About

SSDD stands for the four major phases of a project. Strategy. Solution. Development. Delivery.

SSDD Web Design creates attractive, clean designs tailored to the specific needs of small businesses and organizations. Even in Helena there are plenty of ISPs or design shops that can dump your text and images into prefab, cookie-cutter templates. That’s not how we work; each project starts from scratch.

We keep up with the latest tools and techniques in the industry, delivering…

These are not just buzzwords. We really believe in these concepts. Shoot us an e-mail to schedule your free initial consultation.

Process

Simple is good, and our name is our process. That process, at a high level, is as follows:

  • Strategy
    We start out discussing and exploring just exactly what you want your website to accomplish. Who does it serve? What are its goals?
  • Solution
    Singular. The decisions are made. The design is finalized. The prototype is approved.
  • Development
    At this time the ground is broken and construction begins. The prototype is turned into a template, which is then cloned into the overall site structure, which is then filled up with your content.
  • Delivery
    More than just handing over the keys, this is a period of testing and review. Does the site meet your expectations? Are there any final tweaks? How will it be maintained?

Graphic Design

SSDD Web Design also does graphic design (logos, posters, fliers, brochures, etc.), whether separately or as part of a web design effort. We can freshen up your existing logo for your web site or create an identity from scratch.

Staff

John Bedard, Founder

With a background and degree in graphic design (B.F.A., Colorado State University, ‘94) John transitioned to web design in the mid-90’s. Starting out with text editors like Windows Notepad, he learned to hand-code sites for Netscape “back in the day.” Even now he still prefers to work with the code and markup directly, eschewing so-called WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver or Frontpage.

Fast-forward to today, John has been a web designer/developer for two Fortune 500 companies, having worked on dozens of sites for state government (e.g., a former version of the State of Montana web site, called “Discovering Montana,” et al) and the private sector (e.g., a former version of St. Peter’s Hospital), managing most of his projects from proposal to delivery and in many cases training.

Early in 2006, due to changing responsibilities with his primary employer, he negotiated with management and came to an agreement about doing freelance design. In November of that year he started SSDD Web Design.

John can also be found online at the following locations:

Other Resources

Working in the Helena IT community since early 1998, we have access to other technical resources that can be brought to bear depending on the needs of each project.

Techie Bits

Hosting

This web site is hosted with Dreamhost.com, runs on WordPress which in turn runs on PHP and MySQL. Modifications to the code were and are carried out almost exclusively in Aptana.

SSDD Web Design uses Blinksale.com for invoicing and TaDaList for task tracking (clients can have access to their respective project task list by request).

WordPress Template and Plugins

In building this site we started with SG/Dark 1.0 theme designed by the undersigned. Initially we thought it had the basic structure we were looking for, but we ended up changing so much it’s debatable whether or not we should give them credit. Currently the following custom WordPress plugins are being used: WP-ContactForm by Ryan Duff, Widon’t by Shaun Inman and reCAPTCHA by Ben Maurer & Mike Crawford.