www.visuallizard.com

Visual Lizard

 
 

With a fresh coat of digital paint!

We were long overdue for a refresh on our own website. So when it came time to update the backend content management system to the latest version of Catalyst 5, we found the time to also give it a brand new look.

And if we're going to update, we really wanted it to be an update! Now it's all bright vibrant colours. Here we have wide comfortable spacing. Clearer navigational structure. An adaptable layout that looks as good on your smartphone as it does on your thirty-inch monitor. And all done from scratch, by hand! No plug-and-play theme installation here; it is HTML and CSS written up in our code editor of choice.

The new site is a celebration of everything we love doing: custom-built work that fits our specific needs, and made flexible enough for us to keep refining in the future. 

Uniquely Us

You might say you like the look. You might say you hate it. But one thing you won't say is that you've seen it for sale.

Too many professional websites are starting to look the same. And it makes sense, as they're often starting from the same place. A theme bought online and applied to their CMS of choice, or a framework the designer/developer feels most comfortable with. You can be very efficient that way, but it's hard to stand out.

Sometimes, you need a project assembled quickly. And sometimes, you need custom work done. 

Much of our best work starts from scratch. It's creating a solution to solve your particular problem rather than trying to fit your problem in a pre-designed solution. It's rolling up our sleeves and getting into the code, really understanding how it ticks. It's challenging our design partners to come up with something distinct, and then challenging ourselves to make that design work online.

We didn't want to blend into the same generic layout. We wanted to stand out from the rest of the internet crowd.

Showing off a little

We like to think ourselves lucky. We're lucky that what we do nine-to-five doesn't feel like a chore. We love our HTML, our CSS, our PHP and MySQL. This is the stuff that makes us tick, the sort of work we'd be doing in our free time if we were working any other career.

We're lucky that this is our job. And we like to think we're pretty good at it!

The previous version of our online project portfolio balanced imagery and description. For our site redesign, we just wanted give it a bit more room to breathe. A larger screenshot of the project, more room for the write-ups to live, and vivid colors in which to wrap it all. For each individual project, we went a little less "reserved professional", a little more "fashion magazine".

And now, when listed on the main Projects page or when featured on the Homepage, we put a better foot forward. Gone is the dense grid of logos. Here, we have a graphic display of our work, of names, of attributes, of sneak peeks of the full work. And immediately you get a better sense of scale, of all the great people we've partnered with over the years!

For that extra little pop, content editors can adjust an individual project's presentation with more associated screenshots, more write-ups, more related websites, and a big splash of color. 

This isn't just a gallery of our work, past and present. This is a list of happy clients and proud partners. It's gathered here to read about, and out there on the internet for everyone to enjoy.

Built on using Portfolios plugins.

Writing it down now so we can remember it later

The internet is an ever changing beast, constantly spawning articles, videos, and so much more. It is a fascinating amount of content that's impossible to completely consume and barely possible to keep track of. But sometimes something stands out. And when it does, we want to share it with you!

Our blog roll comes in two flavours...

The short daily links are a collected set of shared URLs, rounded up into each individual day. We only need a title and a short description for each. It creates a quick feed of the most interesting things we find, easy to skim through, quick to parse. Like a social media feed sans all the angry yelling.

The other type of article is the full blog write-up. This is when we have something more substantial to say, and we want it to stand out. Unlike the light greys of the daily links, the full blog articles get a sequentially-assigned color, bright and vibrant, enough to stand out when you're scrolling by. Each gets a permalink so it can be shared out to email or Slack, to Facebook or Twitter, to whatever the future service of preference turns out to be.

Some people talk about the death of blogs, that social media inherited their role long ago. We think there'll always be a need to have a place of your own.

Built on using Articles and Content and Blogs plugins.

Pay your invoices online

We try to keep this simple for you and us both.

An online form through a trusted payment provider, allowing clients to pay their invoices easily and quickly. A minimal amount of information, so no one is wasting time filling in form field after form field after form field. A credit card transaction and notification emails to all parties, so we can follow up as quickly as required.

There's no reason why paying your invoice online should be a chore.