Welcome

to the personal portfolio of web designer and developer Melissa Jane Magee

I specialise in building valid and accessible web sites to the W3C standards and I take great pride in creating beautiful sites which work across all major browsers, structured to degrade elegantly without technologies such as CSS and JavaScript. I hand-code all my work to ensure my sites have a strong, clean mark-up to gain optimal search engine and cross-browser performance.

Based in Jersey in the Channel Islands, I am production manager for the web design company E-scape Interactive; I originally entered the company as a junior designer and developer, and I have rapidly moved to a senior position where it is my duty to create valid and accessible HTML, CSS, and JavaScript coding, test web site usability, and move web sites into suitable Content Management Systems. I also do design work, including client visuals and online advertisements.

Through E-scape Interactive, I have been fortunate enough to work for such prestigious clients as Lloyds TSB and The National Lottery, along with many prominent Jersey companies including the Citizen Advice Bureau, Pentagon Direct, Roulette Clothing, and Reed Insurance.

I have gathered some of my favourite design and development pieces, both professional and personal, on my portfolio for your perusal. If you have any questions or if you would like any more information about me or my work, please feel free to contact me.



Portfolio

This portfolio isn't a full list of all the web design and development work I have done over the years, but rather my more recent (and favourite!) pieces, which I've gathered for your perusal. Click on the thumbnails to see previews of the web sites, or click on the 'more information' links to read about the projects and my involvement in them.

Details on work I'm currently doing, which isn't yet finished, can be found on the projects section.

If you have any questions about my work, or if you would just like to get in touch, please feel free to contact me.

With E-scape Interactive

Reed Insurance
www.reed-insurance.com
Design by Jon Leverrier
Built in March 2008

Reed Insurance was a very enjoyable project; I was given Jon Leverrier's quirky and colourful designs to make into valid and accessible CSS-based HTML templates, and then on through the entire development process, moving the templates into ModX, which is a wonderful PHP-driven content-management system for small and medium sized companies, and building custom PHP forms and features.
More information

The most important features of the Reed Insurance site are the insurance quote enquiry forms which I custom built in PHP. I also built a lot of custom code for the back-end of the site, to make it easy for the client to change around large sections of the web site with just the press of a button. For example, the site went live with a competition on the homepage; the content area was split into two blocks with a dividing line between the competition area and the homepage text. I built code to allow the client to tick a checkbox if he wants this on the homepage, and if the box is unticked, the homepage content will fill the full area, the dividing line won't show, and a different image for the welcome text (which fills the full area) will show instead of the smaller version.

I am also very proud of the 'click-to-call' feature, which links up to LivePerson's contact service, and the 'call me now' step on the enquiry forms, which passes the information securely to LivePerson.


Personal Work

This Very Portfolio!
www.mjmagee.com
Design by Melissa Magee (that's me!)
Built in July 2008

I wanted to build a design for my portfolio which broke away from the standard and reflected my own personality. I'm a creative person and I needed my site to show that! As an avid reader, I have always had a strong interest in fairy tales and imaginative stories, and I felt suggesting a Wonderland through carefully chosen and manipulated images (like the cat with the too-large head) would be a fun and interesting challenge. (It was either this or 221B Baker Street!)
More information

The images are stock photos purchased from iStock Photo; I took my time going through different images to imply the different fairy tale themes and objects, and working them together in an attractive layout before buying them, cutting them out, and changing the colours and perspectives on them to create a new world for my visitors.

If you scroll down through the site, you will notice the background colour fades from blue all the way down to orange, like a sunset. I was actually inspired to recreate this from the beautiful Jersey sunsets (although nothing beats the original on that front!). As the background colour will vary depending on which section of the one-page site you are looking at, I made the image headings, dark boxes, and vines all PNG files with partial opactity on them, to allow a little of the background colour to show through which makes them seem more integrated into the layout.

