Design Highlights
I work in several areas of design, I mainly deal with interactive design, including web design, or product design. I like to include my illustration or comic skills in my design work wherever possible especially on webpages and other interactive designs. I have a wide range of designs, physicals or digital, and I enjoy the process of work that goes into the complete project, whether it is programming for a webpage or preparing screens for a screenprinted t-shirt design. Overall, I enjoy designs at allow the user to see and interact with things in a different way, such as my light-up bag design for the American Museum of Natural History Project or my controller-motif fashion line.
Nighthawk Diner
A functional webpage for a fictional restaurant based on a 1920′s speakeasy theme called “The Nighthawk Diner” with loading bar, audio, animation, and sliding menus. I illustrated it in Photoshop and animated it in Adobe Flash CS3 using Actionscript for the menus. The fully functioning webpage can be viewed by clicking here.
Toy Design
I did toy design for some product lines at an award-winning toy company which include Printies, printable stuffed animals that children design on the computer, and Tag ‘Ems, accessories that children can wear on shoes, headphones or hoodies. The direction for both were cute and cool characters that would appeal to young girls. These designs were sketched out first for concept and then further solidified in Adobe Illustrator.
2P Love
One of the common motifs in my autobiographical webcomic, The Glass Urchin, relates to love through cooperative video game play. I created several designs and supplementary products to promote the idea of “2P Love” (two-player love) online and at conventions. These products ranged from T-Shirts, greeting cards, and jewelry, and encompassed a number of different programs and processes.
Product for The American Museum of Natural History
In a graphic design course I took with Professor Skip Sorvino at The School of Visual Arts, we were challenged to create a new and innovative product for the American Museum of Natural History in New York that exemplifies its mission statement. I choose the imagery of the deep sea anglerfish and combined it with an interactive women’s purse. I illustrated the fish in Photoshop and put together a physical working model of the bag with various materials. When the handles are clasped together as you would normally hold it, they connect the wires and the fish’s lamp lights up.
The Center for Urban Policy Research
During my work study time at Rutgers University while I was an undergrad student, I worked partially as the primary webmaster and web designer for the University’s Center for Urban Policy Research. I coded pages using HTML, CSS, and PHP and I also used Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Flash often during the work process. I primarily helped code and update the websites for CUPR itself, R/ECON, and RCOPC. These websites were fully intended to be functional and educational, and we updated constantly with the Center’s latest data. See the gallery below for some information on the pages and designs I worked on.
