Content Dev

OVERVIEW

Charleston pierce is a world=renowned Modeling Coach and Runway Captain. For over 12 years he choreographed and coordinated the Macy's Passport Parade Modeling Showcase. Charleston approached me to republish his book on Runway Modeling and I was honored to assist him in turning his ground-breaking book into agraphically inspired piece of work. The original was a text-only rendition which was devoid of any pictures or illustrations. Knowing my love for graphics, he transferred over two-thousand pictures which he had gleaned from year of being in the modeling business. It was a gigantic task and one that we are still working on, but it is a complete inside look into the business of modeling and runway coaching.

MISSION

We wanted to breathe new life into Charleston's work of a lifetime, by incorporating full page color pictures on every page. As such a database of the most exciting images was created using Filemaker Pro and Apple's Pages. Oages made the task of layout very simple and we were able to create some stunning visuals overlays using the multitude of images that Charleston gave me.

Even though I am fully fluent as a web coder, we decided to use the Wix platform once again, so we would be able to quickly deploy the site after the printed version was rendered. The idea being that some people would be willing to pay for a subscription to the book.

The project is ongoing as the original book had over 200 pages and the new version has over 400 pages which have been broken up into smaller volumes to make it easier for readers to digest.

I am greatly honored to be working with such a professional as Charleston and am obviously quite anxious to finalize huis life's work in a few months.

DEVELOPMENT NOTES

The task has been so encompassing that it's hard to name a technique or strategy that we haven't used. Full page bleeds with dropcaps and opaque textual overlays were just the beginning.

The good news is that Apple Pages has made a daunting task a pleasure, as it is based on a comic-book creation software application, which makes it incredibly easy to flow text around over and through the massive amount of photographs that the project has.

The final output will be printed in limited edition, on demand runs. Concurrently, I am porting the contents over into Wix and I am happy to report that Wix is up to the task.

However, I will more than likely be hand-coding the final web site, but for the sake of quick prototyping we are using Wix for now. The decision to hand-code the site is due to Wix s limited subscriber options that require a sever amount of modification to allow tutoring, scheduling and grading for Charleston's students.

After we finish the book and the website, I'll probably need a much deserved vacation and will need to get a retread for my brain!