Websites drawn from the trade they serve
Some of the websites and apps I’ve made.
C & E Construction and More
Tyler, Texas · Concrete, landscaping, painting, fence and gate
- The project
- A first website for a Tyler crew, built from a business card. C & E had no site, no logo file and no photos of finished work yet, so everything on it had to come from the card or be something the owner could add later.
- The idea
- Each trade is a nursery plant tag staked in a bed of soil, so four trades read as one row of stock. The edge of each page is a strip of lawn drawn blade by blade, and one mowing crew walks it at a walking pace.
Marquez Concrete
Noonday, Texas · Driveways, slabs, patios, walls and stamp work
- The project
- A rebuild for a Noonday concrete company. The old site’s estimate form had nowhere to send; the new one sends, or hands the visitor a pre-written email when it can’t.
- The idea
- Every load of concrete arrives with a printed delivery ticket, so the site is that ticket: carbonless copies, values typed in dot-matrix, an ON TIME stamp and a detail drawing for each service. The page edge is a slab in section, with a crew working across it while the mixer pours.
Lalo’s Mexican Grill & Cantina
Tyler, Texas · Mexican restaurant, known for bacon-wrapped dogos
- The project
- A rebuild for a Tyler family restaurant that moved from a downtown dogo counter to its own place on Old Bullard Rd. The home page opens on a tray of dogos being built one at a time.
- The idea
- The site is set where the kitchen shoots its photos: dark like the cantina at night, sign-painter letters, checkered paper for the dogos. All ten dogos on the printed menu are drawn from their topping lists, and an ABIERTO neon sign lights only while Lalo’s is open, in Tyler time.
Shade Customs
Georgetown, Texas · Window tint for cars, homes and storefronts
- The project
- A redesign for a Georgetown tint shop that already took bookings online. The shop’s own footage and the fifty-odd cars it has tinted now lead the site.
- The idea
- A 3M sample card: each section is a shade darker than the one above. The first picture is the shop front with one sheet of film laid across it; drag the line, pick a shade, and it reads that shade’s numbers from 3M and whether it’s legal on Texas front windows.
Go2Guy Party Bus
Austin, Texas · Party bus and shuttle rentals
- The project
- A rebuild for an Austin party-bus company. The trip form only says “request sent” once the request has really gone.
- The idea
- The LED destination sign over the windshield, made of amber dots that light column by column. “How many are coming?” fills one seat per guest and picks the smallest bus that fits.
MAC’s Graphics & Wraps
Vehicle wraps, vinyl and graphics
- The project
- A portfolio for an artist who wraps trucks and designs everything else. The work comes first, and you can dig through it by color, finish or mood, or try a color and a finish on a truck in a little wrap lab. The capture shows its preview, where every piece is a labeled sample.
- The idea
- A print shop’s bench. Each color is laid down in its own pass and has to line up, so her name and her work snap into register as the page loads. Every section is a full-bleed color with a pattern on it, a cutting mat, halftone dots or a comic starburst, and a fan of swatches from a sample book re-sorts the whole portfolio by color.
Four archives about Tyler
Tyler, Texas · Four small sites
- The project
- Tyler Bricks counts the city’s brick streets. Tyler Firsts files 165 cards, one to a card. The Rose Capital follows a peach blight into roses. Tyler, Then and Now fills in a map from 1847 to today. Each has a sources page.
- The idea
- Each has its own world and palette: a survey sheet, an index-card drawer, a botanical plate and a surveyor’s map. No stock photos.
And a few more
A directory, churches, schools, a nonprofit and a product site.
Texas Go2Guy
A directory of Texas businesses, in preview.
Kingdom Life Academy
A Christian, project-based school for grades 6–12.
Tyler, Texas
Neurodivergent Advocates of East Texas
A volunteer-run group for families of neurodivergent kids.
Tyler, Texas
Primera Iglesia Local Pentecostés
A bilingual church, in English and Spanish.
Tyler, Texas
Iglesia Maranatha
A bilingual Assemblies of God church.
Hutto, Texas
UPLCII
A fellowship of local churches, serving since 1935.
Gateway Parents
The app site for Gateway College Prep families.
Georgetown, Texas
Leggero
Pediatric wheelchairs and adaptive strollers.
Apps, too
Churches, schools, a tint shop and a kids’ game.
UPLCII
A fellowship of local churches
- The app
- The members’ app for the fellowship: events, ministries, sermons and podcasts, giving, a store, a prayer wall and a directory of churches, in English and Spanish.
- The idea
- Cream and gold, and every screen is drawn twice, in light and in dark.
Gateway
A school’s families
- The app
- Everything Gateway College Prep shares with its families, in one app: a daily brief, the school calendar, news, an optional AI helper that becomes search if you say no, and the handbook, FAQ and directory. Staff keep it current from a web console.
- The idea
- A one-way channel: no logins and no student data, only what the school chooses to publish.
Penguin Helper Islands
A kid-safe 3D game
- The app
- A 3D adventure for iPhone and iPad: make a penguin, explore four floating islands, help the penguin neighbors with small jobs and spend the coins on outfits, pets and pieces for your own house. No accounts, nothing online.
- The idea
- Made for young players: every penguin and the narrator speak aloud, and the grown-up settings sit behind a parent gate.
TintBay
Shop software for a window-tint shop
- The app
- A queue of jobs, a check-in, a quote, and a top-down car you tap, window by window, to choose the film and the shade. A pilot for Shade Customs, for iPhone and iPad.
- The idea
- Every screen answers one question: how does this employee finish the job in front of them faster?
Curbline
Coming soon
Screens are taken from each app running on sample data.
Dashboards
Car-wash chemistry, methane and wheelchairs.
Cost per car
For a car-wash chemical supplier
- The dashboard
- What a tunnel car wash spends on chemistry for every car it washes. The home page ranks each customer against its target, worst first, and lists the sites that are overdue for a visit, close to a reorder or over target, each with a button to start the visit. It works on a phone, too.
- The idea
- One number leads, cost per car, and every customer is a bar that runs from green through amber to rose as it passes its target, so the worst one is the first you see.
Methane command center
For methane monitoring and carbon credits
- The dashboard
- One console for a portfolio of oil and gas wells: a map, risk scoring, leak-detection surveys, work orders, claims, verification and a ledger of carbon-credit tokens. The home page counts what needs attention and lists the alerts.
- The idea
- Eight counters answer one question, what needs me today, and the alerts under them are colour-coded: amber for overdue, red for high risk, blue for waiting on review.
Leads, quotes and orders
For Leggero, which makes pediatric wheelchairs
- The dashboard
- The team’s side of Leggero’s dealer platform. The home page counts new leads, open orders and pending quotes, then charts where leads come from and how orders are moving. Dealers sign in to a portal of their own, where they build a chair at their own pricing and send it straight to production.
- The idea
- Black, and one red. Every bar, ring and chip is a shade of it, so the day’s work reads at a glance.
Screens are taken from each dashboard running on sample data.
Websites and apps are my hobby
I’m Ike Castillo, in Austin, Texas. By day I work in AI engineering, automation and enterprise management.
Websites and apps are what I do for fun. I like to start from the business they’re for: its trade, its tools, its paperwork, its town. Then I draw the pages and the screens.
Websites shouldn’t cost what agencies used to charge.With today’s tools they don’t have to, and I’m all for teaching anyone who wants to learn.
How can I help?
LinkedIn is the best place to find me. If you want to learn how, or want a hand with something, say hello there.
Tell me what you’re working on, or what you’d like to learn. I read every message.
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