Velo, how are you?

Copy this link for a short URL

November 11, 2009 at 1:13am

It’s not every week you get to launch two sites. This week it’s a damn pleasure. It’s ridiculous that I’ve worked with the craftsman that I have. The equivalent of Rain Man, but minus the savant part and the sexy sunglasses. Around the beginning of the year Kevin Tamura approached me about a site he was working on for one of his favorite hobbies. You see, Kevin likes to get dressed up in tights and go places quickly. Kevin is a cyclist, cyclist-enthusiast, and suffers from the rare disease called cyclo-enthusiasmo.

Poor Kevin, suffering from this terrible disease, approached me to help him rebuild his local/favorite bike shop’s website. When Mr. Tamura approaches you with a site he designed, a site he built from IA all the way up… you never say no. Not only is Kevin one of the best working designers around, but he approaches problems with such pragmatism, patience and enthusiasm… such fine-tuned professionalism, that he encompasses all the ideals and professional checklists that you all have been talking about.

Yet the bastard, despite his ability to deliver quickly and beautifully, doesn’t have a blog. He can’t write about all the nice things he provides for you assholes, and there is no mechanism to talk about the cool work he does.

Well I tip my hat to him

Kevin provided an infinite amount of patience. The project was gratis, because I love working with Kevin, and Kevin loves bikes (and apparently, sadomasochism: an effect of working with me) and we would finish it in spare time. Unfortunately, this also meant that sometimes Velo would get pushed aside, but we would always meet-up, discuss it and he would be understanding where necessary, and scolding where appropriate… but always patient and willing to help. We approached it as a team, and Kevin can be the leader or the workhorse: switching roles like that weird formation meant to keep the peloton’s pace that some teams do… or something. 

Kevin had a vision, and Velo is 1300% better than any bike shop’s out there. It’s usable, its interesting and it’s beautiful.

What I did

Here’s what I did:

 
• Javascript, including a custom little lightbox slideshow
 
• Implementation in ExpressionEngine
 
• Copious amounts of drinking (editor’s note: may be unrelated to site)

Here’s what Kevin did:

 
• Everything else, from IA to design to CSS, to some EE coding and probably some cycling in-between

If that doesn’t convince you that you need to hire Blue Flavor if only for the $%()#@)( privelage to work with Kevin then I don’t know what will.

I don’t know crap about bikes…

...but I’m very, very, very proud to finally launch Velo.