I was also very meticulous in selecting the fonts I use on this site: Sybil Green has a wonderful, quirky effect to it which fits into the Wonderland theme, well, wonderfully! I felt it might become hard to read in larger blocks, however, so I limited it to single and few word headings, using the still quirky but much clearer Blown Deadline for longer areas which warranted an unusual font, such as the introduction and sub headlines.


Image Work

Photo Manipulation
See full-sized image
Made in September 2008

This was an experiment to see how much I could manipulate and 'airbrush' a photograph while still keeping it realistic and keeping the absolutely spiffing gorgeous model recognisable.
More information

The photograph is one I took of myself without an ounce of make-up on (as proven by the large bags under my eyes). I removed stray hairs, added more definition and volume to the hair, lightened the entire image, covered the hair roots, lightened the eyes, smoothed out the skin, softened freckles, and added colour to imply make-up.


Skillsets

As the senior front-end developer and production manager for E-scape Interactive, my main areas of expertise are in building clean, valid, and accessible HTML and PHP, beautiful CSS, and elegant, functional JavaScript. I work extensively with mySQL databases, and I also have a very advanced working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, which I use for creating original web site and banner designs and for 'cutting up' designs (separating the images from a file to turn a design into a fully functional web site).

Working within the web design industry, I have had invaluable help and experience from my co-workers (especially the very talented designer Jon Leverrier and the SEO-genius Sarah Griffiths), but I am entirely self-taught in web design and development — in fact, my university qualifications are for English Literature! (Although they still come in handy when it comes to copy-writing and proof-reading!)

As a self-taught designer and developer, I am always pushing myself to learn new things, and I am always watching out for new browsers, languages, frameworks, and content-management systems so I can keep improving my knowledge and my skills.

I have advanced working experience with:

ModX
ModX is a content-management system I originally found and specified for the ICSA Jersey web site, and I have had so much positive feedback from clients about how simple it is to learn and use that we at E-scape Interactive now offer it as our first-choice content-management system for clients.
As it is an open-source solution based in PHP, I find there is no limit to what functionality I can code, and I always enjoy the chance to code new scripts and add in the best usability I can.
Textpattern
Textpattern is more of a blog system than a content-management system, but I have found it a terrific tool for building small, information-based web sites for clients. I have built everything from straight-forward blogs, like the Blooming Direct blog to full-blown web sites, like Spike Productions using this very simple model.
phpBB
phpBB is a wonderful forum framework which I used to build the Pixar Planet forum. Although it is more limited in what can be changed than most content-management systems, with my knowledge of PHP and MySQL, I built a lot of custom code to get the exact functionality I wanted for the site.

I also have working experience with JavaScript frameworks, including MooTools and Scriptaculous, ASP.NET, and XML.

I design all my projects in Adobe Photoshop, and build them in Adobe Dreamweaver (the code viewer; I used to be a NotePad junkie and I strongly believe in carefully crafted, hand-built coding). I build all my sites to the highest standard with care, passion — and a lot of caffiene!


Projects

I am currently working on Bob's Motorcycle Centre through E-scape Interactive. It is a motorcycle web site which I am taking all the way from the design stage right through to production and development. It is progressing very well and I can't wait to add it to my portfolio for everyone to see!

I am also working on several projects outside of work with my partner in crime L Whyte. L is an (incredibly talented) character designer, concept artist, and animator currently working for Tag Games in Dundee. We have been best friends since childhood, and our relationship has stayed strong over the years because we're always working on some crazy idea or other together. At the moment, along with some writing projects which you can find details about on our web site, we are in the process of creating an online game together. It is an extensive 'choose-your-own-adventure' type web game which we have written together. With her incredible artistic skills, L is creating the artwork for it while I am coding the game in PHP and mySQL.


Contact Me

If you would like to get in touch with me, please feel free to e-mail me on:
info@mjmagee.com.

If you would like to find out more about me, feel free to give me a poke (ooh-er) on Facebook, or check out more of my work on DeviantArt.