PearShapedCode - Portfolio

Signature Group Website

While working at Aldine we did a lot of work for the Signature Hotel Group, ranging from corporate templates, popup stands, brochures as well as their website.

We created the first site in 2004 and at the end of 2005 it had come to the point where the first version had provided a solid site but a new improved version was required. With the first site I wasn't really happy with the pastel like effect that I had created after basing it on one of their wedding brochures. The new version sported bolder colours, a more unified design across all the site sections and a massively boosted amount of content.

One problem that was addressed with this version of the site was regarding minor updates of offers and events. Since the whole site was developed using PHP it was decided that a minor admin system was needed which would manage upcoming events and offers, these would be time based so that when the event had occurred they would automatically not be displayed anymore. The trickier part of this was developing a routine to scan a range of events and offers from all the different venues to put in the front page 'news ticker'.

Another feature that I was pleased with was the brochure system. There were quite a few corporate PDFs that were available to download on the site, viewing them can sometimes be a hassle (Adobe Reader availability, speed of version, browser integration etc).Using a batch action process in Photoshop and a nice set of style sheet holders, each PDF has it's own slide show navigator within the site. Also the images are at a decent enough resolution so that they can be printed while still remaining legible.