A visionary approach to understanding and building violins

Steve Rossow, Steve Sirr, M.D., and John Waddle

Steve Rossow, Steve Sirr, M.D., and John Waddle

 A new Dakota Street Design website, Trio Violin Project, has just launched (www.trioviolinproject.com). Dr. Steve Sirr, M.D., is a radiologist and violinist. In 1988 he had a lull in the work day and ran his violin through a CT X-ray machine, revealing an interior view of the instrument he had never imagined. He took the scans to his friend luthier John Waddle who found them equally fascinating.

Fast forward 15 years or so and the two of them connected with luthier Steve Rossow, who designed a system for carving out violin parts that exactly replicate the scans using a CNC machine. Using scans of a 1704 Stradivarius (the "Betts," now in the collection of the Library of Congress) they have successfully re-created replicas of the instrument which are not only fine works of art, but beautiful instruments in their own right.

Read more about Dr. Sirr, his colleagues and this project at: Trio Violin Project

emily savage • rolfing® : beautiful, bilingual, responsive

Emily Savage Rolfing

Emily's a very inspiring young woman who has invested a great deal of time and energy in becoming qualified as a Rolfer® (see emilysavage.com if you don't happen to know what that is). 

Her new website is especially appealing because of its simplicity, muted color choices, and exceptional photography - all original photos from Emily's own travels around the globe. The site is built on a Squarespace template and offers a large image on each page which gradually vanishes as you scroll down - a lovely effect.

Because she is fully bilingual in English and Spanish, Emily wanted her site to be equally available to users of both languages. We used a couple of simple menu choices to make her site flow smoothly between the languages. The home page offers 3 choices: home - english - espanol, with drop down menus to the navigation for each section. We added a toggle just above the footer to switch between languages, too.

One more item of note: Emily is of the generation that tends to view the web entirely from phones, in her case, an iPhone. Having a site that features responsive design is essential to her ability to communicate with her peers.