Web Communications

The Garnet Group offers the full range of web development, e-commerce, web marketing, e-learning, social media, and web application development services.  Today's information consumer is primarily web and mobile platform based; without web-based portals and application tools, businesses and public sector organizations will not reach their desired audiences.  The Garnet Group's staff provide the expertise and experience to leverage the most up-to-date web development and application tools to ensure that our clients' messages reach not only a wide audience, but the right audience.

The Garnet Group's expertise and experience is enhanced by its recent merger with the award-winning Plethora Design web development firm, to form its integrated IT Solutions and Web Communications practice. Please take a look at a sample of our past work:

AICIT Business Strategies International Opus Integrated Business Systems - business software consulting firm
Virtual Therapy Center AGD-guru-large Vineyard Arts Project, run by the ballet coordinator for Black Swan (2010)
medtegra-huge SEC-huge Brooklyn Music School
Neeyamo is a growing human resources outsourcing company, and they needed a web presence fast. We set them up with a Joomla site and a custom template, and made the site fully SEO-optimized using search engine friendly URLs and W3C-validated coding, and a highly customized design. winez asg

You can view Plethora Design's complete portfolio here.

Selected Web Communications Projects: 

  • Virtual Therapy Center

    This unique service offers mental health services through secure video conferencing. Clients connect with therapists through the HIPAA-compliant site, and the time spent on video is tracked for billing purposes, and exportable to Excel-compatible CSV and XLS formats. The system also features secure private messaging with high-level encryption and message obfuscation.
  • Southeastern Consulting, Inc

    Southeastern Consulting had a web site, but it had not been maintained. As a result, the content and layout were all very dated. We helped present SEC's message in a way that speaks more meaningfully to their target audience. We transformed their marketing materials into a cohesive whole on their site.
  • Financial Healthcare Strategies, LLC

    A national healthcare consulting firm providing services to healthcare associations, hospitals, managed care organizations, nursing homes, and government agencies. We redesigned their site and converted it to a content management system, allowing them to edit their pages on their own.
  • MedTegra

    MedTegra ReferralSafes improve patient care coordination, transition of care, patient referral management, and supports electronic health information. We were tasked with designing a corporate site from the ground up. We developed a visual style consistent with the MedTegra team's preferences, using content developed by MedTegra and adjusted for web use by us. The initial design went online within one month, with further refinements following that. Some unique features include the video on the home page, the navigation UI, and the fading text/images at the bottom.
  • Spirus AG – CaseCoder

    CaseCoder is the first hand-held spine coding management system designed to ease the tedious process of spine coding. We were asked by Spirus AG to create a fitting logo for use on the web as well as in their software, both on the PC and PDA. The logo concept is based on the workflow model of CaseCoder.
  • MicroLiter Analytical Supplies, Inc.

    MicroLiter Analytical Supplies, Inc. suplies high quality consumable supplies to the analytical laboratory, specifically the autosampler market. Their previous site utilized static HTML pages, while their e-commerce site was on a different server using a different URL. Using Joomla and some custom scripting, we have integrated their site with their e-commerce software (SouthWare Netlink) using iframes and a customized template.
  • Martha Ireland, Phd, RN, CS, CEDS

    An informational site for a psychologist's practice, featuring online payments, links to Skype (for virtual consultations), as well as basic information about her focus on eating disorders and treating disordered eating.
  • ASG Strategy Group, AG

    A management consulting firm in St.Gallen, Switzerland. ASG Strategy Group develops executives and consults organizations of every kind and size in questions critical to their success. ASG's site is a bilingual German/English Joomla content management system, with a completely custom template and new logo. It features secure user accounts so ASG's clients can access information meant only for them in a totally private manner.
  • DIY Valances, Inc.

