Lealea Design is a studio in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada run by long time friend of the ExpressionEngine Community, Lea Alcantara. Lea specializes in branding, web, and print design that “help you connect with your audience and foster relationships.”

Hi Lea. Long time ExpressionEngine people know you’ve been part of the community a long time now, but for new folks please tell us a little about yourself and how you ended up a web professional.

Lea Alcantara: First of all, my name is pronounced like that Star Wars princess. Now we have that out of the way… I was born on an island in the South Pacific, but my family decided to trade sun and surf for snowy plains. In short, I’m Canadian. I’ve always been a creative person in all ways, but when it was time to decide what I wanted for my career, working on the web just seemed the natural fit. I love technology—I hand-picked a toy computer at five-years-old as my preferred plaything—and artists have always been a part of my lineage. I could tell that the future was on the internet, so I decided after I graduated high school to go into web design. It was a hobby of mine when I was a teenager, and I took it more seriously when I realized that I had a knack for it. After three years of college, I was hired at a national security services firm to take care of all their print and web design needs. I’ve always been ambitious and dreamed of running my own business some day and when the corporate world no longer appealed to me, I launched Lealea Design, and here I am today!

You recently relaunched Lealea.net. Its beautiful! What did you want to accomplish with the redesign?

Lea Alcantara: Thanks, I’m glad you like it! It’s been three long years since I made any type of changes with Lealea.net. While the site seemed to stand the test of time and helped me bring publicity and clients in, it was starting to look a little dated to me. I was also becoming less motivated to interact with it myself, so why would others? That is a concern for anyone in the web business. There were many IA problems I wanted to address; the ExpressionEngine implementation was very basic, messy, and rushed considering it was my first serious foray into the software; the copy was overlong; the portfolio was outdated; and I feel that my skills in design had grown and matured over the years. I am a better professional now than I was then. So, it needed a change to reflect things as they currently stand.

With this redesign, I really wanted to make sure it was an _evolution_ of my brand. Many designers feel the need to completely jump ship and change their entire look and feel but I think that can be a detriment to their brand recognition. I wanted to make sure this new design was different and addressed all the concerns I listed above, while making it recognizable to everyone that it was _still me_. Still Lea. Still Lealea Design, daring and fun, but with a bit more polish and maturity.

How did ExpressionEngine help with the redesign and relaunch process?

Lea Alcantara: It was everything. I love the unlimited custom fields and the powerful template engine. I’ve always said that ExpressionEngine is a designer’s best friend because you can make ExpressionEngine conform to YOUR design, not the other way around.

Meanwhile, Multi Site Manager also helped a lot. When I was working on the update of this site, I wanted to use my live install so I could access my current database of entries. It was very easy to set up a test sub-domain, and MSM treats the new site like it was a completely new ExpressionEngine install. That way I was able to create a brand new and ideal set up of weblogs, custom fields, etc without having to worry about it affecting the current Lealea.net. Lealea.net v2’s ExpressionEngine implementation is now on-par with how I implement ExpressionEngine for my clients: clean, efficient, and awesome.

With MSM, launching was also a relative breeze because no site is “default.” When my test domain was ready and I wanted to launch, it was a matter of just moving folders in the server and editing path.php, and then finally the ExpressionEngine control panel settings. That way, I was able to keep a version of the original lealea.net—v1.lealea.net—fully functioning and working for posterity’s sake.

With the “site” parameter built in MSM, I was able to pull in content from both my new and old ExpressionEngine site setups, so _none_ of my content was compromised. New design, old/new content mixed together. Exactly what I wanted!

SlideShowPro is used in my “Results” pages, and all of the content is dynamically pulled and added from ExpressionEngine entries. I just needed an XML file template (which can run ExpressionEngine tags!) and created a clever setup with that. I may outline the process later on my blog.

Also, this Lealea.net version uses a lot of _default_ ExpressionEngine features. That is important to note. The only non-default module I use is Akismet, to help filter spam for me. The only real (and free) extension I _needed_ to use for the site was Playa for my portfolio page relationships. The other extensions (Add Sitename, Livesearch, LG Addon) was mostly for Control Panel funsies. Plugins I used to help enhance my site have been Twitter Timeline, Textile, ExpressionEngine Gravatar, and Eexcerpt.

What part of the finished redesign are you most proud of?

Lea Alcantara: What I’m most proud of is that it still reminds you of Lealea Design! I like that most people have come up to me and told me that the change wasn’t jarring, that it was just a natural progression and improvement. I like the little detail work in some of the images. I like that it’s feminine and not afraid to be so. I’m a designer, what can I say? Related to reminding you of the same Lealea Design, I love how I was able to still keep my signature color scheme of orange, blues, and of course, pinks… just tweaked.

On your About page you mention that you volunteer your time as a broadcaster for VoicePrint. How did you get involved in that and what does it involve?

Lea Alcantara: Partly I wanted to be able to take advantage of the fact that as a freelancer, I have flexibility of hours. That means, some days I might not be in the “working” mood but I want to feel productive and not waste my time. That was one of my reasons to go search for volunteer opportunities that worked on improving my strengths but wasn’t directly related to the web industry—you have to step away once in a while. So when I found VoicePrint on my search on http://www.govolunteer.ca/ it seemed like the perfect match.

It’s a pretty flexible volunteer job. You call in and schedule your one or two-hour session, and you speak with your co-ordinator of what stories you’d like to read. They are typically 2-3 stories from newspaper clippings that match the theme of the day (each day has different priorities plus local news), and you are taken to a sound-proof booth and we record on industry-level mics and convert the files into MP3s. It is then streamed on the web for everyone to hear, and the national news is broadcast on a special cable channel. The service is meant for people with impaired or no eyesight, and can help people keep up to date. It’s a perfect way to keep yourself up to date with current affairs, too, while improving diction, as well as helping people!

Unfortunately, I’ve been so busy with life and work that I haven’t had a chance to come by lately; when I’m finally able to come up for air, I’ll start going there again.

What’s next for Lealea Design?

Lea Alcantara: What’s next is an interesting question… I’m still in the process of outlining my goals for 2009. However, I do plan on a few fun promos for site visitors soon, including WFAC posters I’ve designed to give away and a t-shirt promo with a twist. So you have to visit my website to keep an eye out for those.

I plan on hopefully attending this year’s SXSW, so anyone heading out to Austin, I’d love to say hi. For anyone looking out for a collaborator or partner for possible online projects, I’m always interested!

ExpressionEngine Add-ons mentioned in the interview.

Akismet for ExpressionEngine
EE Gravatar
Eexcerpt
LG Add Sitename
LG Addon Updater
Live Search Plugin
Textile
Twitter Timeline