The personal disquiet of

Mark Boulton

January 19th, 2008

Coolspotters and Garcia Media

It’s been a good while since I’ve talked about any work Mark Boulton Design has been up to. That’s mostly because the pro­jects we’ve been work­ing on have been under wraps. Until now that is. One pro­ject is now live, the other com­ing very, very soon. 

Coolspot­ters: If it’s cool, they’ve seen it

Fan­zter, Inc hired Mark Boulton Design last year to design their new web applic­a­tion, Coolspot­ters. Coolspot­ters is a consumer-focussed site that offers an exper­i­ence that could shift the way people dis­cover great products.

Coolspotters Logo: Designed by Mark Boulton Design Ltd.

The design chal­lenge was considerable—from the brand­ing to design­ing the UX. We worked closely with Fan­zter, draw­ing on our exper­i­ence with work­ing client-side, to hone the product over many iter­a­tions. I don’t mind say­ing, the res­ult of this close col­lab­or­a­tion is fant­astic. But, you may have to wait a few weeks before get­ting to grips with the site as Fan­zter are open­ing it up for beta applic­a­tions now, before launch­ing proper shortly.

Gar­cia Media

Gar­cia Media is one of the world’s lead­ing news design stu­dios. Design­ing pub­lic­a­tions such as The Wall Street Journal, The Miami Her­ald, Die Zeit and small com­munity papers, they have unpar­alleled exper­i­ence and an industry repu­ta­tion to boot. 

Redesigned Garcia Media website

I had the pleas­ure of work­ing with Dan and Alex Rubin on the design, as well as the in-house team at Gar­cia Media. Mario Gar­cia, Jr. has penned a blog post on the site that explains the back­ground, design and imple­ment­a­tion much bet­ter than I ever could.

Com­ing up… 

We’re thrilled to be work­ing on some incred­ibly excit­ing pro­jects at the moment—from FTSE 100 cor­por­ate redesigns and web applic­a­tions for TV net­works. Through to small, simple web­sites for com­pan­ies with a great idea. In addi­tion to the web work, there are a few excit­ing things hap­pen­ing behind the scenes at Mark Boulton Design that hope­fully I’ll be able to talk about really soon. 

Share and Share alike

So, I’ve talked about my work. How about you talk about yours? What have you been up to? I’d love to hear. Feel free to link it up (although not too many as EE will spit your com­ment back at you!) 

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 10:02 am and is filed under Business, Design.

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27 Responses to “Coolspotters and Garcia Media”

  1. Rex said on: January 19th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

    Awe­some work Mark! Gar­cia Media is so classy I won­der if I’m allowed to be there :) 

    Myself, get­ting ready to wrap up a pro­ject for Uwhar­rie Point, an exclus­ive golf club / home com­munit­ies in North Car­o­lina. Quite proud of this one… 

    About

    Inter­act­ive Flash Map

  2. Kevin said on: January 19th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    And when is the next pro­ject expec­ted to start?

  3. Mark Boulton said on: January 19th, 2008 at 1:04 pm

    RexGood look­ing site, Rex. Espe­cially like the look of the flash map.

  4. Tim Van Damme said on: January 19th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

    I’m cur­rently work­ing on the design for ichoosr and Stake5.be. Two totally dif­fer­ent pro­jects that’ll prob­able launch by the end of March.

    Thanks for the update Mark!

  5. Travis Schmeisser said on: January 19th, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    I’m really dig­ging the Gar­cia site. Simple and straight for­ward, but not empty or lack­ing any info. 

    We just launched a site for a new web devel­op­ment com­pany Hashrocket and handed over files to Dave Shea for the Web Dir­ec­tions North con­fer­ence bags. Busy few weeks!

  6. Colly said on: January 19th, 2008 at 4:49 pm

    Finally… a win­dow­into what’s been keep­ing you so quiet. Well, this and the more import­ant April launch, if you know what I mean. Inspir­ing stuff as always, squire…

  7. Andy Homan said on: January 19th, 2008 at 8:58 pm

    Lov­ing Gar­cia Media Mark! Just lif­ted the wraps off Revolver Film and—a site for fel­low Aus­sie designer—Mark Gow­ing. Look­ing for­ward to see­ing more from MBD.

  8. Tor Løvskogen said on: January 20th, 2008 at 4:41 am

    I really fancy the vibrant color scheme of the Coolspot­ters site, well done. 

    Pro­jects can take a while before it’s finaly ‘out the door’, I can relate to that. Two of my designs is in the final prosess of going live, a yacht site.

  9. Tor Løvskogen said on: January 20th, 2008 at 4:47 am

    (had to split up the link­age)

    …and a site for a plum­ming com­pany (dont mind the dummy con­tent images) 

    And I’m in the prosess of cod­ing up a per­sonal pro­ject of mine, MONUMENT.

