Masuga Design, LLC

In the course of selling myself to a prospective client over the phone today, I was cut short when the client said, “You had me at Portfolio.” I thought that was pretty funny. Thanks for the call, and thank you for ultimately trusting your project to me.

I recently completed work on a website overhaul for Interior Concepts, a custom office furniture manufacturer located in West Michigan. The look was redone, the navigation was retooled, and the site was made much more search engine friendly. What’s more, due to the very robust content management system, they now have the ability to update almost every bit of content on the site in-house. You can see more on this project on the portfolio page, or you can see the real deal for yourself at www.interiorconcepts.com.

Does any TextMate user out there have an idea why (or where, rather) my HTML bundle has gone? I hadn’t upgraded TextMate in ages (should have known better than to try and fix something that wasn’t broken) and finally did so – which brought my version up to 1.5.4 (1324). I had a bundle that I used where the HTML was properly colored, and the PHP in the HTML was colored correctly as well. Now, if I select HTML, all my PHP is red. Everything. The variables, the single-quoted strings, you name it. Setting my bundle to PHP reverses this …More »

For some reason, the star rating script made it to some sort of del.icio.us “hotlist” today, and that absolutely wreaked havoc with this site. It has been off and on all day, and I’m pretty sure my email is completely borked. I haven’t received an email since 9am today, so I apologize if you emailed me today and I wasn’t able to get back to you. I am considering moving masugadesign.com off of its current server within the next couple months, because the problems with downtime and email issues have grown a bit much for me to be able to …More »

I just added a new section to the site called "The Lab" where my feeble attemps at PHP scripting and Wordpress plugins will be found. Right now the main (read: only) thing there is an updated Star Rating script. It's much improved over the original. You'll love it. Here are some of the new features in v1.1: Uses unobtrusive Javascript, so ratings will still work if the user has Javascript off (the script has been tested in IE 6, Safari, and FF). keeps Javascript out of the HTML, resulting in cleaner markup There are now some checks in place to discourage …More »

I recently completed a series of Flash ads for Great Lakes Scrip Center.

I recently updated and rebuilt casperelectronics.com using WordPress, and added an AJAX-driven photo gallery. For the Flash mp3 “casperplayer” I put together a script that searches for a directory with the same name as the piece you are on, and then scans that directory for mp3 files, parses the tags of each file found, and dynamically constructs an XML file that the Flash file reads. What did Pete think of all the updates? “Freekin awesome!!! totally amazing! It looks great. It’s super easy! You rock dude!!!!” View this project in my portfolio »

I’ve added a new section to my portfolio called “Other Work” that contains some information about sites I’ve had a hand in creating in the past. This section is a collection of small summaries describing how I contributed to each project. There are some decent sites in there including work for PRStore and Nature’s Earth. You can view my “Other Work” section here.

A short while ago John Mills (of CSS Remix) asked if I’d answer a few questions about web design and related things. I was more than happy to do so (not to mention flattered). I think the CSS Remix interview category is about 3 designers old right now, and I’m the third one – right behind Veerle Pieters and James Mathias for crying out loud. I think it’s safe to say I’m the first relative “unknown” on the list, as far as web design goes. Thanks for giving me some exposure, John! With that, head over there this minute and …More »

Before going solo, I worked for a web design company in Grand Rapids that puts out a (primarily interactive) promotional piece every year. The piece I worked on while I was there was an interactive game (sort of like Myst) that incorporated numerous areas and hundreds of images from downtown Grand Rapids. All the hours spent in Photoshop on this project paid off. It won a Gold ADDY award and was a Judge’s Choice pick, but best of all it was featured in a book titled “Innovative Promotions That Work“ published by Rockport Publishers in April of 2006. And there’s …More »