Richard Cornish's portfolio

Raising Malawi

I worked with Web design and development agency Blue State Digital to front-end develop RaisingMalawi.org, the Web site of Madonna's non-profit charity organization to help the African country of Malawi fight AIDS and poverty, and had raised more than $100,000 in less than two hours. Blue State Digital is most famous for developing and supporting the technology that powered President Barack Obama's campaign Web site.

I exclusively wrote the XHTML, CSS and JavaScript of the homepage, extended it to most interior pages and implemented parts of it in the ExpressionEngine CMS.

What is Barack Doing?

No public official has embraced social media like Barack Obama. In fact, there was so much information that checking his 25+ Web sites became tedious. I wanted one Web site where I could see his latest blog posts, photos, videos, podcasts and more.

I used SimplePie to parse through more than two dozen RSS feeds, and jQuery to add pleasant interaction in loading photos, videos and podcasts without annoying refreshes or redirections.

During the campaign, the map auto-updated with his current location and its weather conditions. I finished it in about a week, but made incremental updates to it over a few months, adding Change.gov and Inauguration information. A daily snapshot of the site as the campaign finished are archived on Flickr.

A 2009 Knight-Batten Award notable entry, sitting among 20 others, including The Big Picture, The Washington Post's TimeSpace and USA Today's Jobs Database.

Just More of the Same

Volunteered to work with Obama for America's Web team to write the valid XHTML and CSS (with a sprinkle of JavaScript for Internet Explorer 6's PNG woes) that powered JustMoreoftheSame.com, a one-time promotional site for the Democratic National Committee after the 2008 Republican National Convention. Promoted on Democrats.org.

I received the mock at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, and returned a validly coded Web site, tested against standards-based browsers and Internet Explorer 6 and 7, 35 hours later--an hour to spare before the 36-hour deadline, and minutes before U.S. senator Barack Obama's presidential nomination acceptance speech.

Django Podcast

Created and co-authored an open-source Web application for the Django Web framework to easily create audio and video podcast feeds. Some models and some views code credit goes to Python developer Jeff Triplett.

Features include ability to enhance podcast with FeedBurner and iTunes Store feed submission, Media RSS and Google video sitemap and default templates for show lists, episode lists and episode details.

Self-made Champions

A special section dedicated to the University of Kansas' 2007---2008 men's basketball NCAA championship season, winner of the 2008 Associated Press Managing Editors Award for Online Convergence, recognizing "print-online combinations that exhibit the best applications of both in presenting the story." Special section was the highest trafficked "story" in 2008 and top University of Kansas story.

The Google Charts sparkline graphic was enhanced with jQuery, and the sliding panes were created with MooTools. Videos were re-encoded to H.264, displayed at a 700 pixel-width minimum, and served using SlideShowPro. Four-hundred season-related YouTube videos feed that user-generated-content hunger.

And there's still plenty of Trajan to go around.

Three Night Stand

A blog chronicling this year's South by Southwest Interactive, the tech industry's biggest conference of the year, from Austin, Texas. Events, videos and plenty of RSS feeds rounded out the Web site's "his and her's" design theme. Twitter tweets were published on the homepage in true SXSW fashion, and the videos were syndicated as a (rudimentary) iTunes podcast and indexed as a Google video sitemap. She chose the colors.

Creating and implementing the design took longer than making the Django backend. Total project time: Five days.

Crimes in KU residences

In the spirit of EveryBlock's Chicago Crime, a visualization of crimes reported in residences at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. Crime reports can be browsed by year, type or residence.

Where Google Maps don't accompany crime data, CSS bar charts were created. The homepage's piechart was originally created using Google Charts, but later slightly customized. Development work by James Bennett.

Explore Steamboat

Extended World Online's Ellington Marketplace application, a hyperlocal, robust business directory, to integrate with the existing tourism Web site of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The first Marketplace application existed at the Lawrence Journal-World.

I performed a myriad of custom design and developer requests and bug fixes, among them markup, stylesheets, some Flash ActionScript modification and Ellington CMS template logic.

Cyndi Loza

A journalist's portfolio of articles spanning her career. One of my strongest typographical and traditional page design efforts; influences include A List Apart, Gapers Block and The Morning News.

Features include animated Google Maps, Google Street View--Maps and Street View APIs often integrated simultaneously--Google Charts, FancyZoom image enhancement, auto-sized and scrollable bar charts, and accessible printer link, text resize, RSS feed, XML sitemap and KML sitemap all of which are auto-generated. Articles are also cut geographically to include "place profiles." Facebook users can add her Facebook application, which shows her most recent articles.

