http://jamesbeard.org

for all of you foodies out there, you probably already know the james beard foundation. if you don’t, it’s america’s pre-eminent culinary foundation. they have beautiful member dinners produced by the best chefs of the country, along with the james beard awards and many educational programs. we had the honor of being part of the team that took on the huge project of updating a website with thousands of archival entries and daily updates. we never wrote about it before because our blog wasn’t live in early 2008.

although we finished the first phase of jamesbeard.org in april of 2008, we spent the following 8 months adding to the massive structure built on the drupal framework. the site was beautifully designed by our friend scott of simplissimus (with whom we’ve done other projects) and we did all the multimedia and interactive elements along with the build. the site currently gets about 37,000 hits a month.

anyway, fast forward… the reason we’ve decided to write about it now, is because today is the last entry day for the w3 awards (yes, yes, i’m always running late - but we make the deadlines). we think it’s a really beautiful and comprehensive site and therefore we decided to enter it in the the food and beverage category. so if any of you out there have any pull with the w3 awards judges —-> nudge, nudge, wink wink.

http://www.tygriscf.com/

the visual mercenary group is proud to announce that we just finished the developement of a new site for Tygris Commercial Finance. the site was designed by our friends at Segal Savad, whose flash site we also programmed and animated. it’s a great example of the beautifully designed work that comes out their shop.

the tygris site is built on the on microsoft’s .aspx platform and contains many dynamic areas and includes an admin tool for the tygris team to make easy updates. we’d like to wish Tygris success with their new web launch.

dreambrazil tours

hey! just a quick note. we just heard that DreamBrazil Tours was accepted as a member of Embratur - The Brazilian Tourist Board. visual mercenary group would like to congratulate darryl e-smythe on getting accepted. plus, we really love the site. we programmed and animated the entire site based on designs from scott meola and gina lee of simplissimus. now we’re just waiting for the opportunity to take up darryl’s offer of getting the extra-special deal (wink, wink) if we ever get our @$$3$ in gear and get to bahia for some serious eco-fun.

but speaking of simplissimus, scott is also the designer for the james beard foundation’s web site (which we also program and do the multimedia for). but we’ll chat about that later. we should also mention that scott did the sound design for the final vote spot. unfortunately, i haven’t downloaded the final mixdown from craven films. i really should, it sounds great!