Gard’s new website: Three invaluable lessons we (re-)learned from being our own client
Your website is your digital front door, and every few years it needs a new look – not only to refresh the design but to ensure it’s as welcoming, relevant and…
![Gard leadership selecting projects for the website on a whiteboard with post-its.](https://gardcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Gard-Leadership_at-whiteboard_sq_@2x.jpg)
Employee Spotlight: Arthur Parker
If you’re at all familiar with the Portland music scene, you probably know that every December, the Alberta Rose Theatre comes to life with the sights of a talented troupe of…
![Arthur Parker, lead web developer at Gard Communications, on a hike.](https://gardcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/aparker-1-550x550.jpg)
Gard’s work gets a little year-end recognition
As 2022 winds to a close, we’re taking a quick minute to spotlight just a couple more of our projects that caught the industry’s eye this year. w3 Awards for websites…
![Video still of a smiling girl in an Oregon forest, taken from a video Gard produced for OFRI.](https://gardcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Screen-Shot-2022-12-06-at-1.22.04-PM-2-550x550.png)
Gard scores in the 2022 Summit International Awards
Here at Gard, one of our guiding tenets has always been, “Concentrate on the work and the rest will follow.” This past year, we concentrated on quite a bit of work,…
![Cover of OBRC's 2021 Annual Report.](https://gardcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-22-at-10.23.47-AM-1-550x550.png)
Web design usability mistakes
What makes a good website? Is it attractive design? Lots of relevant content? Mobile-friendliness? It’s all of the above — but only if it’s underpinned with excellent usability. By Julia Stoops.…
![A man in a kitchen searching in vain for a utensil, symbolizing the frustration a website user feels on a website full of usability mistakes.](https://gardcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/searching-in-kitchen-by-kipras-streimikis-550x550.jpg)
Healing the whole person: The first tribal opioid treatment program in Oregon
Addiction impacts every aspect of a person’s life: their family, work and spirit. To address the impact of opioid addiction on their members and the community as a whole, the Confederated…
![Purple Camas flower, a symbol of the Great Circle Recovery clinic.](https://gardcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CTGR_0_Camas_flower_Great_Circle_Recovery-550x550.jpg)
Meet Gard’s newest hires!
We’ve been busy here at Gard in recent months – so much so that we’ve added some new faces to our team. You can read a little about them here.
![Informal portrait of Meaghan Burns with her dog.](https://gardcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Image-from-iOS-scaled-1-550x550.jpg)
Farewell to Flash
Flash faded away as the web evolved to be accessible and responsive — but with Flash gone, what has been lost?
![Frame from a Flash animation by Julia Stoops, depicting a line-drawn androgynous figure emptying the pockets of their jacket.](https://gardcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/empty_pockets_julia_stoops-550x550.jpg)
Is it time to jump on the AVIF bandwagon?
We’ve started using a WordPress plugin to convert our website images to the faster-loading WebP format. But the even faster AVIF format is coming.
![The logos of the WebP and AVIF image formats.](https://gardcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/webp_av1-logos.jpg)
Employee Spotlight: Julia Stoops, user experience designer and director of Web and Digital
What do painting, philosophy, teaching and fiction writing have to do with user experience design? Quite a bit, apparently, when it all underpins website strategy and design.
![Julia Stoops, Director of web and digital at Gard Communications.](https://gardcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Julia_Stoops_february_2020-550x550.jpg)