ArtForDorks.com

Fabric Usage Worksheet X

This chart is an extension to our production tracking system. I chose to give it it's own post because I love how colorful it is, I like to think that It makes looking at the information a little more fun. What we are showing in this chart is how much of each fabric it takes to make 1 of a certain style. They are ordered by fabrication (i.e. organic jersey, hemp-jersey, fleece) and totals are shown at the bottom of each fabrication as well as a grand total grid at the bottom of the sheet. This helps the girls in development get an accurate picture of how much fabric they will have to order for a given season. Before orders are actually placed, they can just get a rough idea by style and after orders are input, they get an even more accurate number because for each production run, the system will automatically calculate how much of each style was ordered and multiply it by the yield. This tool also references our "Spec Archive" where the girls in development and the pattern maker go to upload spec's for each style and, if the spec is approved, the style shows up in yellow.

Buyers Area Admin Tool X

The buyers area admin tool is one of my more loved tools that I've built for Stewart+Brown. Most of the information for the buyers area like price, color offerings and sizing comes from the style archive which is always accurate and up to date. The rest of the information is controlled through this admin tool which has the following functions:

-activate / deactivate styles that will be displayed
-override default product categories
-add / update information about each fabrication that will go in the header of each page
-add / update background images for these headers
-add default color bars and override certain color swatches if needed.
-add / edit slide shows for each delivery
-add supplemental information for buyer to download
-test the entire site in the "sandbox" where you can view a preview of the buyers area before it goes live. This -sandbox area also has links next to every field that you are able to update in order to make navigating the -interface a bit simpler
-change the "welcome" image
-add / update showroom contact information
-change which season's are viewable
-each step has full documentation available

News / Blog X

The Stewart+Brown news section needed its own custom theme so that it meshed well with the rest of the site so I created the custom theme seen here. I also programmed it so that a link to a style is created when a user enters a snippet of code with the style number of the item shown in it. That little snippet queries the store's database and returns an active link if the style is for sale or simply the style name if the style isn't on sale. The news section also feeds our newsletter. In order not to duplicate efforts the newsletter set-up admin populates automatically with the information from the blog and a person creating the newsletter just has to select which stories they want to show.

Lengthened Tee Story X

This is one of the favorite stories I've done at Stewart+Brown. We wanted to show how versatile our "Lengthened Tee" is so I sent an email to everyone in the office to make an outfit with one. The next day, I had everyone bring their clothes in and we flat shot the outfits and posted them on the website. I had each "person" holding something applicable to their position at Stewart+Brown just to mix it up. We also tied it into a contest for other readers to make outfits in an artsy fashion and I loved the response. We got a lot of really cool entries and it's always fun to interact with the people you're creating these stories for.

Buyers Area X

This Buyers Area is a password protected area on the Stewart+Brown site for retailers to go to preview the incoming season early. The design was based on our e-store but formatted so that the buyer can see each fabrication on it's own page. Currently, I have the buyers area linked into a number of back end tools that manage the production and development process. If someone in production decides we're not going run a color in a style, they can update it in the back-end and it will automatically update in the Buyers Area as well. This has really helped us cut down on communication errors and it ensures that buyers are always getting the most up to date information.

Gift Certificates X

These are two of the gift certificates I designed for Stewart+Brown. They are what you get emailed to you if you purchase a gift certificate form their online store. We wanted something bright, exciting and seasonal. The image on the top is the holiday version (note the snowflakes) and the bottom is the spring version (note the butterflies).

Stewart Brown E-Store X

The reskin of the e-store over at stewartbrown.com was my first major overhaul of a site's design. Having managed the back end prior to this point I was excited to add in increased functionality that would make it better looking as well as easier to maintain. Many of these features will be lost on those who haven't managed an e-commerce store and/or worked with miva shopping carts but the details include auto-generating colorbars, color changes on images and shop by look features to name a few. Head on over to www.stewartbrown.com/store to see if for yourself.

Stewart Brown Site Update X

When we re-skinned stewartbrown.com we went for a look that was less cluttered and more striking. The wide homepage image seemed to do the trick. We designed it so that the larger image would stay put and the image on the right rotates between nine or less images, giving people on the homepage to see some of our outfit shots. My other favorite page of the site is the Collections Page. Each season Paris Miller, the Art Director, takes the images for the photo shoot and compiles them into some themed montage. I like this page the best because it's easy to navigate, simple and really lets the images speak for themselves.

Style Archive X

The style archive is the backbone of our product information at Stewart+Brown. As each season is developed all information is entered in and edited through the style archive. This information then becomes available to a number of other tools that do everything from create line sheets to track the sampling process. This system ensures that each style meets a certain amounts of checks an balances. For instance, a style can't be offered in a color that isn't being offered to that fabrication and a product can't be sampled in a color that it's not available in. It seems simple enough but you wouldn't believe how easy it is to botch this information if it's not being tracked. Recently, I've added increased tools that track the production of the style. From the style archive you can see each fabric and trim the style uses, see what the orders for that style look like and manage each step of the process the style will need to go through in order to be produced. The style archive also populates our Buyers Area. Before this, we would create an image for each fabrication and any time something changed (which is often) we would have to open illustrator and change the image, resave and re-upload it. This got awfully tedious and now when changes are made, they are made with a click of a button and updated throughout the various avenues of our site. Also, in order to cut down on communication errors. Each time someone update a style, they have the option to send an email to everyone on the production and development team so that they can track it in their various records as well.

Harborscape Tee X

This is another tee that I created for the Spring 2008 season at Stewart+Brown as a composite of one of my drawings (in grey) and one of Karen Stewart's drawings (in black). Karen made her drawing while on a trip to Portugal and with our theme relating to Portuguese seaside villages and songs I added in the rest of the image. We liked the look of classical maps and folklore so I added in the sea monster to give it that folkloreish feel.

Vento Tank X

This is a shirt that I designed for Stewart+Brown for the Spring 08 Collection. The collection was inspired by a trip to Portugal and the lifestyles of the people living there. While discussing graphics we were thinking about voyages and seaside villages and out popped the Vento tee, a stylistic take on a seaside voyage.

Newsletter X

When it came time to create a newsletter we at Stewart+Brown needed something that would be visually compelling, informative, wouldn't take much time to create and would reuse assets already in our store and blog. Howard Brown and I worked on the design together and I wrote the code as well as built the admin tool. I wrote the admin tool in PHP and had it query our Wordpress database to auto-populate editable fields. The assets in the newsletter come directly from our blog and e-store. When it comes time to publish a newsletter a user visits the admin tool and puts a number next to each post they want to include and also has the ability to edit the copy, the link and select which image from the post they want to use for the newsletter.

Starry Daze Collection X

This was my first big graphics project with Stewart+Brown. After looking at the photos from this shoot and discussing them with Howard Brown (the companies co-founder and head designer) we came to the conclusion that it had a very storybook theme and we wanted to play that up with hand-drawn framing and text. I drew a number of frames and such with charcoal pencils, scanned them in and came up with some layouts. After some refining and editing the final result came together nicely. You can view the entire collection Fall 07 - Starry Days collection at www.stewartbrown.com