Branded print pieces include her résumé, business card, printer-friendly article, and Web site handout promo.

The journalist updates the entire Web site herself from the user-friendly administrative interface. Created with the Django Web framework.

Digg the Candidates

Created the logo, page layout, markup and stylesheets for Digg's first presidential election coverage page. The concept was for users to add candidates as friends as an informal representation of users' favorability toward the candidates.

Final version's font sizes and photos tweaked by Digg's in-house design team.

Erin Kross' ePortfolio

A portfolio Web site chronicling the achievements of a student teacher. I wrote some of the XHTML, created the design, wrote the stylesheets, and helped to put it online at its own, respective URL.

As one of my more adventurous color schemes, the design also features automatic, alternating "zebra" color rows using Javascript. The design works well in different horizontal widths, moving the branch of flowers as necessary.

U of I Wiki

Dissatisfied with the local media's coverage of my university's cities of Urbana and Champaign, I created a hyper-local wiki in a weekend. The wiki is powered by MediaWiki, the same software that runs Wikipedia. I designed the logo and edited the homepage's markup and stylesheets.

After spending seven years on my university's campus, I'm astounded by the amount of knowledge I learned "the hard way" that wasn't available in any easily obtainable format. I'm convinced that the locals and veteran students have a wealth of knowledge that could be shared with new students, and the wiki is a step in that direction. Also covered by the student newspaper.

Digital Photography Review (fictional)

A fictional redesign of the popular camera review Web site, Digital Photography Review. Asked to explain my thought process behind designing a Web site, specifically a redesign, I wrote up my methodology in detail.

Features include a cleaner, tighter logo, a visually and functionally redesigned navigation and a strict adherence to the grid. The deliverables were a homepage and interior page composed as Photoshop mock-ups.

College of Communications

My most ambitious project; I designed a college Web site composed of two departments, an institute and a radio/television station from scratch. I designed the layout while adhering to university colors and typefaces; wrote almost all copy, edited everything and created electronic versions from old paper documents. Photographs were a combination of well-selected campus-specific stock, those by a freelancer and the rest taken by myself.

I wrote standards-compliant markup, styles and scripts, and designed for a radio media player and converted a variety of old video sources to Flash video. I interviewed faculty members for consultation and students for informational profiles.

AORN Fox Valley Chapter

A freelance Web site for a chapter of the national non-profit organization the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses, AORN. For the first four years, the Web site was maintained by a webmaster, but in response, Movable Type was installed to allow members to update the Web site for themselves.

To aid in updates by members, I recorded video screencasts (third image) narrating the update process. The Web site uses Google Maps to display the location of meetings.

Drudge Report (fictional)

A fictional redesign of the (in)famous, right-wing news Web site, the Drudge Report. Assigned as part of a job interview assignment, directions included a better organization of existing page elements but keeping enough of the visual cues to be recognized as the Drudge Report.

I gathered all search forms into the sidebar above the collections of news wires and columnists, and used a monospace typeface to re-create the feel of old journalists on typewriters. See the old version.

Deb Aronson, Writer & Editor

A freelance Web site for a freelance writer and editor, the design uses bold reds and golds with clear typography. Articles feature automated "curly" quotes and other typographical entities and on-the-fly image resizing without intervention by Deb. Articles are categorized by feature or essay.

She updates the Web site herself with a customized Movable Type installation more than a year and a half later.

Arrested Development Club

Upon discovering the hilarious and short-lived comedy series Arrested Development, I fell in love with it. When I learned about its difficulty in attracting fans, I created a registered student organization at my university and held viewing parties on places at campus.

The design emulates and extends the program's introduction and quick wit in page elements having a "strewn about" appearance. The Web site's news entries mark the first time I used and customized Flash's FLV Playback component. I also designed and printed T-shirts for club members.

DuPage County Democrats (proposal)

As one of my first attempts at standards-based design in 2003, I created this one-page mock Web site for the DuPage County Democrats in the Chicago area as a proposal to take over the webmaster's duties. I didn't receive word back from the webmaster, most likely because he didn't want to talk to the person who was also gunning for his job.

Although it stands as one of my first standards-based designs, I continue to use many of the techniques today that I discovered in this design. The colors and layers of shadows are subtle without becoming overbearing or gimmicky. See the old version.