Tim McElwee - web portfolio and thoughts from the New York City and Long Island

Portfolio

Interactive

• FreeWorldU

  FreeWorldU is an online education site that with a goal to provide "free online education to everyone worldwide," using a flashcard model. I've worked with the development team to refine several areas of the site, from the flashcards to the administrative sections.

• Working Papers

  Working with a former colleague who'd gone back to graduate school, I created the Working Papers site with a clean, modern design to reflect the editors' initiative to revitalize the publication as an online journal. The design incorporates color elements from the larger University of Pennsylvania branding.

• SelectMinds

  While I was working at SelectMinds, the company decided to update it's branding to better reflect it's place as a leader in the world of corporate social networking. I worked in conjunction with the Director of Product Management and the marketing team to create a clean and modern website design that matched the new branding initiative. (The link above goes to an Archive.org version of the site that is missing some of the sIFR headlines and flash elements.)

• Irish Connections

  This is the internet presence for my father's tour company. He specializes in small-custom tours and wanted a site that reflected the more professional and experienced nature of his business. The primary goals of the redesign were to better showcase tour features and the beauty of Ireland. Luckily my dad's a pretty good photographer. I focused on incorprating large, colorful images to show potential tour guests exactly what they can see and do.

• Vanderbilt University

  I created a style sheet based upon a Vanderbilt Creative Services design for the Vanderbilt University redesign that was live from August 2005 until August 2007. As part of their regular refresh cycle, the university webmasters wanted the site to use the latest development techniques. I'd just finished helping Peabody College create their first CSS-driven site, so they asked me along with other campus web professionals to assist.

• School Choice Center

  I created the School Choice Center site to provide an initial presence for this federally funded education research center, with the intention that it would serve as a hub for information dissemination to partner institutions and the general public.

  I wanted to incorporate a sense of the long history of educational debate surrounding school choice. With the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education near the founding of this center, I created a design that had the feel of a piece of school letterhead and newspaper articles of the 1950s.

• Peabody Style Sheet Design

  One of the primary goals of this project was to provide maximum HTML control for the webmaster and Peabody web team while allowing design variation for departments and centers. The result was one stylesheet that controlled all of the college's changing visual identities.

• Top Notch Hockey League

  This is a partially completed design for an online hockey league using NHL 2005 from EA Sports. Though the project was ended by the client before completion, it features a nice DHTML menu while fitting into the exitsting site structure.

• Peabody Journal of Education

  The PJE website serves as journal's Vanderbilt web presence, providing abstracts for each article and a means of accessing features from the publisher's website for those who begin their search at Vanderbilt's website.

• LPO Ed.D. Program

  A proposed design to provide a professional and attractive website for the LPO Ed.D. Program.

• Peabody Center for Education Policy

  A redesign and expantion, the Peabody Center website was created to provide information about researchers, research projects, news updates, and sponsored seminars. The design incorporated leaf motiffs similar to Peabody College marketing materials that focused on the campus' status as an arboretum.

• UNC CATIE Project

  CATIE's site serves as an informational respository for potential patients, their families, and researchers. Navigation and overall feel was improved by separating the two major areas of the study with the colors of the logo and tying them together on the homepage where the connection made the most sense.

• UNC Schizophrenia Research Center

  The Schizophrenia Research Center's site served as the public face of the research center and it's investigators. It was challenging to reach a consensus about the design and symbolism, but the final outcome is simple and unique with the progression of disease and research growing outward like a sea shell.

• GVSU ARSP Division

  Here I have created a site for a division which provides a great deal of information and service to the campus. I've tried to maintain some of the top-level layout and design elements within the program sites in order to create a more unified experience. One of the program sites is included below.

• Testing Services

  Testing Services coordinated a number of GVSU tests, including math and writing placement, CLEP, and English as asecond language.

Print & Identity

• Working Papers Article PDFs

  For the PDFs on the Working Papers site, I wanted to create a consistent structure and typography that would provide a more professional appearance. After all, it's created by Ph.D. candidates who aren't far from their degrees. I also created the template to allow for printing on standard letter sheets from a campus printer or for them to be eventually uploaded to a print-on-demand service for later collection or for a future revenue stream.

• Peabody Professional Institutes

  I created graphics for the Peabody Professional Institutes' Summer 2005 offerings using an image of the most distinctive building on campus with a bright purple—both commonly used in Peabody print pieces—to provide a cohesive and visually interesting identity.

• LPO Ed.D. Brochure

  This is a simple brochure created for potential advisory board members of the LPO Ed.D. program. I focused on clear typography with punches of color in the headings and tables.

• LPO End of Year Summary

  For the end of year summary, or "by the numbers," the numbers associated with department accomplishments over the academic year became the focus, as most faculty and staff were aware of these endeavors, but not necessarily the number of people or dollars involved.

• AEFA Conference Abstracts

  I compiled the abstracts for the AEFA 2005 annual meeting to accompany the official program, hence no cover page. I tried to focus attention on the content of each presentation by placing descriptions and titles in main, left column.

• IES Grant Proposal Cover

  This proposal cover posed a challenge to convey a focus on excellent teaching while incorporating the logos of participating research institutions and school districts. I tried to achieve this by using type and an off-center photo to draw attention to the teacher while using the negative space to group the institutions' logos.

• Breast Cancer Candle Tags

  These tags accompanied candles, whose profits were donated to breast cancer research.

• GD Graphics Library Icon Submission

  This is the application icon submitted for the GD Graphics Library icon competition. It was designed to represent GD library's flexible, server-side creation of graphics where elements could be "pealed back" on the fly.

• Trailblazer Icon Submission

  This was a submission into the Trailblazer icon competition. It was meant to represent the programs intent of leading users back to a website that they'd found on a previous search without bookmarking and could no longer find.

About

I'm Tim McElwee. I'm originally from Allegan in Western Michigan. I've been a designer/developer for eight years, working primarily on the web. I am currently looking for full-time employment, so feel free to contact me if you like my work.

Most recently, I worked as an interface engineer for Wunderman, working on full sites, landing pages, and email campaigns. Also in the city, I worked at SelectMinds putting together corporate alumni and social networking products.

Before New York, I worked at the Peabody Center for Education Policy. It's an educational research center at Peabody College of Vanderbilt Univesity, in Nashville, Tennessee. While there, I had the luck to work with both the colllege and university to create their first CSS-driven websites.

Previously, I have worked for the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Grand Valley State University in the Academic Resources and Special Programs Division as webmaster and scanning coordinator for their disability services office.

Also while at GVSU I worked with learning and physically impaired students as the assistive technology trainer, teaching students about the assistive software packages available through the disablities services office. I really enjoyed being able to show people how to use a piece of software that could make their daily life easier.