What we do
We design, and we build, both websites and web applications.
Over the past two decades, that’s meant working across a wide range of projects, from brand identities and print collateral to microsites, marketing sites, and complex web applications. Every engagement is a little different, and we like it that way. Some clients come to us with a clear vision that just needs the right hands to execute it. Others come with a problem and need help figuring out what to build in the first place. We’re comfortable in both places.
Good design doesn’t live in one medium. The same thinking that goes into a logo or a print piece informs how we approach a web experience, and vice versa. After hundreds of projects, what we’ve learned is that the details matter, the process matters, and so does working with people you actually trust.
The People
Michael Lee
Founder
Mike’s been crafting digital experiences since 2002.
The design/development business sort of happened by accident. Formal education and training is from UC Davis, with a degree in Neurobiology, and a minor in Philosophy. The affinity for web design/development happened amidst course studies. After taking up photography in college, and eventually selling a few prints, it seemed prudent to build a website to showcase photos to the larger world wide web audience.
Since then it’s been years of academic-style training and appreciation of web standards, minimalist principles, typography, technology, and a few coding languages. Designing interfaces and developing brand experiences for people is a great gig indeed.
Amanda Lee
Marketing & Analytics Boss
Amanda is originally from a small town in Wyoming that nobody’s ever heard of.
Since she watched that small town grow even smaller in her rear-view mirror, she’s traveled to more than 100 cities in 10 different countries (she actually counted once). She’s now happy to hang her hat in San Francisco, a city everybody’s heard of.
Her background in marketing, PR, communications and behavioral sciences has given her a well-rounded marketing perspective, complemented by a strong creative bent. Along with developing and executing content marketing campaigns across multiple channels, she loves a good SEO puzzle to solve and knows way more about Google Analytics than most people would ever want to. She’s also a portrait, product and lifestyle photographer, and her work has appeared in many online and print publications.
When she’s not working, she’s usually out exploring the city with her dog or cooking up some new, experimental dish in the kitchen for Mike Lee to test out.
Paul Au
Design and Developer Consultant
Paul grew up in Sacramento, then got the heck out for college. Enter, UC Santa Barbara.
After some exploration in chemical engineering, for which he felt, ‘yeah, not so much’, he migrated to UC Davis and landed in biology. Paul’s work life has ranged from… all sorts of stuff. It fits with his creative, exploratory nature. He’s made coffee, crepes, played in a garage-rock band, and has spent a few years in anesthesia research at UCSF. In the end, it’s made him a people-person.
These days he navigates around Photoshop with ease, dives into HTML like nobody’s business, and helps to ensure Focus97 projects (and hence the web in general) stays clean and usable. He also happens to be an awesome cook and a fantastic musician. A constant search for novel dishes and the desire to make music means creative is at his core, and it brings a different style of thinking to the table. Not to mention good eats.
Motto
Age quod agis
\ˈä-ge-ˌkwȯd-ˈä-ˌgis\
LATIN: “Whatever you do, do well.”
Fine-art Prints
If you are interested in ordering a print, just let us know the image and desired size in the form below.
Prices range from $200-$400, depending on size and paper type. Generally sizes start large – 12×18 or 16×24 – to showcase detail, with the most commonly printed size of 20×30. The images themselves are captured with Canon’s pinnacle system – the EOS 1Dx. This means tremendous detail, even when printed poster size.
Prints will be signed and shipped direct to you.