Web Designs

I'm also a moderately successful independent web developer. I've helped design and implement small-to-mid sized business websites, as well as a seemingly never-ending plethora of personal sites. I've included a few of my favorites below.

 

Note: These are not the "best", or the biggest. They're just the most fun. It's my website, and I'll do what I want.

 

ChrisCanfield.net

Chris Canfield.net

 

You're looking at it. Chris Canfield.net has undergone many revisions since it launched in 2002. Originally it had monocolor ovals for navigation along the left side of the content. I briefly toyed with a hideous metallic scythe in purple and orange, before settling on a distinctive background and angular styling based upon the Sushi level in Bust-A-Groove 2. After many years of that, I adapted the more gritty and realistic design you see in front of you here. This is actually the first version of ChrisCanfield.net adapted from someone else's design: I didn't have time to complete a redesign and a re-implementation, and happened to be quite fond of the other deigner's work.


StoryGame Initiative

The Story Game Initiative

 

After a frustrated attempt to capture the essence of story-based gaming in a turn-of-the-century modernist motif, I turned to the muted colors of Japanese stationary for inspiration. What came out the other side is a site distinctly different. Much like the game, it eschews bright colors for passive subtlety, but fills all available space with story, if one were to look hard enough.

I attempted to draw the viewer into the website by drawing the negative space backwards, instead of thrusting the positive spaces forwards. Navigating is a bit like skipping across stepstones in a creek, rather than jumping up onto huge buttons.

The distances and sizes could have been a bit more subtle. But it was 2004, and entirely expiermental.

...Archived for Posterity
 
Mandatory Police Communication

The Bureau of Mandatory Police Communication

 

I warned you this was entirely for my own enjoyment. Around 1997 I created this piece as social satire, for this new graphical gopher thing called the World Wide Web. At the time, the image drew directly from the FBI's website... a petty jab that never drew the desired cease-and-desist letter.

I was particularly proud of how the buttons "extruded" or "tabbed" out from the side, which hadn't been done before online. Yes, I'm laying claim to inventing tabs. It's probably not true. Deal with it.

 

...Archived for Posterity