JHM Designs Portfolio

Garden Medicinals and Culinaries This large e-commerce site offers over 200 varieties of medicinal and culinary herbs, selected heirloom vegetables and flowers, and supplies for herb growers. The site includes a number of digitized photographs, colored graphics, dynamic elements, and a reference library of over 250 sites related to herbal medicine. First developed as a single page in 1996, this information-intensive site now consists of over 90 pages. The e-commerce section now utilizes an osCommerce shopping cart system featuring a number of modules such as product reviews, most popular products, new products, specials, and product search. We have been developing, maintaining, and upgrading this site since 1996. It is currently undergoing a major re-design expected to launch late in 2007.
Spirit School of the Intuitive Arts The Spirit School offers courses, workshops, and intensives to develop intuitive techniques to discover inner wisdom, to gain access to spiritual guidance, and to develop a better understanding of one's life path. Based in Charlottesville and Sperryville, Virginia, they also offer workshops in Maryland, and Costa Rica. JHM Designs was asked to re-design their site because their previous site had problems with the navigation (which 9% of their clients couldn't access because JavaScript was turned off in their browsers). Also they were looking for design enhancements, better customer service, and a more personal touch.
Saving our Seeds The mission of Saving our Seeds is to promote sustainable, ecological, organic vegetable seed production in the Mid-Atlantic and South. This site provides information, resources, and publications for gardeners, farmers, seed savers, and seed growers. Though the basic development of this site is complete, additional content is planned over the next several months.
Belize Survivor: Darker Side of Paradise What if you had lived your life differently? What if you'd just slung a backpack over your shoulder and traveled to some far away place? This powerful new book, an exposé of unspeakable domestic violence against a contrasting backdrop of magnificent tropical splendor, is getting rave reviews and gathering momentum as a groundbreaking literary work. Belize Survivor is currently being adapted into a screenplay for submission to Hollywood as a major motion picture. The author commissioned JHM Designs to create a site that creates a visual paradox, contrasting a darker message of domestic violence against a backdrop of the tropical beauty of Belize where much of the action and adventure occurs.
Van Yahres Tree Company Van Yahres Tree Company originally designed their own website which served its purpose for a while, but after several years wanted a more professional-looking site. JHM Designs re-designed their site in close colaboration with their own designer who wanted consistency with their marketing literature. Here is how their old website looked before the re-design. A clickable thumbnail of the new site may be seen on the right. Based in Charlottesville, Virginia – Van Yahres Tree Company dates back to the 1920's when George Van Yahres helped to restore the grounds at Monticello. Still family-owned, many of the staff are ISA-certified arborists with many years of experience in tree care.
Two Blue Herons This broadcast site is named as a tribute to the heron, considered in ancient Egypt to be the guardian of the spirit. Two Blue Herons is the creation of two visionaries who see the world changing quickly. Their site features Eco-Light Radio, recorded broadcasts that offer mindfulness experiences: talks with leaders in creative thought, earth-wisdom, arts and science, as well as interviews with innovators in conscious business. Their objective is to feature the work of people who are living their truth, as well as leaders of the spirit who share their vision, joy, and perspectives on evolving consciousness. Our asssignment was to design a clean, simple, open, and visually interesting site that symbolically illustrated the mission.
Hiromi T'ai Chi Hiromi T’ai Chi is a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching and promoting the health benefits and art of T’ai Chi Ch’uan in Charlottesville, Virginia. Hiromi offers training in the Cheng-Ming System as taught by Grandmaster Wang Shu-Jin as well as other related martial and healing arts. JHM Designs was asked to create a new website that conveys the mission of the organization and the look and feel of the teachings.
Sand Hill Preservation Center Specializing in heirloom seeds and rare breeds of poultry, the Sand Hill Preservation Center in Iowa offers over 1000 varieties of heirloom vegetable, flower and herb seeds, and a large number of rare and unusual breeds of poultry (including chickens, ducks, turkeys, guineas, and geese). They also offer a large selection of sweet potatoes. JHM Designs was commissioned to completely re-design their site. An image of their old website may be seen here - old website. The site owners want to maintain their site after the re-design, so we offered software and training to enable them to edit their text and to add new varieties. Later, with additional training, they plan to offer photographs of their seed varieties and poultry breeds.
LearnerTools LearnerTools aims to put the chance to learn to read and spell in the hands of every would-be reader. It also provides tools for teaching basic math skills. This is a developing e-commerce site that will be offering learning tools such as books, games, and exercises to help develop basic skills. This site relies heavily of the use of cascading style sheets for control of the layout and look and feel.
Clergy and Laity United for Justice and Peace (CLJP) CLJP is an interfaith group of clergy and lay people in Charlottesville, Virginia who believe that the voice of the religious right on crucial issues of justice, peace, and the common good has gone effectively unanswered. Therefore they seek to help build a more faithful community of conscience and to stimulate action in the arena of public policy. They seek a commitment to active participation in the political process by those members of religious communities who hold views larger than sectarian interests or narrow ideologies and who would serve, beyond private advantage and any claim of spiritual superiority, the moral vision of the common good.
Virginia Plant Savers (VpS) VpS is a networking and education center for the members of the Virginia Plant Savers and other concerned individuals and organizations interested in the conservation and cultivation of North American medicinal plants. Part of its mission is to promote the creation of medicinal plants sanctuaries in Charlottesville, VA, Albemarle County, and throughout the state of Virginia. This is the first state chapter of the national organization, the United Plant Savers (UpS).
The Nature Awareness School Specializing in cutting-edge technology for 5000 B.C., the Nature Awareness School teaches wilderness and survival skills, primitive tool-making, fire-making, stalking, camouflage, tracking, making cordage, nature and spiritual awareness, and vision quests. The client wanted a very simple website that looked much like their brochure. The home page uses a number of small photos designed to give a sense of the school's mission and activities. The client is delighted with the site. Check out the camouflage video on the video page.
Healing Herb Shoppe This site was developed as a "business brochure site" for Paul Olko, a Chinese herbalist who has a very successful practice in Earlysville, Virginia. The site was designed as a one-page site with future expansion in mind. A navigation menu can be easily added underneath the header without having to re-design the site. The Healing Herb Shopped offers a number of herbal products with an emphasis on bulk Chinese herbs, supplements, and custom formulas.
Charlottesville Therapeutic Massage This is another example of a "business brochure site, or one-page starter site." The client wanted a starter site that was similar to the look, feel, and content of her business brochure. Her site explains the benefits of massage therapy, what to expect during a massage session, and rate and contact information.
Labyrinth Ministry of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian-Universalist The labyrinth site was designed to provide a service to the central Virginia community, and to provide information on scheduled labyrinth walks, and to provide resources for learning more about the history and uses of labyrinths (which date back thousands of years). The site currently consists of approximately twelve pages with future expansion planned. The site uses dynamic HTML content, multimedia, and a slide show which depicts the construction of the Chartres style labyrinth.
The Peace Project A message-oriented personal website by Stephanie Blackton who has been inspired by her experiences in using the labyrinth as a tool to help people connect with their inner wisdom. The site is designed as an outreach for her work, and to develop a sense of community around the use of labyrinths. She wanted a simple, uncluttered site that conveyed the look and feel of her vision. Stephanie wanted to maintain the events and calendar portion of her site, so we provided the training for the parts she wants to change. We continue to maintain the site.
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (SESE) Specializing in heirloom and traditional seed varieties, this nationally recognized site was first developed in 1996 by Julian Heck. Shortly thereafter, JHM Designs took over the site and further developed and expanded it from 7 pages to over 50 pages. During this time we added interactivity, more graphics and content, a small catalog, and a shopping cart. In 1999 the company was sold to a new owner. Here is how the site originally looked: original home page of SESE (viewable without active links).

