Shelly is a masterful designer. We’ve been thrilled with her work and her fluid and prompt communication during projects. Working with Shelly is a true pleasure, and her designs rock.

Audette Media is a boutique internet marketing firm located in Bend, Oregon. Run by Adam Audette, Audette Media is a firm that helps companies - large and small - improve their marketing strategies for their online business by building brand awareness and targeted traffic, with excellent customer service (and a great sense of humor, I might add).

I was very flattered to have been hired by Adam to build a site design for his business. If his name sounds familiar, it’s because Adam (and his father John) are well known for their contributions to the internet marketing world. Adam runs the LED Digest, one of the oldest marketing email lists around. So this guy kinda knows what he’s looking for, and it was a pleasure to work with him, and very flattering to think that my work was exactly what he needed.

Adam required a new logo and site design that would reflect the way he works: straightforward, with information available at everyone’s fingertips. He wanted his site to be clean, subtle, and accessible - a lean, mean marketing machine. I was able to provide him with exactly what he wanted, and I was able to learn a few things in the process myself.
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Like Shelly, I am somewhat of a perfectionist. I can quickly come up with an idea but I’ll spend weeks tinkering around before I’m satisfied with any outcome. TechNews was no different. I had a design in my hands but I knew I would need to hire the best in order to make it come alive. There were so many little features that I wanted to implement and on reflection it began to worry me a little…. would I be able to find anyone who could pull it off?

That was until I found Shelly. I won’t go into great detail on how I discovered her but I can honestly say that I’m glad I did. We hit it off from day one and kept in constant contact throughout. She is an absolute joy to work with; unlike some other contractors, Shelly constantly told me where she was at and what was coming up next. After a few days I had access to the work in progress which enabled me to play around and suggest tweaks as and when they were necessary. Saying that however, it was pretty scary how she managed to nail it so quickly. It was turning out to be just how I imagined it in no time at all!!!

Towards the end of development I did drop a little bit of a bombshell on her - I asked if we could work in two dynamic features I had yet to see on a technology blogging site. I asked her if we could introduce Windows Live Messenger and Skype status icons and make it easy for visitors to strike up a conversation with the site staff. We both researched the options available to us and were able to use some open API’s. Needless to say, she pulled it off a treat.

Right at this very moment I have TechNews open in another tab on my browser. I’ve spent this weekend setting it up, adding content and so forth. Everything just works - I love being able to say that. My biggest worry before giving Shelly the “go ahead” with this project was how accurate could she reproduce the PSD design. I can’t honestly tell one from the other, that’s how good the end result is.

So would I recommend Shelly? Without a shadow of a doubt the answer is yes. I’m almost sad that the project has come to an end because she was so fun to work with. She’s driven, focused and really does care about making you happy. I can tell that she loves doing what she does, and it does show in the end result. I have a website that operates in fully validated code and it’s something I’m passionate about too. I will definitely be coming back to Shelly and Brass Blogs for all future work that I need doing. I know I’m going to get the best, so why would I look anywhere else?