    DIY Valances allows customers to design their own window treatments online. We took over this project from another developer. Our initial efforts focused on a total redesign, to give the site a more polished and elegant look. Since then we have made improvements to functionality and are helping the owner plan for future expansion and new features. 
  • Free Generation International

    Free Generation International is an abolitionist organization committed to addressing capacity gaps in the field of human trafficking and its linkages with gender-based violence. We were involved throughout the bidding process, primarily as information technology consultants. We also designed the FGI logo and developed their site. One of the special features is a clickable map of Africa, done using Flash.
  • Settlement & Integration Services Organization

    Globe SISO is dedicated to the settlement, integration and development of immigrant and refugee youth. They offer newcomer youth information, assistance, support, referrals and skill enhancement activities in an environment that appeals to youth, while still fostering safety, trust and inclusion. The site is designed for their Hamilton youth center and is aimed at those youth. It features embedded Flickr photo galleries, custom user profiles, and basic social networking
  • Robarts Interiors and Architecture

    Robarts Interiors and Architecture is an interior design and architecture firm with offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The project involved redesigning an HTML/Flash site into a content management driven site, using Joomla. Since they are located in China but also serve an international clientele, the site needed to be in both Chinese and English. It features a custom Joomla template. This project was done under sub-contract for the Made Noble Corporation.
  • Allied International Corporation Information Technologies

    A new corporate site for a northern Virginia IT solutions provider with a presence in the Equinix data center for North America, near AOL's operational headquarters. The site is built using Joomla 1.5 to allow the owners to edit it themselves. It also offers a version compatible with PDA's such as the iPhone and Blackberry smartphones.
  • Tilev Architects

    A new web presence for a Bulgarian architecture firm. The site is in development. Current site is a placeholder featuring an image slideshow. The site owner uploads JPGs to a folder on the server using FTP, and they show up in the slideshow in alphabetical order by file name.
  • A-A-A Storage, LLC 

    This company offers personal, vehicle, and business storage with locations throughout the US. They started in Texas and due to their expansion it became necessary to revamp their marketing to target all states and tailor their message so to allow for that growth.

    This was a redesign and CMS conversion that we did for a partner company called MadeNoble. It included adding a searchable locations database allowing customers to search by city name, zip code, or keyword. The site is enabled with search engine friendly URLs, an XML sitemap, and URL redirects to capture and redirect any traffic that may try to go to old URLs. In addition, this company can edit their own pages and locations.
  • Jutco Pty Ltd

    When we were contacted by Jutco, their site was being updated with FrontPage, and their catalogue consisted of hundreds of items in HTML tables. It had become unmanageable. Our client needed to automate their online catalogue and tie it into their existing customer relations database, and allow their customers to place orders online. We used osCommerce, an open source e-commerce system, to set up a product database that they could administer themselves through a web-based interface. This site is customized for Australian taxes and sells only to tools dealers, so we built a function that requires dealers to submit a credit application in order to set up an account. Our client is now using the system to update the site regularly, and we are involved in the ongoing maintenance as needed.
  • Javvo e-Learning

    Javvo, Inc. required a sleek design in keeping with its focus on e-learning. This site features several e-learning courses we have designed as well, also in Flash format, both for the web and CD-ROM.
  • Neeyamo – HRO services

    Neeyamo is a growing human resources outsourcing company, and they needed a web presence fast. We set them up with a Joomla site and a custom template, and made the site fully SEO-optimized using search engine friendly URLs and W3C-validated coding, and a highly customized design.
  • Haruspex, Inc. - Florida Business Software Solutions

    New site for Haruspex, which provides enterprise resource planning (ERP), accounting software, customer relationship management (CRM), and IT consulting throughout Florida. They are able to maintain their own pages as well as the photo slideshows that are visible on several pages.
  • Organizational Systems Design, Inc.

    We designed a custom layout for this company offering unique organizational systems design services to Fortune 500 companies, government, and other organizations. The site features client-customizable random overlay colors and background images, and is designed to be search engine optimized.
  • GW Realty Co.

    Our client, a southern California residential land developer with a portfolio of over $2 billion in transactions since 1993, entrusted us with the task redefining their web presence. Their previous web site was outdated and difficult to use, and moreover did not reflect their vision and growth. We worked closely with the client to get their company's values across both visually and textually. This included using photos specific to the southern California market. The site makes use of Flash embedded into W3C-compliant HTML 4.01 Transitional code using a CSS layout. A user-friendly navigation menu was custom-built for this design. The transactions pages use custom CSS to display the various locations. The logo is from their previous site, and we were not involved in logo design for this project.
  • Education for Peace International This non-governmental organization asked us to revamp their previous site. After careful consideration of the goals of their various projects, we came up with a design that exuded peace and calm. We configured their site for Macromedia Contribute compatibility, so they can edit the content themselves. It also comes with a custom-built search engine that indexes the HTML content automatically.
  • Landegg International University

    When Landegg International University, a private university in Switzerland, decided to relaunch their online presence, we streamlined their navigation and built a site search engine and a public library search for 8000 or so books and a private back-end administration system. The school has since ceased operations.
  • Perkins & Will - U.S.-based architecture firm with 20+ offices worldwide.

