Satterberg Foundation

The Satterberg Foundation was struggling to make an outdated website on an outdated platform work for them, but it was a slog to edit and update content and the old design was cluttered and out of style.

We worked closely with Satterberg staff to determine a new design direction for the site and then built a custom solution from scratch to meet their needs.

Now it’s easy to update the website, which means that accomplishments and news are shared more readily with their audience and grantees. The new site also gives them the ability to highlight the amazing work their grantees are doing.

KCRW Blogs

After a big rebranding effort for their main website, it was time to update the blogs for KCRW to bring them inline with the new branding guidelines.

Each of KCRW’s dozen or so blogs is constantly updated with fresh content so we wanted a way to make all that awesome content visually appealing while making the theme responsive, and creating some ties across the entire blog network.

We worked with the team at KCRW to build out the new custom blog theme.

Natalie is truly a delight to work with. Super detail-oriented with a friendly demeanor, Natalie made sure to check in with our team every week, explaining progress on our projects and setting expectations for the future… I would highly recommend Purple Pen Productions!

Megan GerschKCRW

Climate Dynamics

Professor Schneider had a static HTML site with a separate wiki for his team to communicate and share ideas. He wanted to be able to update his site more easily, add a blog, and roll the wiki into the website.

Working with designer Mark Tapio Kines, we customized WordPress including fancy asynchronously loading biographies in the menu on wider screens and video players that load videos on demand. We added blog functionality and rolled the wiki into the WordPress site so Professor Schneider’s team now has one place to go to update research, add videos, share ideas, publish blog posts, and update their biographies and publications.

Thinkspace

Thinkspace gallery had an older website that had been put together using WordPress and custom extensions before WordPress was quite as capable as it is now. The site was also not responsive, but the minimal black and grayscale design was a great fit for showing off their pieces on the site.

We took the existing site, made it responsive, and imported lots of external database entries and functionality into WordPress. In the process we were able to make it much easier for the gallery staff to create new shows, add new works, show up-to-date price conversions between US dollars and Euros, and provide more flexibility in general.

The original design was done by Suzette Franck, and we just updated that to be responsive.

Cargoland

Cargoland is a series of five radio stories conceived, written, and produced by award-winning radio producer Lu Olkowski that focus on the lives of people anchored to the waterfront community of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

We worked with KCRW’s Independent Producer Project to create a website that would feature the five radio stories and provide supporting content, photos, additional stories, interactive infographics and more.

Cargoland is a WordPress site that makes use of the Aesop Story Engine for creating rich, interactive stories.

DanBern.com

Dan Bern’s existing website was a collection of flat HTML files that were tedious and time-consuming to update. Some content was even scattered across other websites because of the difficulty in maintaining and updating the site.

Mark Tapio Kines re-imagined the design of the site and organized the content. Then we built out a fully custom WordPress theme that includes options for updating the header image, background color and texture and more.

A custom WordPress plugin added support for the discography, lyrics, store, and stories sections of the site.

Capital Campaign

KCRW has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move from their cramped basement home to a new, airy, eco-friendly, and beautiful space built just for them and their needs. A gorgeous case statement and some other print collateral had already been created for the campaign, but they were in need of a website. The website would serve not only as the online home of the campaign, but also as a presentation tool for meetings and events.

The case statement served as inspiration for the color scheme and typography of the new site. The website tells the story of the campaign, the story of KCRW’s history, and KCRW’s need for the room to grow, evolve, and adapt to the changing world of media.

We built the site on WordPress to be easy to update as the campaign progresses through several phases over the next couple of years.

Megan Gersch

Natalie is truly a delight to work with. Super detail-oriented with a friendly demeanor, Natalie made sure to check in with our team every week, explaining progress on our projects and setting expectations for the future… I would highly recommend Purple Pen Productions!

Megan GerschKCRW

Imaginary 20th Century

Norman M. Klein and Margo Bistis collaborated on a unique project. After writing a fascinating tale set at the beginning of the 20th century, they were unhappy with the book-like experience provided by traditional ebooks. So they worked to create an immersive and interactive experience for the novel, in the form of a narrated media archive that includes beautifully curated video, audio, and photography.

With that project nearly complete and the book ready to go to print with their publisher, they approached us for help marketing and selling access to the narrated media archive. Using the existing work as a guide, we designed a gorgeous sales page and built a system for collecting payment and requiring a login to access the media archive.

Margo Bistis

Natalie is so professional, super responsive, and she can answer questions in a manner that anyone can understand.

Cassava Films

The Cassava Films website was a decade old and consisted of hundreds of flat HTML files. While the site’s owner, Mark Tapio Kines, did a terrific job of keeping the content itself up to date, it was time-consuming and labor-intensive to add and manage the site’s contents.

Mark re-designed the site and we built out a fully custom WordPress theme to meet his needs. We also made reading the site’s excellent content on a variety of devices easy by making the site fully responsive. Additionally, the site is now easy to maintain and update.

From Cassava Films:

Mark Tapio Kines

Natalie was so easy to worth with. She’s incredibly knowledgable about the latest technology, but she made everything easy for me to understand and use. It’s not often when perfectionism and friendly, dependable service go hand-in-hand, but you get it all with Natalie.

Mark Tapio KinesCassava Films