Painting By The Brush offers online painting videos to show people how to create simple artwork. It is designed for anyone to have fun following along with the video to create their own painting.
The subscription model allows users to subscribe and get 1-3 videos per month or purchase videos individually.
Lead/Designed/Developed this project.
Worked with an illustrator and videographer.
Developed in Angular
Developed the back-end using PHP
Configured the hosting solution (AWS)
Uses AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS S3 to handle user-uploaded content and to serve the videos.
Generates custom composited image from user-uploaded content for sharing to facebook.
Integrates with Stripe’s API to process payments including recurring subscriptions.
Created custom video player to give painters features that are unique and make it easier for painters to paint along with the video.
Designed, developed, and wrote copy for the home page.
Created a web app for painters to follow from Facebook events page and reserve a seat for a painting party.
Allows painters to get a clearer view of upcoming events than what Facebook events page provides.
Aims to improve the attendance rate for those who have signed up by requiring painters to “reserve” a seat and receive a reservation ID. Average attendance rate for any event that does not require pre-payment is an average of 50%, which was about accurate in this case.
One requirement of the project is that the app will not accept pre-payments.
Prompts painters to cancel if they cannot attend.
Attendance percentage is now close to 70% on average.
Generates an image optimized for posting to Facebook events page at the correct size and with a styled background.
This coffee shop’s menu is large for a coffee shop. They carry lots of flavors and offer many coffee drinks as well as cold drinks. They also have lots of pricing rules in cases where drinks include flavoring/whipped topping / espresso shots in their prices. This all caused the previous menu to be confusing and overwhelming to customers.
Old Menu
The solution I came up with was to simplify the menu somewhat (but not too much), and to design it so it clarifies some of the confusing points while comfortably displaying all of the many options available to the customer.
I created a mock-up so the shop owner would be able to see how it would look in the end. I have included it in the image below. Compare to actual photo above.
New Menu (Mock-Up)
To do this I decided the menu boards needed to be larger and somewhat numerous. I also added color, in part to help distinguish between hot and cold menus, and in part because the shop is colorful place and very art-oriented. I also added icons to describe when flavoring/whipped topping is included in the price and when it costs extra. This even helps the baristas understand it better too. I added icons for espresso shots. This helps customers to know how many shots they put into each type and size of drink and whether the drink includes espresso at all.
Many customers in the area are not familiar with terms like “latte”, “breve”, “frappe”, so I designed a poster from scratch which describes the drinks offered by the shop and how they are made (taking into account the specific way this shop makes them).
When designing the menu, I needed to keep the cost of materials down. I chose to use relatively inexpensive white boards as the “frame” and then I chose to have the menus printed out as posters with a thicker paper weight. I attached hooks to the backs of each white board myself and crafted a system by which they hang at a downward angle, making the menus easier to read and helping to minimize glare. Then I mounted the posters to the white board with double sided tape. Because of the low cost of printing the poster, it will be easy enough to update the contents of a menu by having a new one printed and re-mounting it. The owner is very hands-on and is willing to do many things herself to reduce costs.
Brandon Henson 