Christopher Marques

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Melia Kapri Photography​

Melia needed a website that would not only showcase her photography but also engage potential clients through a seamless browsing and booking experience. The project focused on creating an elegant, user-friendly platform with easy navigation and SEO optimization.​

Overview

Melia Kapri is a passionate photographer whose love for photography was sparked at a young age by her father. By the age of 14, she had developed a deep passion for photography, which she eventually transformed into a full-time business in 2019. Melia specializes in capturing timeless moments, and offering clients a personalized experience that tells their unique story through her lens. With a deep commitment to her craft, she aims to create images that will be cherished for a lifetime.

Project Owner​

Melia Kapri Photography

Role

Web Developer/Designer, Content Editor, Branding Advisor

Services provided

Web Design, UX/UI, SEO Optimization, Content Strategy, WordPress Development

Timeline​

2024

Development Platform​

WordPress

Visit Site

Challenge

The Melia Kapri Photography website needed to balance business and aesthetic goals. The focus was on showcasing the photography without overwhelming the user experience, ensuring responsive design across devices, simplifying the booking process, and optimizing SEO and load times without compromising image quality.

Objectives

The main objectives for the Melia Kapri Photography website were to create a visually-driven platform that showcases her work, ensure seamless functionality across devices, streamline the booking process for clients, and optimize SEO for improved search visibility while maintaining fast load times for high-quality images.

The Process

1. Discovery & Research

I worked closely with Melia to understand her business needs and artistic vision. After analyzing competitors and researching best practices for photography websites, we set clear objectives to enhance user experience and highlight her portfolio.

2. Wireframing & Prototyping

Developed initial wireframes focusing on a clean layout that kept the photography front and center. Created prototypes to test user flows and ensure smooth navigation and booking processes.

3. Design & Development

Built the site on WordPress, leveraging a responsive design with SEO-friendly architecture. Integrated image galleries and a booking system to ensure users could easily navigate Melia’s services and portfolio.

4. Testing & Launch

Conducted thorough testing across devices and browsers to ensure a seamless experience. After addressing feedback, the site was launched with a focus on performance optimization and mobile responsiveness.

Design System

For Melia Kapri Photography, we selected a calming palette of soft blues and grays, complemented by black and white for contrast and readability. Lora was used for headings, paired with Montserrat for body text, combining elegance with modernity. This design system highlights Melia’s focus on capturing timeless moments while ensuring a smooth user experience across devices.

Aa

Lora

Heading

size 60/50/35

weight 700/500/400

Aa

Montserrat

Body

size 35/28/18/17/14/12

weight 700/400

#FFFFFF

#D9D9D9

#000000

#9ABAD6

##9D9B9B

#8BA5D6

Elements to be Addressed:

  • Showcasing Visual Work Effectively
    The main challenge was creating a platform that highlighted Melia’s photography without compromising the website’s user experience. It needed to strike the perfect balance between visuals and functionality.

  • Client Engagement & Bookings
    Ensuring the booking process was intuitive and streamlined, minimizing friction for potential clients to schedule photoshoots.

  • SEO & Performance
    Optimizing the website for search engines without sacrificing load times or image quality was essential to increasing visibility.

Goals:

  • Create a website that highlighted Melia’s photography while maintaining a sleek, modern design.
  • Implement a seamless and intuitive booking system for clients.
  • Ensure the site was mobile-responsive and SEO-friendly, increasing visibility and user engagement.

Website Design​

Before

After

Client Feedback:

Conclusion:

The new website for Melia Kapri Photography successfully balanced form and function, increasing client engagement and bookings through the improved user experience. The SEO optimization led to better search engine visibility, driving more traffic to the site. The responsive design ensured a seamless experience across all devices, allowing users to explore the portfolio and book photoshoots effortlessly.

 

Beat Vortex

Previous
Next

Beat Vortex is the working title for a rhythm game I began working on in 2018. 
I picked back up work on the project during 2020 to see how much further along I could get. 

After extensive research, I was able to implement multithreading for the song loading and analysis.  
This took load times on mobile from 7-12 minutes depending on the song to 50-90 secs. 

I later use a similar technique to improve the terrain generation, which yielded similar results. 

Tools used: Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, Unity, Visual Studio, Trello. 

Honor Lore and art

During the pandemic, I took the opportunity to freelance and work from home as a way for me to focus on finishing up one of my passion projects.  

One of the first steps along this journey was to develop more of the lore and background of the world. 

Honor Rulebook

As progress on the game began to pick up steam, I shifted focus over to refining the rulebook I had previously thrown together during the original development. 

As part of the process, visual and grammatical improvements were made to improve the flow and clarity of the rules. 

After completing the revisions of the rulebook, the project moved forward into play tests and further refinement. 

Journal App

This past year I started working on developing a productivity app. I felt that the to-do list’s or habit trackers I had tried were very narrowly focused on doing one thing well. This often left users needing multiple apps to handle simple planning and task management for their day to day. This creates a lot of opportunities for confusion,  wasted time, and more pain points than their software solves. 

The goal of the Journal App is to give every day users the same depth and control over planning of their schedules as we have for corporations with software like Jira, Trello, Monday, or Asana. 

This project has been a great test of my UI design and implementation. It has also given me a chance to further improve my workflow for loading/storing user data. 

Tools used:  Photoshop, Trello, Unity, Visual Studio. 

Tulipanov Virtual Gallery

For this project, I was asked by the painter, Igor Tulipanov, to create a virtual gallery space where he could host private exhibitions of his art. 

I used a concept image he gave me to model the exterior off of. I then designed an interior that worked well for that space and fit his unique art style. 

The final goal for the project is to be able to embed the gallery on the homepage of their site. This proved to be the main challenge of this project was setting up the ‘multiplayer’ aspect, due to it being webgl. 

 

Tools used: Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, Unity, Photon 

Pip42 - 1 : Building design

PIP42 – 1 gives players the ability to place down structures and create bases on a foreign planet. To do this required a modular building. 

I started off by building a mood board of space structures that I felt fit the aesthetic I was looking for. 
Since the game is top down, I need to design with the ability for the  roof of all the models to be removable. 

Tools used: Autodesk Maya. PureRef. 

Honor Stats Rebalancing

After the first few play tests, we found the stats for Honor needed to be rebalanced. 
Using google sheets allowed me to visualize the distributions of stats for classes, weapons, and armor. 
I was able to do this using conditional formatting, which I set to shade cell based on their value. 

The original stat calculations took a considerable amount of time to work out. 
Developing a new system cut down the time substantially. 

Tools used: Google Sheets

Honor Card Design

Over a few months, I worked to refine the card designs for my tabletop card game. Here are some iterations of the early stages. 

After not seeing much progress towards a suitable design, I decided to create a mood board to help define what I wanted to create. 

I’ve settled on a simplified look with minimal framing, allowing more room to let the art shine. 

After settling on the new design, I began implementing those concepts across the rest of the card types from the game.

Tools used: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Pureref

Graphics by Color Group

Before
After

This was a project for a local business. They wanted their site updated to something that was more modern and fresh than their old site. 
I designed and built out the new site remotely, then swapped the site out over night to prevent downtime and users seeing a broken site. 

www.ColorGroup.com

Museum of Bops

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Museum of Bops was a freelance animation project for the painter Igor Tulipanov.  

Igor wished to see the characters from his paintings come to life. 

I modeled the character, built out a museum and animated all the characters.

The video is the intro of the project where the characters enter the museum before climbing into the paintings to interact with their fellow bops

Tools used: Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, Unity, Visual Studio, Trello.