the blog

Here we talk about design, development, games, the publishing industry, and any other web-related stuff that we find interesting. And, of course, we talk about what we are up to in the studio.


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Updating our work

We had a very busy 2010, and it seems 2011 is looking to be just as busy. We’re thrilled! We love what we do, so busy is good. Of course, because we are a small team and our clients come first, our own site has been largely forgotten. We will be updating our main portfolio with some of our larger finished projects (including Erik Larson’s new site, the new Cake Mix Doctor and Modern Library) in the coming days, but for now I wanted to share some of the smaller sites and projects we’ve wrapped-up in recent months.


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The Candymakers by Wendy Mass
We worked on a micro-site for Little, Brown and Company to promote The Candymakers by Wendy Mass. It’s a super-fun book about four kids who have been chosen to compete to find the tastiest confection in the country. The book cover is a delight and the site was designed to be a tasty reflection of this.


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Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns
Isabel contacted us about creating a new site to promote her book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. It is an amazing story about the six million or so black Americans who fled the American South to create a new life in the urban North and West where they might find freedom. Migrates included such greats as John Coltrane, Miles Davis and James Baldwin.


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The Princess of Nowhere by Prince Lorenzo Borghese
We created a new book site for Prince Lorenzo Borghese to promote The Princess of Nowhere about his own ancestor, Princess Pauline Bonaparte Borghese (Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister). The subtitle of the book says it all:

“A story of passion, betrayal, and a woman who truly conquered all – even death”.


More updates to come soon, along with news about other fun projects we are working on. For more “regular” updates from us though, you may want to follow us on Twitter (@beingwicked). We’re on there a lot it seems.


Christmas Break!

We will be taking a break until January 3rd. Please note that any inquiries or emails sent during this time will be answered upon our return in January. We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We are incredibly excited for 2011 as we already have a number of great projects scheduled. See you in the new year!


Reversing the order of your comments

We develop our client’s sites in WordPress since it is such a flexible and powerful system. It allows our clients to update and maintain their own site content which is always a good thing. Sometimes editing the defaults in the system is very easy, but other times it takes a little finagling.

Recently a client wanted to reverse the order of the comments in their blog. By default, WordPress lists comments from oldest to newest. Now, there is a setting under “Discussions” within the WordPress panel to select comments to display in the reverse order: newest to oldest. When we adjusted this setting within the client’s WordPress admin panel though, nothing changed. It seemed we had stumbled across a bug of some sort. Thankfully though, there is an easy fix:

1. Open up the comments.php template

2. Locate this line:

<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>

3. Replace it with the following:

<?php foreach (array_reverse($comments) as $comment) : ?>

That’s it. Comments will now display newest to oldest.


A Busy Start to the Year

Well, it’s hard to believe it is February already. 2010 was off to a rather busy start and January was a whirlwind of work for us. We’ve finally taken a few moments to update our portfolio with some of our recent work.


Website for Rebecca Skloot
Rebecca Skloot
With the recent release of her incredible book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot needed a fresh new look for her website.


Website for Secrets of My Hollywood Life
Secrets of My Hollywood Life – Little, Brown
Little, Brown contacted us to put together a micro-site for the popular Secrets of My Hollywood Life series by Jen Calonita.


Website for Heresy by S.J. Parris
Heresy by S.J. Parris – Random House
Random House contacted us to create a micro-site to promote Heresy by S.J. Parris.


Hello 2010!

We aren’t the type to reflect a whole lot on things past – the good or the bad. We’d rather look forward to what the new year has to offer. 2009 has been a great year for us though with some exceptional projects. We’ve connected with great clients, publishers, authors and entrepreneurs, and next year we’ll be working with many of these same clients on new, exciting projects. We have some big changes at the studio as well with a move to the US, so 2010 is already shaping up to be a busy one. We are looking forward to it!

We wish you all a very happy new year! May 2010 be filled with laughter, success and lots of good reading.


Full Scalable Background Images

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Recently we worked on creating the new Fashion for All web site. F4a is a national non-profit in the US. The aim is to offer women living in low-income communities a day of dignified shopping and access to community-based organizations, which provide educational, career, health, wellness, and parenting resources. It’s about providing the tools and resources for women to achieve personal and professional growth. A good cause indeed.

The branding for f4a was done by a very creative group who handed over a PSD for the homepage, along with some minor requirements/requests. The main one, and the one that had me Googling a bit: to have the background photograph expand/shrink with the browser window. I’d seen this done before, but never tried it out myself – always great to have a challenge and learn something new. I Googled and found a few techniques for this – some much better than others.

Read the rest of “Full Scalable Background Images” »