Nur Ahmad Furlong

Category: Portfolio

A sniff at a nomad-one redesign
Being snowed under for way too long as meant that some of the initial elements I wanted to add to the previous re-design of this site were left out. To be honest the design hadn’t lived up to my expectations form the very begining and has some serious usability problems as well. Having lived with version 4 of nomad-one.com for some time now I think a re-design is definitely way overdue. After pondering over where to start for a while I made a few notes ad a few sketches and dove straight into some look & feel mocks in Photoshop. This time I’m planning to develop something which interprets the nomad concept alot more literally, hopefully with a bit of a digital feel in part.
I’m still at wireframe stage but would appreciate some feedback from anyone out there with regards to the little mockup above and also how you think I should improve on my site based on the current design & layout.
So I need to know about:
Colour, Graphic Elements, Layout, Usability, Readability, Functionality and last but not least, Content, the area I think probably needs to most focus.
March 27, 2009
Checkout the new WordPress Meetup site
Heads up. Today is WPCPT3 at the Bandwidth Barn from 4pm – 7pm. We’ve just launched our new theme designed by yours(that’s me) truly and coded by Paul Weingartz who did a fantabulous job. Check us out at www.wordpress.org.za
May 28, 2008
Recent Project – Praxia Technologies Branding & WP website
A nice little Branding & Web design project I recently completed was for Praxia Technologies.
Praxia Positions itself in the following manner.
“Our mission is to help our clients realise the full potential of their network, communications and computer hardware and software.”
Saeed of Praxia Technologies approached me, firstly to refresh his web presence and put something up there he could manage himself. This has become pretty much a standard request for web design projects as no-one wants to have to call up an html coder each time they want to update a page on their site.
As usual I recommended WordPress, due to it’s quick and simple framework and user friendliness, especially for Praxia’s simple CMS(Content Management System) needs. I found a template which suited their requirements and went about giving it a complete facelift. Praxia’s logo also needed a change and I was happy to oblige as logo design is one of my favourite areas of focus.
First Things first – Establish a new Brand
We started off with the logo design so we could base the site’s look & feel on the Brand and create a nice consistent looking online presence.

After exploring various directions as I usually do with logo design projects the client was split between 2 logo options and we had some back & forth discussion on the pros and cons of each direction.
We settled on the more practical option, the other being the 3 dimensional X element. The focus on the X stems from their original logo and was maintained to keep some kind of consistency going in the re-brand.
Next comes the site in WordPress
We decided to re-use the 3D X element with each component of the X representing a specific business unit as the client still liked the element and wanted to maintain it somehow.
Because Praxia is an IT Tech company focusing every element of a clients IT Tech needs they wanted to go with something which links well with the technology they use. A few stages of design drafts and the client was pretty happy with the look though felt something was missing, and with the inclusion of the brushed metal background we’d settled on a design which the client was very excited about.

To see the final coded result visit www.praxia.co.za. Let me know what you think.
May 8, 2008
The Official WordPress Meetup Cape Town Logo
That is of course if anyone disagrees in and provides something better. I did a few roughs and seems this one was the favourite, so in the spirit of moving forward, I’m planning on whipping up an I’m attending button for you to put onto your blogs. Lets hope this will stimulate a little more interest in the event which will be taking place 26th March, 4pm at the Bandwidth Barn in Cape Town CBD.
What do the rest of you think of the logo?
Grab the badge below or paste the code into your sidebar to let others know you’ll be there and to encourage more to join us!
<a href=”http://wpcapetown.wordpress.com” title=”Wordpress Cape Town Meetup March 26 2008″><img src=”http://www.nurahmadfurlong.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/wpmeetup-button.gif” alt=”Wordpress Meetup Cape Town March 26 2008″ border=”0″ /></a>
March 14, 2008
nomad-one is being re-designed from scratch -what do you think?
A while back I realised just changing a few colours and the mast image wasn’t enough for my blog anymore. So, I started working on a re-design of my site and made quite a few changes a short while ago. This has seen me through to the point I’m at right now, where I think a complete re-design from scratch is now necessary. { Latest Design at the end of this post }
So where do I start with this re-design?
I went right back to the beginning and asked myself a few important questions which would get me moving in the right direction before getting too bogged down with design.
What is the most important aspect of my site?
- Portfolio
- Services
- Call to action
- Social Network Links
What do I need to do different Graphically? How do I set myself apart, keeping with my own personality & style?
- Colour & Texture
- Graphically Rich
- Typographic treatment
How can I structure my site’s content more efficiently?
- Tabbed Content
- Highlighting Key site content in a hierarchical fashion
- Creating Focal Points
- More clear Divisions between content boxes
- Creating Layers of interest
Put together a list (using freemind to create a mindmap) covering everything currently on my site, and then adding those things I think are missing.
(more…)
January 23, 2008
A few Logo Designs for fun – sitepoint design contests
There’s been an awful lot of debate going around in design circles about non-paying pitch work (spec work) and it seems the vast majority of designers are against it. On the other hand most client’s would prefer it for obvious reasons.
One place online which I’ve recently been testing out for fun is the Sitepoint Design Contests. I was browsing the many contests and thought I’d give it a bash, just to see what I could do in a few minutes, and also to test the responses I might get. I have to say, most of the logo designs submitted in these contest are really shocking. Many times it seems the people who are requesting the designs are not very design literate either, which would probably explain their need or choice to use a solution like this. There are however quite a few really great designers spending their time crafting to top notch stuff on these design contests. This means not everyone is against this type of design work and someone has to be making some money off this type of service. You’ll have a laugh at some of the weird and wacky designs people try to get through these contest. I recommend visiting the Sitepoint Design Contests just for the fun of it, some crazy companies on there as well.
It was quite a fun exercise, working with limited briefs, not putting in too much time, no feedback, mostly working on these in the wee hours to get some creative juices flowing. Below are a few samples of some of the logo designs I developed which I thought I’d share with you. I’m holding thumbs that one of them might be chosen so I can boost my income a little. Let me know what you think.
ERGOWRITE – healthy stationery

Edmonton – Social Planning Council

WTHRU – where the heck are you (people finding software)
Domaining.org – domain registration service

December 4, 2007