    CBS Presentation     - when Perkins and Will, a large U.S.-based architecture firm, needed to offer CBS a web presentation for an upcoming interview, we closely followed the structure of their PowerPoint presentation, but extended the portfolio and resume sections, and added streaming video to the presentation section. Deliverables included Flash for the web and CD-ROM.

    General Motors Presentation - a small site that presents a number of PDFs, portfolio pages, and resumes to the potential client, General Motors. The was presented online as well as on CD-ROMs leave-behinds after the presentation. 

    DesignLab - a showcase of architectural visualization projects. We came up with a portfolio of renderings as well as animations, and connected the interface to a discussion board created on the company's intranet specifically for discussion of 3d modeling and visualization.

  • Javvo e-Learning
    Javvo, Inc. required a sleek design in keeping with its focus on e-learning. This site features several e-learning courses we have designed as well, also in Flash format, both for the web and CD-ROM.
  • Princeton University Campus Center

    Princeton University's new student center needed a way to give people directions to various parts of this large complex. The final design incorporates wayfinding tools along with clear directions and intuitive site navigation, based on Princeton's color palette of black and orange. The site has recently undergone a renovation but some of the original elements remain.
  • Princeton University School of Architecture - School of Architecture International Programs

    The International Programs site highlights graduate student work and presents architectural designs from the school's program in China.
  • Brooklyn Music School

    This music and dance school located in Brooklyn has over a century of history behind it, and was in need of a fresh new web presence with the ability to easily update their pages. The site is set up using the Joomla content management system. In March 2010, the Home Depot selected the school as its first community renovation project. The director of the Brooklyn Music School has explained to us that their web site played an important role in getting the school noticed and eventually selected.
  • Brooklyn Prospect Charter School

    After being referred to us by another NY charter school, we set to work upgrading Brooklyn Prospect's Drupal site to the latest version and correcting a number of issues. Our focus then shifted to improving the design and functionality, so that the school now has a list of teachers, who each have their own profile which students can watch for announcements and additional course materials. The improved site also has an events calendar which sends a tweet to Twitter each time a new event is added.
  • KPBS Radio, San Diego Under the Envision San Diego banner, KPBS produces television, radio and web content with its media partners to discuss and analyze large ideas that are normally not explored in depth by news stations and print journalists. Our team designed a site focusing on these topics, incorporating RSS feeds from various San Diego area news networks and broadcasters. KPBS is a broadcast service of San Diego State University.
  • Development Professionals International, LLC

    A team of highly skilled development experts committed to ensuring effective and sustainable international development. DPI was founded by a team of committed international development professionals who have extensive global experience in democracy and governance programs. The site is built with Joomla, allowing DPI to edit their own pages.
  • Shenandoah Valley Economic Education, Inc.
    Shenandoah Valley Economic Education, Inc. -- SVEE is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, established in 1983, to promote and enhance economics instruction in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County public schools, K-12, for the Virginia Standards of Learning through the James Madison University Center for Economic Education.

    Our client's RFP called for a public marketing-oriented site as well as a management backend for handling awards management. Each year they hold a renowned awards competition rewarding teachers for outstanding commitment to the instruction of economics. The public site is built using the Joomla CMS and allows SVEE staff to add and edit pages and articles in a blog fashion. Newer items automatically appear on top where appropriate, yet static content remains static.
  • Winez VOF – winez.nl

    A Dutch online wine seller with a unique elegant look. The site was designed to appeal to the 25-40 age group, who would be more receptive to purchasing wine online. The site is built with Joomla, and the e-commerce is handled by VirtueMart, a Joomla extension. It has been set up for credit card transactions, and for Dutch customers bank transfers are possible using an iDeal plugin. The site is multilingual and is available in English, Dutch, and German. Using Joomla the client is able to maintain all content including all translations themselves. The design make use of some "Web 2.0" JavaScript libraries for Flash-like rollover effects. These have all been designed to maximize SEO performance by avoiding complicated Flash workarounds altogether. The site also has an automatically generated sitemap for use with Google and Yahoo sitemaps - also giving an SEO boost.
  • CEO World Travel, LLC – privatejetsvip.com