Current consulting projects

June Russell's Health Facts: A health-oriented website by June Russell, a retired health educator, writer, and researcher. The purpose of this website is to educate the public about health issues. This is a very large, text-only site which is being reorganized and reformatted to make the information more readable and accessible.

Villa Las Cumbres: This website features luxury rental villa on the Mexican Riviera overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Manzanillo, Mexico.

Prior consulting projects

U.S. Government CD project: The client (the U.S. Forest Service) and their team provided their own graphics, photography, and content. They had a clear idea of how they wanted to present the material. Our mission was to design the interface, layout, navigation and look-and-feel. This project involved the production of a website on a CD (over 150 pages). Additional information and references available upon request.

Harlowe-Powell Auction Ltd. Harlowe-Powell Auction is the leading antique and fine art auction house in Central Virginia. They sell full estates and quality individual pieces, at their gallery and on location. They also sell real estate over a broad geographic area. Harlowe-Powell came to us asking for a complete makeover of their site. They also wanted to integrate the site with an online database to feature both upcoming and past auctions. In addition, they wanted in-house control over making changes to text and pictures so they could make rapid changes to content.

Crisis Incident Analysis Group: Center for the Study of the Mind and Human Interaction, University of Virginia. The Critical Incident Analysis Group is an interdisciplinary consortium of academicians, professionals, and experts dedicated to improving the public’s ability to understand and cope with critical incidents, and government’s capacity to anticipate, prevent, and manage them effectively. Their website was maintained, upgraded, and then migrated into the University of Virginia template which can be seen here.

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