I’m really looking forward to a good winter.  Having completed my internship with Snowboarder Magazine, I am back from California.  It was an incredible opportunity to redesign and rebuild Snowboarder’s website from scratch.  I learnt an incredible amount in the 8 weeks of design and development, and am looking forward to continuing development on their site! The guys at the mag are a great group of people, and so HUGE shoutouts to everybody back there in Cali!

Since being back for almost 3 weeks, I’ve only spent 2 nights in my own bed.  For some reason, I’ve decided to travel throughout the interior of British Columbia and elsewhere. I kind of feel like Mad Max, hence the post title. I’ve also been spending some time in Vancouver and have really taken to this city. I’m going to do my best to actually move out here and spend at least a year on the coast.  The fact that the ocean and the mountains are so close is incredible, and I don’t want to miss the opportunity to experience the city.  And speaking of ocean’s I leave you with a pic of me learning to Wake-Surf.  It’s not really an ocean, its just Shuswap Lake, but enjoy nonetheless.

3rd Day Wakesurfing

New SnowboarderMag.com!

It was a daunting task, to say the least, because the magazine has an incredibly large archive of features, photos, and videos dating back quite a few years.  Luckily I had the help of a few other interns to backdate posts and media, which worked out great.

The largest complaint about the old site, was its user interface.  Most people found it extremely hard to navigate, and they just couldn’t find what they were looking for.  So I cleaned up the front page, added tabs for quick access to top stories, and greatly improved the commenting system.

Here is an example of the FEATURES landing page on the OLD site:

Ugh.

Few problems here! Whats the deal with the blank space under the ad on the left? The articles that are features are tucked away on the side! Instead of being showcased like they should!  Also not much care was given to ad placement, sometimes they would fall right into the middle of a article or paragraph or sometimes cutting off someones comment!

This was all taken into account for the redesign, and I hope you enjoy it.  So take a peek and let me know what you think!

Snowboarder Magazine