    We built a custom private jet flight planner from scratch. The site was set up using Joomla 1.5, and the flight planner was programmed as a custom component which is capable of searching its database of nearly 10,000 airports worldwide. Together with the selected jet class's average speed and the calculated distances between airports, it is able to determine the flight duration and apply the appropriate hourly rate to arrive at an estimated total. It also accounts for the time a jet is allowed to wait on the tarmac, and all of this can be controlled by the CEO World Travel themselves on the Joomla backend. This script is also set up to support multilingual sites, and has a detailed debugger built in.
  • Marathon Development

    Marathon Development Inc. specializes in development consulting services for housing communities, specifically senior housing. Marathon staff have been responsible for the acquisition, financing, due diligence and syndication for over 4,200 low income, market rate and senior housing units valued at over a half billion dollars. After being referred to us by one of our previous clients, they asked us to redesign their site and imbue it with life and color. We culled renderings from their image collection and used these as inspiration for the color scheme. The site also features a gallery of photos of completed and ongoing projects. In January 2007 we were asked to redesign their site again, to keep it up to date with their ongoing marketing efforts and materials. We worked tirelessly to deliver the new site on time, since the success of their bids and proposals could hinge on the successful and timely redesign of their site.
  • Spiritwood at Pine Lake – retirement community

    We were given a turnaround time of two weeks to produce a friendly and alive interface for this new assisted living and memory care community that opened in spring 2006. We worked closely with the client, graphic designers (for the logo), and board of directors to select appropriate photos and produce the content the way they wanted to present the story of their development.
  • Armitage Gone! Dance Karole Armitage's Broadway dance company, Armitage Gone! Dance, has been breaking new ground in modern dance and ballet for nearly two decades, and has worked with David Salle, Jeff Koons, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and many others. After fifteen years in Europe, she started this dance company and needed a web site. Dance is a very visual medium, and our team's design is heavily based on that visual imagery. Our team's design won a DesignFirms Web Award in June 2006. This is a prestigious award, and we received this award alongside the official site for Casino Royale (James Bond film), both in the category of Arts and Entertainment. In May 2009 we converted the site to Joomla, enabling the Armitage staff to more easily make updates, and opening up new possibilities such as image galleries and embedded video.
  • Vineyard Arts Project

    Founded in 2007, Vineyard Arts Project is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization whose mission is to foster, develop, and promote the live arts as experiences central to education and the community of Martha's Vineyard. Our designers produced a custom Joomla template using a Flash home page based on photos of various Vineyard Arts Project dancers. This minimalist gray / orange design is accentuated by the warm colors in the home page photo, and puts the viewer's attention squarely on the content, whether it be photos or text. The site has recently been made iPhone-compliant.
  • Breaking the Barrier, Inc.

    Publisher of Spanish and French language materials for teachers. BTB was referred to us in 2006 by a client who is also in the language publishing field, and we were asked to see what we could do to improve their existing site. We made design improvements and added a newsletter sign-up form, and enabling them to edit their own pages using Adobe Contribute. Their previous HTML layout did not use a template, so we created an Adobe Dreamweaver template for all the pages to use. In July 2008 we converted tobreak.com to a Joomla content management site with e-commerce capability.
  • Medic Response Health and Safety

    A regional training center providing the most comprehensive and convenient First Aid and CPR/AED training available in greater Northern Virginia and the surrounding areas, including Maryland, DC, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. We were tasked with improving parts of the layout, adding new content, and improving the search engine optimization. We also improved a separate e-commerce site and drastically increased their sales.
  • California Parking

    Redesign for a northern California parking services company. The new site uses a content management system so the site owner can edit pages on their own, and also features online billing and bill payment for parking at any of their San Francisco area locations.
  • BelastingLobby

    BelastingLobby (Dutch for "Tax Lobby") relies on text messaging with mobile phones as a way of organising petitions on tax advocacy matters. The goal is to have these petitions sent to the Dutch parliament. Voting via text messaging has become very popular for much more trivial things, and this site relies similar technology to effect change in the Dutch tax laws. We designed the layout and logo of the site, and set up the logo for use on printed materials for the BelastingLobby marketing campaign.
  • Centennial Business Products

