Galore

Galore is a media brand built around models and the downtown creative lifestyle. Galore references all eras, celebrating the sexiest bombshells and most fearless rock and roll girls.

Background

Inception

Our relationship with Galore started with Kennedy (our creative director) making it to the final round on BetaBeat’s The Pitch with our product Status Chart. While waiting to pitch to the VCs, Steve Schlafman and Nikhil Kalghatgi, he ran into Mike Albanese (advisor for Galore). After a quick chat they both knew this was an amazing start to a wonderful relationship.

The first coffee

Mike and Kennedy met at, our now favorite meeting point, The Library at the NoMad Hotel to chat about Galore. Anytime we meet with our clients about a project we love getting to know who is behind the ideas. We enjoy working on exciting work, but what we enjoy most is the opportunity to work with amazing people. We always start the first meetings by getting to know the team on a personal level.

Getting to know the team

Galore is comprised of some of the most talented and awesome people we have ever met. We have had a blast getting to know them and spent time going dinners, relaxing together at the Turkish bath house, and hanging out at the infamous parties they throw. Prince & Jacob are the Co-Editors and Creative Directors of the magazine. Their artistic style and vision are the heartbeat of it and it shows.

“We were interested in their approach to design and development, so we met and instantly hit it off”

- Mike A.

Solutions

After a couple meetings and some brainstorming we looked at all the problems they were trying to solve. We helped them discover what they wanted and we assisted in bringing their vision into fruition. We created a roadmap and milestones of everything we were going to be working on.

Branding

They already had a logo, but it needed to be cleaned up and vectorized.

Type

Colors

Website

The foundation

When we first started on the project it lacked cohesive organization and workflow. We set Galore up with a Github account and put the site in a private repo. This way we could keep track of the changes that we were making and to keep everyone apprised.

When we build a site we are incredibly meticulous with our code. We like to pretend that whoever works on the site next will be a serial killer that get’s his rage from shitty code.

Hosting

Switching hosting providers is something we typically do not do unless it’s absolutely necessary. The most common reason to switch hosting providers is to upgrade in order to handle the influx of traffic. Our reasoning to do so on this project was the files being hosted were inaccessible by traditional methods. We found a solution to move the files and we migrated the site to MediaTemple.

“They have opinions, but allow facts and data to shape them.”

- Mike A.

Site realign

They came to us asking for a redesign, but after analyzing the site and discovering what they were actually trying to solve we decided what they needed was a realign. A realign is basically taking the existing design and cleaning it up a bit with a clear vision and some focus. Because of this we ended up completely rewriting the wordpress theme. In return the site was faster, more responsive, and more accessible.

Ecommerce

One direction Galore wanted to test out was selling items on their site. Galore’s site was using Wordpress so we were tasked to find a reasonable ecommerce solution to make it work with it. We ended up using Shopp, a plugin that makes it easy for merchants to manage their storefront. It’s also pretty flexible for developers which allows us to make custom modifications to better fit the needs of Galore. In the process we setup the SSL cert to insure secure transactions and customer data. And for the payment processing we used Stripe, a cost efficient and secure way of handling the money.

Testing environment

When working with our clients it is important for us to have open and clear communication. One of the ways we did this was by creating a testing site where we could show them the current state of the site and test out new ideas before releasing it to the public. This was of course all done with behind a private wall to ensure that only the team at Galore could view it and so it would not be picked up by a search engine.

Credits

• C.M. KennedyDesigner & Developer