Recently, I enjoyed another fantastic collaboration with Andrew Mager to create a new site identity and blog skin for Roland Lazenby’s “Laker Noise“. Roland is the author or co-author of more than 60 books, most of them about sports. Among his works are several Lakers-related projects, including the bio Mad Game, The NBA Education of Kobe Bryant, and Mind Games, his Phil Jackson biography. Lazenby also teaches journalism at Virginia Tech.
The site is intended on being Roland’s online home to exclusively cover the game, players and personality of the LA Lakers. As you can see, this greatly influenced the visual design. For the logo, I was inspired by the name – which made me think of a hand held sign that a fan would have and wave to inspire other cheering fans on the floor of the Staple Center.
The blog is not a live game, but the web based coverage of a team, the idea was to create a mood that strings together the topical content in a way that is both connected as well as “in the lime light”. This is achieved with the literal metaphor of “stringing the posts” together. Further emphasis is achieved by placing a fixed positioned and ambient lit background behind a transparent content block. This way, as a user scrolls down the page, the story floats above a back lit background – A look similar to the promotional signs you would see walking through an NBA coliseum.
For the door, all of the individual post are tied together – where as should a user click into an individual post, all user comments are then tied together to continue the theme regardless of weather it is generated by the author or expanded on in a more viral manner.
The site is still being developed and will soon have additional sections, bugs resolved along with more prominent navigation to toggle between Roland’s blog coverage and information about him and the projects that he is involved with.
I am an avid student and evangelist of user-centered design principles - I have created or overhauled some of the world's largest online Business & Technology properties. My focus has always been on building functional design systems that creatively solve business problems. Solutions that convey brand & messaging, but more importantly, are intuitive to maximize the possibilities of an interactive medium. 
