Hunter McPeak – McPeakdesigns.com

Summarize the evolution of your capstone

For myself capstone was more of a maze and a journey rather than a straightforward path. This path took me down many roads of failure as well as many roads of success and understanding. Thought my years at University of Maine and in the New Media Department I thought of capstone as something that had to be changing to the world around me, but when it actually came down to it, I found out it was more of a chance to showcase what I wanted to do with a degree in New Media.

Initially in the fall of 2014 my goals were straight and the plan for my capstone was to make a mobile app that connects people to events. It was called “Poppin”. Poppin a social media app that was originally made for college students to invite a delegated amount of people to their parties without them getting too out of control. I still love this idea an may pursue it in time, but another opportunity arose that was much more practical for me and my life after college. This opportunity presented itself and was called “Liberty Farms.

Liberty Farms was a small start up year round all organic produce company that was started in Falmouth Maine. Their mission was to bring people in the surround area with fresh produce year round. With contracts such as Portland high school, and Hannafords already secured, I thought this start up was going to be an amazing success. It was my job to develop a logo, website and potential mobile app for this start-up company. Over time with the lack of communication and resources to build a functional site from, I left the project and took a trip to San Francisco.

In San Francisco I showed family what I was working on in school and through sheer word of mouth I was able to gain two immediate contracts and another potential contract post graduation. The first contract was for a consulting company known as Wigioadvisors. The second is Hallie Wine consulting and the third and only potential big contract is Bass Electric. 

Wigio already had a site and logo, but was looking for something new and refreshing. Although they still wanted something along the lines of what they had, they did want a new smoother perspective on their site with some added functionality. The other client was Hallie Wine Consulting which is also post graduation, but a sure contract that will result in actual cash flow. Although I had these contracts secured, these were not the only part to my capstone.

Once I returned I spoke with Joline and the direction which we decide to take was an actual portfolio/business that could showcase all of these sites and logos that I was building or currently working on. From there I thought of the concept mcpeakdesigns. Mcpeakdesigns is the title of my online graphic arts portfolio/business and actual personal blog site that shows up to date what I am working on. It consists of any range of materials or work that I have done over the semester including the three additional sites that I have built (Wigio, Peachwave, Liberty Farms). These designs and sites are another example that further shows my evolution as a graphic designer and business minor. By looking at them you can see that my feel for aesthetic appeal and design has progressed as well as my knowledge and understanding of servers and wordpress itself.

Plot a future for your capstone

When it comes to the future and dealing with McPeakdesigns, it could be extremely useful and helpful for my career choice. I one day wish to own an actual business and this experience has been extremely insightful when it comes to learning how to handle a small start-up. I needed to learn about servers, easthetic appeal, interacting with clients as well as taking advice. A lot of people think that their idea is just going to work, but something I learned was that you are going to hit roadbumps and sometimes your ideas will be rejected. So having numerous sketches/sites being rejected was an extremely useful thing for learning how to adapt to clients for the future. As for the actual future, I have thought about it and I am considering a name change as well as a site overhaul. Although I like the design currently, I think I want to make some changes to it and make it brighter and more eye catching. The simplicity works and the clients that I have talked to like aspects of it, but as for the actual site I wish to make some changes. Although the futures of the site is unknown the projects are certain. I have gained two contracts that I am going to begin to work on in the near future.

The first and smaller of the two is Hallie Wine Consulting, which is a smaller wine consulting business that specializes in bottling and distributing wines from the Bay area. With this contract I will be paid for developing a website with email as well as a log and business cards for the start-up owners Sandy Roberts and Heather Whiles. Through all of the research and information gathering I think this process will be extremely fun because of the sheer amount of connections that each wine consulting company has to another. The complexity wont be the hard part, it will be the actual information and getting what I need to make a successful site. Although Hallie Wine Consulting is an upcoming project its not my only project. The next project is a big contract that would involve a lot of redesigning for big electric company in San Francisco. The company is called Bass Electric and though their site is not bad, they wish to make a jump forward and switch to a wordpress platform so they can optimize and change their site without consulting an outside source or who actually built their site. Although Bass electric is not as urgent or as sure as Hallie, the future is bright for McPeakdesigns considering the two contract via post graduation.

Assess your capstone’s successes and failures

When it comes to success and failures, every capstone is going to have them, but the mistakes I made were more along the lines of having to wait. When it comes to building sites one thing I found important was content. Content is extremely important to making a successful site and one thing that was extremely tough was actually getting the information. Over the entire time, I was struggling to get what I needed and that made progression extremely slow. Being understanding for small start-up companies is extremely important, but there has to come a point where you just say enough is enough and put fake filler content in and I understood that too late. Switching information and media would have been easy enough, but I didn’t think of doing that so my progression on a couple of the sites. So for me the biggest failure was actually getting what I need and pushing clients, which caused a lot of last minute additions. There were significant failures when it came to designing, but thats the beauty and best part of design is that you can go back fix your corrections and move onto the future. With mistakes you learn and thats something that I certainly believe in because I learned so much from aesthetic appeal and what people want from the failures I made as a young designer.

Some of the successful parts of my project were the fact that I was getting paid to actually do work, because 3 out of the 4 sites that I made in one semester actually paid me and the forth site was my site so I couldn’t pay myself. Another part I would deem successful would be the actual learning about all of the independent parts of what it takes to make a small portfolio/business site. You have to learn how to make sites, point sites host sites and such with a server. I knew nothing about how hosting domains and servers so to learn about them was one of the more important things that I learned during this entire process. Another thing that was pretty big was as I stated earlier, connecting with clients and learning how to adapt to what the people you work for need. It is different then an actual job because what they tell you has to be applied in order for you to get paid. Changing how you wash dishes is completely from changing and entire sites front page and the way a site looks. You have to learn how to adapt and implement what people want which was a big success for me because my clients were happy with what they saw, so much that I was able to stay and be paid to do the work that I enjoyed to do. My biggest success would be the fact that I got paid or am getting paid to do something that I love to do. Design and aesthetic appeal is something I love and focus on so to get paid to do it would be considered a sites in my book.

Conclusion

Overall I had an extremely enlightening time learning about what it takes to start a small business and graphic design portfolio. Through all of the switches and changes over the year I was able to keep it together an create something I actually believe is a viable New Media Capstone and something that will defiantly help me in the future. The only tough part for me with be moving from such a low level of experience to somewhere like San Francisco which is the #1 graphic design city in the world. Although this will be a tough challenge, learning and becoming the best that I possibly can will be maximized by moving somewhere like that.

Figures

 

Liberty Farms was the original site that kicked off this entire adventure of having a web hosting business

 

Next came the complete redesign and of the peachwave site that is owned by my father David McPeak.

 

After Peachwave was finished I focused my attention of a small startup company based out of San Francisco which was called Wigio, an online advising company for ecommerce.

Finally you have McPeakdesigns, which was the portfolio/business and web hosting showcase that could should people what I have made and all of my projects.

Annotated bibliography

http://www.bluehost.com/

Blue host is the web hosting site that I bought my server space though so that I could actually host all of the project that I do.

 

https://wordpress.com/

WordPress is the core and entire focal point of my project and without learning the ins and outs of wordpress I could not have made this project possible.

 

http://www.umit.maine.edu/~Jorge_Gonzalez/

I have to give credit where credit is due and I learned a lot about aesthetic appeal from my professor Jorge Gonzalez

 

http://www.squarespace.com/

I learned a lot of various platforms and another viable platform yet not my choice would be squarespace.

 

wigioadvisors.com

The original site before we launch our new site which is coming soon.

 

Thank you for the opportunity and enjoy your summer

-Hunter McPeak