Black Swan Designs
Project Background
Black Swan Designs is run by Mel Blowes, a crafty entrepreneur, professional photographer and graphic designer living in Christchurch. She is involved in the Christchurch arts and crafts scene and has won various awards for her work, most recently winning the Supreme Award for the window display competition at the 2009 Ellerslie International Flower Show.
Black Swan Designs had a previously existing website (see image below), however Mel felt that the old site no longer accurately reflects the current state of her business, and was keen for a fresh look. She also had three separate web presences – her original website, her blogspot blog, and her online shops – and wanted them all put in one location. Being a graphic designer by trade, Mel was able to handle the design work. My role involved advising Mel about the web-specific aspects of design, turning the design into a working site, and also coming up with some funky javascript effects.

The original Black Swan Designs website
Site Description
The new Black Swan Designs website is a PHP brochure website featuring:
• Fully-integrated WordPress blog
• Image galleries featuring ‘Slimbox’ image viewer and slideshows
• Auto-updating array-based navigation system with a slick Mootools motion effect
• Bespoke Content Management System (CMS) with administrator access to edit site text and admin user accounts.
• Integrated Etsy online shop listings via XML/RSS feed
• Contact form
The new Black Swan Designs website includes many photo galleries featuring images of past and current products and services, as well as information about the business, her online shop listings, and contact information.
The new site also features prominent links to her two online craft stores at Felt and Etsy, plus a live display of her current Etsy listings which is integrated into the shop page with PHP thanks to Etsy’s RSS/XML feed. The new Black Swan Blog runs on WordPress, and we were able to import her old Blogspot posts using WordPress’s import function.
Testimonial
‘Richard was great to work with, preempting my requests on several occasions and constructing a functioning site that was 100% faithful to my original design. I enjoyed the informative emails with relevant links which made me feel a real part of the process, and look forward to working together again in the future.’ – Mel Blowes




