My friend Josh Willis came to me a few weeks back and told me that he was entering this contest and wanted to know if I could help him out in anyway. After some quick brainstorming, we had a name, a plan and the rough sketches of what would become his new website. Josh’s ability to convince so many creative professionals to work with him is a little scary, but when you give full creative freedom to the guys who want nothing more than full creative freedom, it’s hard to say no.

I knew that the website we were going to get set up for him had to accomplish two things: be fun for the end user, and do one thing and one thing only. That one thing was push people to Josh’s application page on the Island Reef Job website. The initial concept was born out of a few portfolio’s I had seen recently where everything was on one page, but in different level vertically. Josh came up with the name “great bearded reef” (since he has a beard) and I knew that we could do some thing that would simulate diving into the ocean.

All the illustrations were done by another one of Josh’s friends named Dino Henderson. I had never worked with Dino before, but I am pretty sure it was by divine appointment that I was able to partner with him for this site. The concept was good, but Dino was able to take it to an entirely different level with the quality and detail of the illustrations. Everything from the beard icon to the Sea Monkey as a side kick was born out of his creative mind. I am definately going to try and partner with him on future projects.

There wasn’t anything too tricky about the site. It’s features a simple javascript that makes interacting with the anchors more interesting (same one’s used on this site). Trying to get the menu bar to be fixed with the top of the browser was a little tricky since I hadn’t tried something like that before… but I got it down with no problem. Other than that, building this site was a total dream. Josh was down with all the fun ideas and trusted me and Dino to deliver a kicking site that would not only get him some recognition, but beef up our respective portfolio’s as well.