my website design + photography + graphics

Updated, February 1, 2010

his web site began as a project for my Interface Design class at The Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, D.C., where I completed a certificate program in Electronic Publishing/Web Design in 2001. The assignment was to create a portfolio of our school work, with an emphasis on a particular theme or skill, and to show photography and other graphic arts projects. My site started out as a travel photo portfolio of one of my trips to France, along with some of my class projects. Over time, it has become a web design portfolio site showing all of my current (and some past) website design projects, displayed on my Portfolio projects page. I also have an interest in typography, and my Graphic design projects section shows some of my typography posters and other graphics that I have created over the past couple of years, after taking a class in Typography at The Corcoran. (Please see the graphic link at the top of the right column of this page, “What is Typography?”) I am also a frequent visitor to other typography and graphic design-related blogs on the Internet, some of which are listed under my Web resources page. Typography and color are two of my favorite design topics!

One of my projects this past year included developing a WordPress blog for a friend/client who took a travel sabbatical this summer, and was blogging about his visits to land trusts between Maine and Montana. The purpose of his blog was to write about how land trusts help to protect and preserve wild, undeveloped regions throughout our country (and also work to save the environment at the same time), for future generations, through the acquisition of landtrust easements, and cooperation from individuals who would like to donate their lands for conservation. His blog, "Unity to Wisdom," (the name referring to the blogger’s beginning and ending destination towns), is located at: http://www.unitytowisdom.org.

To learn more about blogs, I took a class to develop my skills with WordPress and how to set up a blog, as well as how to incorporate the blog posts with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. I then transferred management of the blog to the client, so he could update it himself. The blog also featured podcasts of his visits to the land trusts which he recorded and uploaded himself, making his travel stories more interesting, as well as interactive. The blog development was a fun learning project for me in terms of design, as well as how to create a distinctive look through plug-ins, colors, added navigation pages, etc. I hope to develop more WordPress blogs in the future; perhaps even my own at some point – if and when I have enough time to maintain a blog! For now, my website will have to do. I have also set up Facebook and Twitter pages of my own this year, but find it hard to update them all the time, and to also separate the business side from the fun side, so for now those things are more fun or news–related for me, but I am not using them for website design discussions since they only allow so much text. All the more reason to have your own design blog, I think, some day!

My other website projects this year have included ongoing web work for The Northern Virginia Chorale, as well as a new website for a mortgage broker/lender, Elite Mortgage Capital LLC, located at: www.elitemortgagecapital.com. The Northern Virginia Chorale’s website I frequently update with their season's choral schedule and performance information, as well as content inside of their Singers’ Only section which includes musical links, mp3s, and other learning resources specifically geared towards the choral members’ use in practice. Additionally, I helped to update another website for a Treasury Management professional’s business called CJVolk Associates, at: www.cjvolk.com. I worked on search engine optimization, as well as a new design/look and colors for the site. You can read more about all of my website projects from the links on my Portfolio projects page.

In addition to my own freelance work, I have also worked as a web content editor and developer for a number of associations where I managed larger, more complicated websites, and created things like e-newsletters, flyers, and online registration processes. I also worked with other graphic design team members to prepare photos and graphics for both print and web publications. Between my freelance work and the association work, I have experience with everything from designing the site architecture, navigation, and graphics; to writing, editing, taking photos, and developing visual content. My work for the associations has been more website maintenance and creation of new content, within the larger framework of content management systems.

On my own website I like to use fun, colorful graphics and images and spend time updating my site with new headers based around the seasons and holidays. I use the right-hand column of this page for links to other sites that are either design-related or of some other interest to me, like my resources page on the important topic of global warming. This page has links to various sites that deal with this urgent and timely environmental topic, as well as what people are doing now to try to solve it. I also have some other pages devoted just to travel photos from some of my trips.

There is always something new and exciting happening on the Internet in terms of technology, but I have tried to concentrate my efforts on the things that I know how to do best for now in web design, using programs like Illustrator and Photoshop, as well as Dreamweaver. I have gained inspiration from reading other designers’ and bloggers’ websites, like Veerle Pieters,’ who has provided much insight to graphic and web designers such as myself. I find the web design work to be both fun and challenging, and enjoy the creative, artistic, as well as the technical aspects of it. I also like to write and edit, and find that web design lends itself to doing all of these things. Before working as a web designer, I was a paralegal, and have a degree in political science. However, I have always maintained an avid interest in things like art as well as graphic design; so like other career-changers, decided to pursue something that was more in keeping with my own individual passions and interests!

Thank you for visiting my site. I appreciate all those visitors who continue to come back, whoever you might be!

-- Jacquie Apel

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ContaCt:

To contact me, please use my
online form.

 

* “SNOWPOCALYPSE” — a source of great devastation and/or doom, accompanied by
massive amounts of snow occuring in the Washington, D.C. area.

Other similar adjectives:
SNOWMAGEDDON, SNOW-BONANZA, SNOWBUNDANCE, SNOWTASTROPHE,
and SNOW-PALOOZA.

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TECHNICAL SKILLS:

My website design experience includes working with the following
graphic design and web programs:

IN THE PROCESS OF: Learning more about current web trends in usability and design, other web programming languages like ColdFusion and XML, and I am striving to become more proficient with CSS2, as well as valid HTML code, and Section 508 accessibility requirements as I have time.

Please visit my web resources page for links to other websites and helpful information for designers.