    Centennial, a supplier for the printing needs of various industries, needed to be able to edit their own pages and have an catalog with online ordering. The solution is a Joomla site integrated with SouthWare.
  • Business Strategies International

    When Business Strategies International came to us, they had a web presence containing very interesting articles, but required an enhanced site they could easily maintain themselves. Besides improving its existing functionality, the site layout was improved, using Macromedia Contribute as the content management solution. We also did custom scripting to allow our client to edit navigation menus with Contribute.
  • (Client Confidential)

    We were approached by Spirus AG on behalf of a British comedian and Hollywood actor to redesign his site. He has appeared in many films as well as having starred on shows broadcast on NBC and HBO.

    The new design had to be a fun experience for visitors to the site as well as easy for the client to update himself. We were challenged to come up with something fresh and unique, and after several conceptual sketches we developed an interface based on pictures of the comedian. This Flash interface uses a lens that the visitor can move around to reveal an x-ray of the actor and at the same show navigation buttons in the form of various animated objects. On the backend we installed and customized a content management system allowing the client to update the site without outside help.
  • Approved Solutions, Inc.

    A full service HVAC / Controls / Energy / Security company that specializes in residential, commercial, industrial and institutional facilities. The site consists of several pages explaining the company's services and products. In the future, it will expand to sell products online, and that capability has already been built in so that the site can grow as planned. This is a Joomla site, so the company can easily edit its own pages, forms, and products using a browser-based editor.
  • The Ethical Community Charter School, New York The Ethical Community Charter School approached us to build a site for a new school in New York City. The site was set up with Joomla, allowing the customer to login and edit their pages online. A sister site for their Jersey City school was also set up at the same time.
  • LPR Toolmakers

    This Australian supplier of tools and toolmaking equipment hired us to turn their old HTML catalogue into an e-commerce shop with around a thousand items. Australian GST taxes are calculated for customers in Australia, customers can search for products by various criteria, and customers can set up user accounts to store their profile for later use.
  • EnviroBinz, Inc.

    EnviroBinz.com showcases an ecological and aesthetic solution for urban receptacles and recycling, based in San Diego, California. For this site we designed a custom 3d Flash animation of their product and built a complete Flash interface with XML menu. We were also involved in the creation of marketing materials, including pamphlets, a promotional video, and a slideshow presentation for a tradeshow booth.
  • Arina Enterprises
    Our Bratislava-based client required an online presence showcasing their growing Persian carpet business. The site was originally published in 2005 in English, Slovak, and German, and we arranged for our client's Slovakian hosting provider to have Arina.sk forward to the Slovak version of the site. The multilinguality is set up in such a way that a visitor can switch languages at any time, thereby translating their current page into one of the other two languages. In August 2008 we were asked to add support for Russian content, and decided to convert the site to the Joomla content management system to take advantage of its multilingual content editing features. Additionally, the new site automatically detects visitors' preferred language based on their browser settings.
  • Cambridge ESOL SG GmbH

    English testing center offering full support to Cambridge ESOL examination candidates, teachers, schools and companies in the cantons of Appenzell AR, Appenzell IR, St. Gallen, and Thurgau, Switzerland.
  • Aristotle Foundation (Stichting Aristoteles)

    The Aristotle Foundation is a Dutch organization seeking to bring Classical education back in the classrooms. When they approached us they had a site up and running, but it needed some work. It uses a custom-built content management system, for which we altered the template file. We also made the front page more engaging with the use of Flash for the textual introduction, and the content pages were improved by adding carefully selected stock photos.
  • SolarXport – renewably energy and photovoltaic products and services

    Our Chile-based client came to us looking for a renovation of their existing site, to help reach a wider audience and use their site to attract customers. We built it using Joomla, an open-source content management system, and customized it for English/Spanish multilingual display.
  • Nepal Monitor

    We were asked by the staff of NepalMonitor.com and Newslook, Nepal's first online news magazine, to modernize the look of their site and streamline their content management. The client was using Movable Type, and we found that the static pages were not template-driven. We therefore created a Dreamweaver Template which was used to generate Movable Type template files, making design changes very easy. Rather than editing several dozen files, only one file needs to be edited. Our work on this project was primarily focused on backend improvements, though we did make moderate improvements to the look as well.