Environmental website needs crisp, clean design (+extra work?)

Edge Environment

I am an internet marketer and web developer. My latest project requires more visual flare than I am personally capable of so I am looking for a talented designer to give the site the professional touch. If things go well then I will look to use a graphic designer on all future projects.

My clients are Edge Environment: an environmental research, consultancy and education business focussing on the construction industry.

Their clients include well known brands, manufacturing companies and government organisations. We need a professional design that reflects the status of their organisation and clients.

They need a design for their landing page. It should be a crisp and professional, with a focus on clarity and readability. The site should look modern without being overly fancy.

It would be nice to see some environmental imagery reflected in the design but I think it should be subtle. They certainly wouldn't want anything cartoony or garish.

We would like the design provided in a layered psd or png. Fonts, images, etc will need to be included.

1

I have attached a template for how the the content of the new site should be laid out. Feel free to adjust the scale of the various elements but the basic layout of the content should not change.

Please ensure that the services and their descriptive text are fully visible on a 1024x768 display in IE, without scrolling. This means they must be displayed within the top 600px of the page (approximately).

The exception to this is the navigation area, including the logo, which you may place as you feel appropriate. The logo itself should not change in terms of colour, font etc but you may alter the scale and the position of the sphere icon in relation to the text should you wish. The phone number should remain in the rop right hand corner.

The template should not influence you in terms of colour or style - it is purely intended to provide place holders for the different content we want on the page.

Some of the items on the navigational menu will feature drop down menus. Please provide an example of how the drop down items will appear in the context of your design.

The template represents the central 'content' area of the website. The content area should not excede a width of 950px. Your design should present the content area in the context of a scalable background (even if the background you choose is plain white).

Please select appropriate images where indicated.

http://www.edgeenvironment.com.au

The following sites are representative of the kind of aesthetic style we are aiming for.

http://www.aecom.com/What
http://www.landor.com/index.cfm?do=landor.home
http://www.accenture.com/us-en/Pages/index.aspx
http://www.arup.com/

Please note that some of these sites make heavy use of flash animations or javascript to make the page more dynamic - this kind of thing would not be their style.