We jumped at the chance to take on this project, since at least half of couldbe studios is blind as a bat (though the other half got his first pair of glasses recently – which counts, even if he only needs them when he spends too long on the computer) and most other online glasses retailers…well, let’s just say we had lots of ideas! The Moody Eyes guys let us take the design lead, and the result is a site that makes us really want another pair of glasses.

The collections are hand-picked and showcase the frames, and each collection features a piece of pop art by the fabulously talented Hillary White. The whole thing has a retro feel without being too kitschy, which really complements the product lines.

One of the coolest (and most developmentally challenging) features is the prescription form – not only did we integrate it with the product pages, but we tied it to customer accounts so that if you enter your information once, it will automatically populate the next time you order glasses. Cool, right?

We’re really excited to announce the launch of the new blog for The Clink Room – and not just because we had a hand in making it! The Clink Room guys do fantastic design work – they’re the people who do the official logos for Major League and Minor League Baseball teams – & we’ve had a blast doing this project. We got to flex our layout muscles getting the site to look just right, and we even got to create our first mobile site! Seriously, it’s very cool and all of you with iPhones or Android handsets should check it out, stat.

We’ll be launching the revamped Shopify store for these guys very soon, too – keep your eye out for the announcement.

Henry needed a site to showcase his fabulous new collection of luxury yoga towels. His design preference was upscale minimalism, and the site reflects that with a clean white background and dark gray typography. The only splash of color comes from the towels, which take center stage on the home page slideshow.

Henry’s fabulous photography definitely took this site to the next level. Visit Baktuli.com to check it out yourself!

Since Savvima was already built on WordPress, we were able to use plugins to get the site up and running quickly and painlessly. The front page slideshow uses the fabulous Smooth Slider, which we highly recommend.

Check out the site in action at Savvima.com!

Building this site has been a bit of a comedic adventure in Why Designers Should Hire A Designer. Despite all our proselytizing about keeping things simple, when it came to our own site we found ourselves trying to cram it full of every idea we’ve ever had. Seriously – the first iteration of the site practically did your dishes for you. And then, inevitably, we’d hit a wall. Pound our keyboards in frustration. Let the site sit for a while. Each time we came back to it we cut it down a little bit more, but there was still too much information and too little breathing room.

Finally, about a week ago, we started over. Clean slate, blank page. We had a brainstorming session in which we wrote down the three most important goals of couldbe studios: being able to offer affordable, quality design to people who don’t think they’ll be able to hire a designer; making accessible, standards-compliant sites; and providing complete identity solutions to small and home-based businesses. With those three things hanging out all by themselves on a piece of notebook paper, we went back to designing our site – and we knocked the whole thing out in a little over a weekend. Go, us!

We’re sort of glad it took so much work to get the site going, actually. Now that we know exactly what our clients are going through, we’ll be even better at helping them through the design process. And it is a process, you know? Getting from Point A to Point B isn’t always a straight shot.

So, yeah. Have a look at couldbe studios. Drop us a line if you want to hook up with a new site or a spiffy logo. And enter your name and e-mail address in the form on this blog to get our newsletter and stay on top of our latest happenings.