thisismyurl.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/getaway-graphics-great-web-sites-for-great-hotels-20090116.jpg" rel="lightbox[roadtrip]">After a long hiatus from operation, I’ve recently decided to resurrect my graphic design business and relaunch Getaway Graphics, a company that I’ve been running here in Fredericton for the past few years.

Getaway Graphics focusses on delivering quality websites and web marketing support to businesses in the hospitality industry, specifically hotels and inns but as far reaching as restaurants and tour operators.

Putting this website together was an interesting challenge for me, I’m not a huge fan of Flash websites but I wanted it to have some pizzaz, so I’ve incorporated a lot of very subtle CSS tricks, some features found only on Apple Safari such as text glows and a lot of deep, rich photographs. 

The site has three basic template files, the home page shown on the right has a blue welcome box and features the inset menu at the top of the page for easy access.

The five menu items result in pages, each sporting a quality photograph designed to set the mood for the page. Most photos are my own but a few I managed to find on Flickr, following my own advice. In fact, some of the photos are available for free download from my article Ten Free Photos From Mactaquac Canada.

Below the photo, I choose to use a nice simple font, clear text and short paragraphs to introduce the page content. On three of the five main pages, I list a series of articles or free tools for people to download.

Each article page is stored as a post in the website, a feature image is set using special fields in the post settings and the excerpt is recycled as a pull out introduction at the top of each posting.

As with the pages, a smaller version of the menu has been placed at the top of the page while a larger version resides at the bottom for easy navigation.

I have to admit, the footer is something that I’m really pretty proud of on this site. It’s created using three over lapping PNG files with alpha channels, something I’ll most likely write an article about later in the year.