Services Just for You

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Form Meets Function

Creative services for developers. Art direction, visual design, interaction and user experience design, wireframing, and web writing & editing. They say that beauty is on the inside, but your user may not agree. I can bring my design know-how to your development project and ensure that your product looks as good as it works.

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Websites with Heart

Small business owner meets website… And they lived happily ever after. Perfect for independent professionals too. Need to establish a standout, personal web presence for your business? You’re in the right place.

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Consulting

Call me your internet MacGyver. I’ll help you assess, select and customize the best technologies and services to meet your budget and bring your vision to life.

I also (happily) offer identity & branding and print design services. Samples available in the ’folio; contact for more information.

“Allie, your web design skills and technical support have saved me so many times that I’ve quit counting! Before you came into my life, my experience with web designers was dismal. Since you’ve been steering the web ship, I have complete confidence that you will complete the job with superior technical skills, catch problems before they become mistakes, offer imaginative and pragmatic solutions, create intuitive functionality on web pages, help direct long-term, strategic planning, and collaborate with ease on projects. Plus, you have an artist’s eye when it comes to design, coupled with the savvy of a technician who knows what works best online.” —Ariane Goodwin, smARTist®

Consider It Done

Just a shortlist of things I (love to) do for every client:

  • Pay attention to details. Good design is in the details.
  • Promote usability, readability and a quality user experience. Design should serve your content — not the other way around.
  • Ensure that every site is built on web standards. What that means to you is a lean, mean, visitor-friendly machine designed with update-ability and SEO in mind.
  • Make your web presence sustainable and timeless, while strategically utilizing the latest technologies.
  • Build a deeply personal working relationship. I work directly, one-on-one, with all of my clients, and this ensures that your website reflects your unique personality and goals.
  • Use the best tools for the job at hand — whether that’s a widget-enabled custom Wordpress template or a hosted third-party service or anything in between.
  • Edit copy, as needed or appropriate. I’ll help to make certain that your copy is clear, concise and SEO-friendly.
  • Cross-browser test. At minimum, sites are tested against Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox for Windows and Mac, and Safari.

From the Folio

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The Allie Aesthetic

Simple. Effectual. Beautiful.

Just because something is as useful and reliable as your favorite circa-1992 sweater doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be every bit as lovely as your most stunning evening gown.

We should be able to delight in the everyday — the tools we use, the people we affect, the stories we tell — and this drives my desire to make the web both usable and beautiful.

I’m a firm believer in design as storytelling. I’m passionate about the emotional response to design. I’m deeply committed to design that does its job — design that is responsive and communicative, enchanting and appropriate, accessible and unassuming.

And I’d love to collaborate with you.

Let’s Get Started!

Does it sound like we could make beautiful websites together? Complete this little form, and your correspondence will be hand-delivered to my inbox.

“I am so pleased with the artistic work you did for the logo and website for my home staging company. The logo is stunning; it sums up in a visual the message I wanted to convey to potential clients: calm, competent, uncluttered home redesign. Your concept for the website meets the needs of Spruce Up beautifully. The site is easy to navigate, graceful, professional and gets results. We have had so many positive comments from our clients.” —Bonnie Covey, Spruce Up

In case you were wondering, Allie is…

  • 24 and recently married.
  • A computer science graduate who worked in design for IT shops, newspapers, higher education institutions, insurance companies, and social networking companies before starting Allie Creative.
  • A girl with a plan. Or, perhaps more accurately, a girl who’s always planning.
  • Originally from California’s Bay Area and now living in enchanting, green, bridge-filled Portland, Oregon.
  • Often guilty of perusing Etsy for new bird things, vintage things, letterpress things and paper things.
  • Proud design aficionado since 1985.
  • An INFJ.
  • Constantly working to make others’ lives simpler and her own as complicated as possible.
  • A lover of books, poetry and plays. Don’t miss: The Time Traveler’s Wife (Niffenegger), The Shadow of the Wind (Zafon), Patchett, Austen, Bronte, Cummings and Wilde.
  • Also a lover of films and music. Too many recommendations to list here.
  • According to some, a big-city girl with a small-town heart.
  • Always behind by 1,000+ entries in Google Reader. I secretly find time for guilty pleasures like PostSecret, TFLN, “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, and (Oh So) Beautiful Paper.
  • A maker of lists. (Have you seen Lucky 7? A woman after my own heart.)
  • Aspiring to be a domestic goddess, letterpress shop owner, voiceover actress, novelist, and Anthropologie window display designer. And all in this lifetime.
  • Unsurprisingly and often awake at 3 a.m.
  • Unbelievably blessed.
  • Only black & white in photographs:
Portrait of Allie

Recent Red Herrings

A new favorite blog: TypePoster72. What’s better than a well-designed typographic poster? Especially one like this.

@ecorrigan’s blog post from March just made my day brighter. “This is not a place you can go charging into, armed with to-do lists and rational argument and plans. You can’t take inventory and tidy up in there. It makes pieces of itself visible only when it’s ready. If you’re lucky, you might catch a glimpse in your peripheral vision every now and then. This is kind of a scary idea. That something so deep and so big and so in control is so elusive. …But the thing is, this is the essence of being human. It’s what we all have in common.”

Finally had a chance to try Jeremy Smith’s how-to for running Internet Explorer 8, 7, and 6 concurrently, and it works flawlessly. I didn’t even receive any of the DLL errors that he cites in his post.

News of the weird (and creepy): a girl who doesn’t age. Sixteen years old, and she still looks like a toddler. “In the long term, the idea that the aging process might somehow be manipulated raises serious questions about what human beings might do with that knowledge. ‘Clearly, that’s the science fiction aspect of it. …We can’t have continued reproduction and people who don’t age.’”

A little Monday eye candy from Visualbox, a motion graphics shop in Argentina. Brilliantly communicates video in series of eight stills.

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