the OCCDs company logo (the letters O, C, CD made into a CD-like graphic) and all other aspects of the presentation (wood-themed design). Since doing that work, I have also become responsible for the design of the commercially-manufactured CDs themselves, and have designed various magazine adverts in the same style for OCCDs (Fanfare, Classical Music, International Record Review etc.). The result is therefore a highly coordinated whole.

Fand Music Press
The Fand Music Press site was my first attempt at a completely software-driven site: although a few sections are plain XHTML with CSS, the large majority of the site is dynamically generated using a custom content management system that I wrote in PHP and MySQL. I have been involved with Fand Music Press in various capacities for many years (since the early 1990s), producing new music editions for it to publish, but since becoming Webmaster I have also given the company’s whole presentation a refresh. Music editions now have a much more sophisticated full-colour cover design that uses a similar presentation to the website, and – like my work for OCCDs – I coordinate all printed and online material to be presented in a consistent way.

I have been working on Web sites since 1999, when I created a site for The Huddersfield Singers in order to teach myself HTML. As it happens, much of what I have done so far has found its way onto CD rather than onto the Web as such. That's partly been in the nature of my other work: as a magazine editor, it has been a natural progression to produce Web sites to act as front-ends to magazines on CD, or other CD-based items. I am, though, currently involved in other projects that are destined for the Web. This area of my own site exists to demonstrate some of the larger projects that I've completed in the past:

The Huddersfield Singers
As mentioned above, The Huddersfield Singers' site represents my very first experience of HTML, and was intended to mimic the style of the spot-colour printed brochure that the choir publishes each year to advertise its concerts.

RISC User ...in a Nutshell
The RISC User ...in a Nutshell site demonstrates my first CD-based project: a front-end for a major commemorative CD which contained a vast amount of data, all of which needed to be organised coherently and helpfully for the user.

Foundation RISC User Online
Lastly, Foundation RISC User Online is an online sampler of the CD magazine that I edit at present. Each issue of this magazine is effectively a large Web site on CD, though there are other considerations such as the ability to run resources directly from the pages of the articles.

Although I'm not one of the longest-established Web designers on the Internet, I hope that I bring a certain organisational flair to the subject, and a good feeling for design and layout. The three sample sites listed above are all very different from one another in their presentation, but I hope that each is well thought out in terms of its structure, attractive to view and easy to use.

I'm available for freelance Web design work, and bring to the subject a strong sense of structure, an ability to create attractive graphics and an experienced writer's command of English. Contact Richard@Hallas.net or phone me on +44 (0)1484 460280 if you wish to discuss a project.