About Us

Welcome! My name is Jesse Zolkowski and I am a wood and metal worker. Originally, I am from the great state of Wisconsin, but the Navy has relocated me to the equally great state of Texas. My focus is creating custom, functional, and high-quality pieces of furniture and decor. I venture out of those areas as needed and/or requested.

I pride myself in the quality of the work, as there are too many things in this world that are manufactured poorly. My passion is to work with my hands and bring creations to life in a traditional manner, but fuse it with modern technology.

What this site is about.

1* The intent of the website is to provide contact information, a portfolio of previous work, and prices for ordering of the workshop. This will possibly link to an Etsy/Amazon account for purchase, but would be transferred to a secure transaction tool, if the online portion of the business was successful. Removing any cost for consignment or comission would be the end goal of this. The portfolio portion will allow for connection to other craftsman, and provide another route for revenue through the purchase of project plans. The target audience for the site would be anyone who owns a living space and/or is searching for a piece of furniture or decor for a custom gift.

All of this played heavily into to creation of the website. As I went through the weeks, I ensured to keep the goals and intent of the website behind all steps in its creation. The initial site planning document that we created in Milestone One was the key to this. Everything from the logo at the top of the page and the navigation ribbon underneath it was laid out perfectly; Milestone 2 and 3 only clarified and solified these decisions.

2* The aesthetic decisions on the website are meant to embody the material that the workshop deals with -- earthy, natural, and simple. The color pallete selected was filled with cool, metallic colors while contrast colors were implemented to draw the users attention to certain sections of the web page. Again, this was done to focus the users attention on the products and the rest would be for the functional areas of the website. The font selected was Times New Roman. The goal was to have a clean look, but also have a more rustic, earthy feel to fit the theme of the rest of the website. The information on the page followed with a Sans-type font to follow the over-arching theme of not taking away from the other content on the page.

The index/cover page is the only page that was designed differently. The purpose of the page was set the stage of the overall theme of the website. The rest of the pages were created the way they were to ensure ease of Navigation in a uniform fashion to remove any possibility of "getting lost" on the website. Additionally, the facilitate the rationale even further, there was another navigation bar added to the bottom with links to external sites affiliated with the business. Each page is then similar for a professional feel, yet succinct in its purpose as to not lose interest in the site.

3* The future plans for this site is to continue filling it out with projects that I've completed. As I do this, the color scheme and pictures may change, as I may be able to personalize it to just my content. As I become better at HTML and CSS, the possibilities for the website are endless and it will only continue to become more of a polished and finished product to rival any other website in the same realm -- capturing the craft and selling the byproduct.

Had I more time with the site and more resources, Java would definitely be the next step to this site. Addition of a search feature and putting into function the "Contact" page just to name a few areas where this would be implemented. Additionally, I do not have a lot of photograpy of the projects, nor a true "Studio" to do this in. That would allow for a more professional batch of pictures to be used. As the website is updated, the links to the external pages will be added, as these other outlets are not created, yet. As stated, more professional pictures as well as the addition of pictures taken by me to the background. Lastly (and perhaps most importantly), a functional shop and checkout would be the pinnacle for the functionality of this website.