  10. Mark Slocock said on: January 20th, 2008 at 6:06 am

    Hi Mark, I’ve not com­men­ted before thought it was about time I got involved instead of just reading.

    Both pro­jects look great, coolspot­ters looks inter­est­ing look­ing for­ward to see­ing the site when it goes live. 

    We’ve been work­ing on http://www.lovechips.co.uk (we don’t do the design — just the build).

  11. Filosof said on: January 20th, 2008 at 10:22 am

    Hi Mark, I like your work quite a lot. I’m work­ing on a web­site called Zelena hvezda (design and XHTML/CSS).

  12. Winnie said on: January 20th, 2008 at 8:08 pm

    Always nice to see your work, Mark. Espe­cially the typo­graphy. :) *ahem* since you asked…I was work­ing on the design/ui part of an online com­ics cre­at­ing & shar­ing site and now it’s newly launched for beta as well – Comiqs, and my own typography-led per­sonal site.

  13. Matthew Pennell said on: January 21st, 2008 at 2:32 am

    I hate these posts — because I’m work­ing under an NDA and can never link to any work… :(

  14. Mark Boulton said on: January 21st, 2008 at 2:50 am

    I hate these posts too. It’s only six months later I can talk about these pro­jects. The pro­jects I’m work­ing on at the moment won’t be avail­able for pub­lic con­sump­tion for at least six months. Kind of depressing.

  15. Gary Bristow said on: January 21st, 2008 at 8:18 am

    Nice work, great to see some examples of what you’ve been work­ing on. 

    New ideas at: [url=http://www.garybristow.co.uk]http://www.garybristow.co.uk[/url]

  16. Alex Bobin said on: January 21st, 2008 at 9:53 am

    Coolspot­ters looks pretty inter­est­ing.  I like the Gar­cia Media site — like Travis Schmeis­ser said — you’ve cre­ated some­thing simple without it feel­ing empty or under­done.  I find it hard to strike that balance.

    It seems like we all work on such cool stuff.  The most inter­est­ing pro­ject I’ve recently fin­ished work­ing on is Vent Lon­don.

  17. Joshua Brewer said on: January 21st, 2008 at 10:25 am

    Beau­ti­ful work on the Gar­cia Media site. I noticed the Happy Cog-inspired nav­ig­a­tion on the homepage and thought that it was a per­fect style for the com­pany. Well done.

  18. Caspian Ievers said on: January 23rd, 2008 at 6:28 am

    Thank you for shar­ing your work. I was just look­ing at Gar­cia and noticed that the con­tent shifts a few pixels left/right when you click between the online and mobile tabs. Say­ing that is is a much bet­ter site than I could build.

    We’ve just been busy re-branding and re-launching Rack­space http://www.rackspace.co.uk, and just for fun http://www.theoldtimersmachine.com just in time to head off for some well earned snowboarding.

  19. Sam Hardacre said on: January 24th, 2008 at 9:39 am

    All the work looks great mark! : ) 

    As I’m look­ing to start doing a bit of freel­ance work, I gave my site a redesign last week. I need to pad it out with more con­tent and illus­tra­tions which is on my sched­ule next week. I’m also work­ing on the design and front end devel­op­ment of a site for some friends to pro­mote artists in the local area. The lat­ter isn’t live yet unfor­tu­nately as there are a few bits and pieces left to add.

  20. Smosh said on: January 25th, 2008 at 1:57 pm

    Oh wow. Really nice designs. Elegante!

  21. Elemis said on: January 25th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    I like to work and feel myself like fish in the water!

  22. Efrain said on: January 29th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    Any news about Flow??

  23. NFS said on: February 1st, 2008 at 5:26 am

    I also really like the col­ors of the Coolspot­ters site, good job!

  24. Chloe Stroller said on: February 4th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    Just been on the coolspot­ters homepage and yeah look­s­really nice. 

    @Caspian Iev­ers

    I also have a few rack­space serv­ers and have been aware of their rebrand of their web­site, very nice. I am a keen rack­space fan­at­ical sup­port lover !

  25. Craig - Web Design said on: February 6th, 2008 at 8:20 am

    The CoolSpot­ter stuff looks inter­est­ing, I like the logo design on it too, nice work. We are find­ing a lot of people like that white/crazy col­our con­trast atm. 

    I sup­pose it is just well in line with web 2.0 but I hope it doesn’t become too over used :(

  26. Antony said on: February 6th, 2008 at 11:50 pm

    I am work­ing in the net­work mar­ket­ing — like my job very much!

  27. edwin p. said on: February 7th, 2008 at 12:05 am

    I like clean and visual attract­ive straight for­ward designs, without unnes­sacery bagage..good work

  • Me

    Hello. My name is Mark Boulton. I’m a designer, an author, a speaker and I run a small design agency where we work with lovely cli­ents and pub­lish books as we go. This is my blog.

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