The
Fairmont Group LLC, is a boutique investment banking firm headed
by its financial advisor/CEO, Jack W. Helm in Winchester, Virginia. The firm offers mergers and
acquisitions advisory servcies, divestiture, pre-sale and restructuring
services, competitive capital sourcing, private placements and underwriting
advice.
The
Fairmont Group has a decidedy international focus and maintains corporate
relationships with the independent investment banking firm of Hock &
Co. in Frankfurt, Germany, as well as Folgat AG, also located in Frankfurt,
focusing on direct investment opportunities in the Ukraine. Mr. Helm
has over 20 years of corporate finance experience including experience
in both German and European multinational markets.
About the Design:
This
website was the first website I coded primarily with CSS and div tags rather than tables. It also uses a vertical left navigation
with a fly-out submenu under the Services link which was also the first fly-out menu I had coded. The colors chosen were
black, gray, and blue, to give the site a subtle, corporate business look. Header images found at the top
of each page were created with photos of foreign currencies and other images showing business
people, to enhance the international investment banking theme of the site. The website has only six pages, but provides extensive information
about the services provided by the firm.
Of
question was whether or not to inlcude a page background color, or to
leave the background all white, as well as to include borders around
the content sections. With the white background the website seemed to have a lack of a visible structure.
The client preferred to have a minimalist look without too much structure,
but eventually a gray background color was added to each page. This
sets off the rest of the site colors nicely, and allows the content
sections to stand out more. Recently, I have added some additional borders and color to the site and the navigation menu, to make the visual structure stand out even more. You can view the original site, at my second link above.
The
present site design has been altered by the client, and features an animated header, with a wider page format, as well as a more commercial presentation. However, the
photo headers and images were reused, and the content of the
site remains the same on the new site.
Results:
This website reflected a new attempt at design without tables, using CSS. It was not a complicated site except for the navigation; which, while it works was not the best example of a vertical fly-out menu, as it is hard to distinguish the primary from the secondary menus, without a different color background (an element that I was not able to incorporate into the coding). For this reason it was hard to make the veritcal menu stand out visually from the rest of the page, and to also create more space between the links, so that they had more height and a wider frame between the links.
Some of the more positive features of the site are the image headers which lent it some sophistication and creativity in appearance, as well as the text and link colors, and the organization of content on each page. There are also secondary navigation menus found in the footer of each page, and within the content of some of the main pages of the site, in addition to the fly-out menu. If I were redesigning this site, I would probably try to use a horizontal drop-down CSS menu instead of a vertical one, and look for a different style JavaScript/CSS menu, as well.
