The Commissioner's Ball

The Commissioner's Ball is a New Year's Eve party thrown at The Herkimer in Minneapolis, MN. Capacity at The Herkimer is limited, so I volunteered to design and build an invite/rsvp system for the event.

The finished application, built with Codeigniter, was used to send personalized emails to all invitees with a unique invitation code, and a link to an invitation page with their own name on it. This page let the invitee RSVP, invite friends via email, and get their invite in paper (PDF) or on an iPhone.

The site handled the invitation and RSVP of over 500 people, and they all showed up with tickets in hand (or phone).

Can'ya Make It

I designed and built an RSVP site for our annual holiday party. The system emailed personalized invites to all of our guests, and tracked their RSVP status.

I stripped away every "feature" I could think of. No comments, no seeing who else was invited, none of that. What happens when you whittle away an RSVP site down to its core? A simple question: "Can 'ya make it? Yes, or no?" And so, that's what I built. One page, two buttons. Once the invitee RSVP'd the choice was made even easier - a single button reading: "wait, yes I can", or "wait, no I can't".

The site's background is a landscape of my house and the houses around it. I spent a nice afternoon standing on the sidewalk, drawing the houses, and chatting with the neighbors. I ended up with a nice wintery scene that spanned even the widest browser windows.

BixbyHeart

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Will it be bacon, or juice?

Bixbyheart.com was a collaborative effort between Dane Petersen and myself. I designed and built the frontend, and he built the backend.

We met Mark Bixby at SXSWi 2007, and were fast friends. Our late-night IHOP jesting that year eventually blossomed into a full-blow iPhone web app. The premise was simple enough: let the world feed Bixby bacon or juice, and move his heart rate up (bacon) or down (juice) accordingly. Telling our audience to keep Bixby's heart rate between 70 and 120 beats-per-minute was the secret sauce that kept our core audience (SXSWi attendees) checking in. In order to help us monitor Bixby's health, we pulled the most recent updates to his Twitter and Flickr feeds, and graphed his BPM over time, using the Google Charts API.

Bixby survived that year, and continues to live a seemingly healthy life, despite being fed 2,965 pieces of bacon, and 2,861 bottles of juice (at the time of this writing).

Anne's Chit Chat

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My wife, Anne, has been blogging since 2005. When we moved her from Blogger to her own domain, we made the switch to Wordpress, and I designed the template from the ground up.

Eastvold Custom

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I designed this site for Matt Eastvold's woodworking company, Eastvold Custom.

The design is modern and minimal, just like the furniture they make.

Sidenote: Eastvold Custom built The Big Red Desk itself!

Anne & Jake

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When Anne and I got engaged, I built anneandjake.com to give our wedding an online home. The design matched the look and feel of our wedding invitations, and gave people a look at what we were up to.

Silvercocoon

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Minnesota artists/designers/architects Tia and Souliyahn Keobounpheng use silvercocoon.com as an online showcase. They came to me with a homepage design and a ton of photos. Informed by their homepage design, I built the rest of their site as an extended gallery, enabling navigation between both photos and projects.

Ingman Photography

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I designed and built ingmanphotography.com for my wife's photography business. The design matches her stated photographic style: candid, classy, fun.

Casa Verde Design

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I collaborated with Hello Creative to build casaverdedesign.com.

Casa Verde Design showcases modern kitchen, bath, and home furnishings from a number of designers and builders.

The site is as clean and modern as the furnishings they showcase.

Iowa State Engineering Kids (ISEK)

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I designed and built the ISEK site and logo while working on the K-12 engineering summer camp program at Iowa State University.

The ISEK (Iowa State Engineering Kids) program teaches K-12 kids about science and engineering through a number of programs, including summer camps on the ISU campus, and FLL (FIRST LEGO League).