Team UT has just launched Amanda Beard’s new official website, please have a look http://www.amandabeard.net.

Lets be honest, Amanda Beard is easy on the eyes. Needless to say, sitting in photoshop designing her site is a designer’s pleasure. This was a fun project for us to work on, so we thought we’d take some time and briefly go through our creative process.

TALKING WITH AMANDA:
Our clients are primarily sports athletes, so in order to get a solid foundation of what they want and/or what they are looking for when they come to us…we setup a meeting. In this case, it was clear from the start that Amanda had a very outgoing and confident personality. I guess one can expect that from a 7-tiime Olympic Medalist and Model. However, like most clients, they really don’t know what they want. When we asked her, “What kind of look and feel are you going for?” She replied, “I don’t really know, that’s why I came to you guys.” We loved her immediately, those words gave us creative freedom to brainstorm and come up with our own ideas…

FLASH HOMEPAGE:
We decided to make her homepage entirely in flash. This is the only flash page contained in the site. Why is there just a flash homepage and no flash on the rest of the site you ask? Well, Amanda’s site isn’t large…and the content structure is very simple. Therefore, we decided to use WordPress for our backend CMS (Content Managment System). So, a cool and animated flash homepage adds some excitement to a content driven site. In addition, it excites fans and users from the start and entices them to look around more.

We wanted to get creative with the animation; specifically the water effects. In Flash, you really can’t achieve this. So, 95% of the homepage animation was done in After Effects. Each callout was animated and exported out as a transparent FLV.

DESIGN LOOK AND FEEL:
Professional and personal personas, there needs to be a mix of both. We wanted Amanda’s site to be modern and edgy, yet personalized as well. So, we had her provide us with high resolution modeling pictures. Throughout the site, we designed multiple background collages because we wanted imagery to play a big part in her site. Each main section of her site has a unique background. Check out the screenshots below:

END PRODUCT:
Amanda loves the site, and that’s all that matters at the end of the day. However, we take pride in our work and we have to be happy with what we produce as well. Working with Amanda Beard was great, and we’re happy she loves her new website. We look forward to a long and lasting working relationship with her.

AmandaBeard.net