Needmore Designs for J&R Group

J&R Group owns and operates a number of properties in the Portland area. They came to us to create a website with a youthful and visually interesting approach.

The homepage layout was a fun design task, one that required us to find a balance between the grandeur and large-scale beauty of the J&R Group’s properties and the finer details that make their interiors and settings unique. It became important for us to see the connection between the way a staircase crosses in front of a wooden wall and the way the Tanasbourne building’s roofline stretches into the sky and to highlight those similarities.

Intent on allowing those details to stand on their own against a stark background, we kept navigation to the individual projects hidden on initial view, only showing links to the individual properties when someone mouses over them.

We carried this idea to the logo as well, which slides up when moused over to reveal the J&R Group’s name. These “tricks” are achieved using various CSS and HTML techniques, both old and more cutting edge. The property titles that fades in on mouseover and the smooth slide of the logo combine old design techniques with the contemporary abilities of the web.

While these effects in the past would likely have been achieved using javascript, we only used HTML and CSS. Tip of the hat to Dan, our newest team member, for going the extra mile here. HTML5’s new ability to wrap multiple block-level elements (images and headings, in this instance) within a single anchor link granted us more styling flexibility with the property navigation. In newer browsers, CSS3’s opacity and transition properties allow for a smoothness to those fading backgrounds and to the logo’s movements.

The fallback in older browsers (you know who we mean) is still completely usable and doesn’t impact the look of the page—we just lose the smoothness of those animations, as they now happen immediately rather than over a set period of time. It’s a website everyone can enjoy, and we think most folks will love.

Thanks for reading about the latest Needmore website. We look forward to more exciting work to come out of our relationship with J&R Group in the future.

Raymond Brigleb

Creative Director, dreamer, partner, father, musician, photographer. Has been known to ride the rails. Pulls one heck of a shot.