Ever evolving portfolio

Hi, my name is Zen. Ths is my website full of stuff. Feel free to have a browse around some of the things I have done, and don’t forget about the media player at the top. Read how the site was made by following the blog posts.

Ajax Multimedia webshop!

Dripping with high-tech features, this new music label offers free previews, podcasts and chances to buy digital songs or vinyl! This one stop site will cater for all your eclectic dance needs. Don’t forget about the secret button!

This new music label that cut its teeth releasing party vinyl has gone digital with a fresh new music website and shop!

Play music whilst shopping for music, previewing any track live. That was the main objective… well that along with high quality music delivery using Web2.0 features such as podcasting and rss feeds.

With a stark graphic style by Vacant Design we needed some strong visual animations as cue points for actions. The Flash-based music player is autonomous and animated as it loads an artist’s playlist or swaps between songs. For those not of a nervous disposition, there is always the secret hyper mode (*top dial on the left) if you find it too tame.

Speaking of the music player, let me mention a few unique features:

• automatic saving of your volume preference for when you come visit us again
• communicates with the artists’ pages so that songs can be selected outside of the music player
• wholly animated to reflect the party music is playing with regards to the volume
• super secret party mode for fast processors

If you would like to attend any events, join the mailing list and check out the news and live pages.

Technical details

⊗ ActionScript 2.0 Custom music player code with intelligent internal music database.

⊗ Flash mx compatible with ActionScript animated GUI.

⊗ Music Player loads XML, RSS and XSPF playlists from the netcast.

⊗ Javascript html music controls and feedback – communicating between flash and html.

⊗ On-the-fly xpsf and xml (atom or RSS) playlist creation with scraped coverart

⊗ Based on the Opensource CMS WordPress. Yes really!

⊗ SEO super optimised with analytical software to determine most important records.

⊗ All Artists and channels have relevant RSS and ATOM feeds.

⊗ AJAX page requests into dynamic html.

⊗ Down-gradeable to simple html shop.

New logo, old school software

Want music making to be instant and fun again? Try Med. As version 2 is finally nearing completion I have designer a new logo for the product. Made up of musical clefs, staves and punctuation, this is a super-musical logotype!

A logo for a comeback

Back in 1999, I designed some concept products for Amiga Inc. Many became a reality, although dissappointingly none were used by Amiga, and to this day no hardware has been released. However, with the launch of version 4 of their OS, things look back on track.
So, to announce my return to the community, I have done some thinking about the logo. In case you were wondering, it isn’t quite a cube, in fact it is a section cut from a boing-ball.

Future Retro Kitch

Designed as the main logo for the reborn ‘Box Office Poison’ band. Commissioned for the sleeve art, T-shirts and PR material, the logo is sultry and exotic, with just a cheeky dash of kitsch.
Subversively there is a hidden face. Can you find him???

A co-operative freelance umbrella group

Originally designed as a 3D logo by Jim Lundblad, the Shogun Logo is up for grabs as one of the latest bounties. Here is my submission, or one of my submissions. Read more to find out about the many variations of the theme.

Super secret underwater propulsion system

Commissioned brand for a new start-up who specialise in eco-friendly underwater propulsion systems. It needed a rugged, durable and bold logo as well as a defining and unifying brand.

A bit of selfish branding

I just finished off redesigning the logo for this site and it’s accompanying literature. It is a ‘d’ and a ‘z’ (for DesignerZen or course!) but I have arranged it in a circle so that it has a little dash of character.