Juxtaprose blog

This post is coming a bit late, but I wanted to showcase another author site we completed in the summer. This one is for Marina Koestler Ruben who is the author of How to Tutor Your Own Child:

Marina was great to work with, and she’s a great blogger too! If you spend any time around children, her blog is full of great bits of wisdom on how to bring learning into everyday activities.

For Marina’s site design, I wanted to use the colors / feeling of the book cover, but not match it completely. I ended up using graph paper and doodles/illustrations at the top and as design elements throughout, which brings in the feeling of learning and school, while not feeling too elementary or specific.

We built Marina’s site in ExpressionEngine which allows her to easily update the pages and blog. She’s doing a great job!

Visit Marina’s site.

We recently finished a new site for author Ilene Beckerman. She’s most known for her book Love, Loss, and What I Wore as it’s been made into a play with productions in New York and Chicago. Her latest book The Smartest Woman I Know is about her grandmother, Ettie, and what it was like growing up in New York around their stationery and magazine store. I enjoyed all her books, which I read as I was designing the site.

The design is bright and vibrant, with different colors on each of the pages (to complement the book cover colors). It was especially fun to use some of her illustrations from the books on the site as well. We built the site in WordPress to allow for easy updating.

Check out her website and her tour dates this fall.

We just finished and launched a book website for author and nutritionist Kelly Dorfman’s book What’s Eating Your Child. For this site’s design we used the colors from the book cover (bright, primary colors), but also added some design elements of healthy fruits, herbs, and vegetables.

The book is full of really helpful information, but it is also written in a very accessible style—using case studies. As I was working on the site, I’d find myself reading entire chapters, curious as to what she figured out worked for each of the children.

Be sure to check out Kelly’s upcoming events—she’s touring in June, and her blog: Nutrition Detective (which touches on nutrition/diet for adults as well), is definitely worth a read.

Visit www.whatseatingyourchild.com.

We’re happy to announce the launch of a new website for the forthcoming novel Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz and David Hayward:

To help explain the site, it’s useful to know the premise of the book:

Paul and Lacey Hansen are orphaned siblings who grow marijuana just outside the outskirts of tiny Mercer, California. When they find a headless body on their land one night, their occupation prevents them from calling the sheriff. Instead, they move the corpse to a more public location. Two nights later, the body reappears in their driveway, and Paul and Lacey soon discover some unsettling connections between their persistent visitor and their family’s past.

But the murder mystery might be the tamer side of Heads You Lose. The book is the product of a unique collaboration between author Lisa Lutz and her ex-boyfriend, obscure poet David Hayward. When the coauthors start to disagree about what should happen in the book—and to whom—their own turbulent past spills onto the page. As Paul and Lacey scramble to stay a step ahead of the killer, their toughest challenge might be surviving the crossfire between their two creators.

So we played on this in the site as well. The blog is set up for he-said / she-said type of postings. We have a “poll” going on on who you would rather collaborate with. (I’m excited to see what else Lisa and David come up with.)

We had a lot of fun designing and building the site. The folks at Penguin did a very dynamic cover, and we used that as the basis for the design. The book’s out on April 5, and Lisa and David will be out and about on tour, so be sure to check out if they’ll be in your area. In any case, definitely pick up the book when it’s out (it’s funny and a very good read).

Take a look around and be sure to hang out on the home page for a bit to see the full animation (subtle, but fun—the way we like to do animation). Don’t forget to vote for your choice as a collaborator:

Visit www.headsyoulose.com.

Seattle-based young adult author Sean Beaudoin came to us a couple months ago, and hired us to redesign his site in time for the publication of his new book: Who Killed Wesley Payne. And, we’re happy to announce that his new site is up and running!

As part of the project, we migrated all his existing content from his old site, including his movie and book reviews (very fun and informative reads).

The visual design has a “noir / old Superman comic” feel to it. (Then we added a bowl of tomato soup – ha!) It was super fun to design and build, and it was great working with Sean.

Check out the new site:

Also, if you’re in the Seattle area, come by Elliot Bay Books on February 1st for the book launch party for You Killed Wesley Payne. Should be fun. You can find out more / RSVP here.