“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
UI Design
PowerDMS UI Overhaul (Look & Feel)
These screenshots show the end result of a complete UI overhaul of the PowerDMS application. The UI had not been freshened up in 7 years, so was looking dated compared to other SaaS applications.
This project was challenging because we could not touch the html markup, only css. We tested various design approaches, took the elements that tested well and then assembled a UI that managed to look new but didn’t alienate established users. The design approach also incorporated aesthetics as a way to compensate for particular areas where usability was less than stellar.
Redlight Redlight Beer Parlour
Brent Hernandez and Richard Sherfey are longtime friends and I have been a patron of their bar ever since their first location on New England Ave (2005). As they prepared to celebrate their 10-year anniversary, they asked their homie to redesign their existing site..
Their needs were pretty basic and the one big requirement they asked for was the ability to update the draft, bottled beer and wine menus. I set them up with a WordPress CMS solution in order to avoid reinventing the wheel and then worked with a front end developer to customize the UI to match their branding.
Check out their site and if you’re in ever in Orlando, stop by!
Vintage Ride Finder
This is a sample project I created when I taught a UX Course at Full Sail University. The course was a project class in the Web Design and Development Degree that focused on teaching students a UX process they could apply to their final project class later on.
The project asked students to define a search application and personas, create a task flow diagram to illustrate the steps of the proposed interactions, and perform a Heuristics evaluation of a similar service. Students also had to define a testing plan they would use to vet out their solution.
Students had a month to put this all together. In an effort to offer guidance, I provided an example of a project that contained all required deliverables.
Mobius Information Center
A throwback to 2001! This was one of the first UIs I ever created. For those of you not familiar with this, consider yourself extremely lucky as it was a tedious and labor-intensive process compared to CSS layouts.
Nothing fancy about this one, just your basic internal portal the company used to communicate to its employees. It was designed to integrate into the VDR Contentuity platform, which was an early enterprise CMS (think along the lines of an early Wordpress). I used to work for their professional services group and implemented these kinds of solutions for different clients. Working with this group, I was lucky enough to travel to different places across the world (Europe, Korea, Australia). I like to keep this one around as a reminder of where I came from and how far I’ve progressed in my career. :)
Visual & Graphic Design
PowerDMS New User Guides (On-boarding)
This was a joint effort with the Customer Success Team and the Demand Generation Team at PowerDMS. This user guide is given to all new customers once they start their on-boarding process. It’s meant to give new customers an idea of what it will look like and what will be covered. Think of it like a course syllabus is you will.
My contributions to this project where primarily in the area of instructional design and creative direction. The main goal was to ensure the design team adhered to PowerDMS Brand standards to ensure consistency between this and other company touchpoints.
Identity Design: Emerald Travel
Logo and Business Card design for Emerald Travel, a Washington DC based travel agency. This agency works with numerous corporate clients and conducts business on a global scale. After many years of using their standard logo, the principles of the company wanted a fresh and updated look. They wanted to go with a cleaner logo and typography treatment, more in line with some of their strategic partners.
They wanted an element that reflected the name of the company on an instinctual level yet wanted to avoid using cliched iconography in order to reinforce the name, In order to address this, I used a shade of green that reflected the name of the business and instead using an icon to further reinforce the name of the business, I chose instead to use a flat map of the globe to give it that visual element while reflecting the global nature of their business.
Flyer Design: Orlando Bicycle Weekend | Macaframa Premiere
One of the things that is surprising to folks who live outside of Florida is the strength of the cycling scene there, especially in Orlando. The downtown and surrounding areas of the major urban areas tend to be dense and congested so cycling is the preferred mode of transportation for many. Didn’t matter what you rode, fixie, bmx, cruiser, mountain or road bike, you were part of the tribe. Events such as Critical Mass and Bicycle Film Festival in Orlando were attended heavily by many from the 407 cycling community.
These flyers are examples of some print collateral I did for friends of mine that hosted these bicycle related events. I did a few of them during the course of the years and really enjoyed it as it gave me a creative visual design outlet. One of the things I always tried to capture in the look and feel of the collateral was the experience of living / riding in Orlando.
Flyer Design: Torque / Jungala
From ‘98 to ‘06 I did a series of promotional flyers for an event production company named Jungala. They specialized in hosting drum-n-bass and dubstep nights and have been hosting events since 1997. When they started their night Torque, they asked me to do their first flyer. They got so many compliments on it, they asked me to do the next one as well. Next thing you know, I had designed event flyers for them for almost 8 years. Being the collector that I am, I have a portfolio case of every single one of the flyers I designed for them.
One of the things I loved about doing this work is how I unintentionally set a standard for flyer design back then. A lot of the party flyers you saw back then were crazy rave looking things that were unreadable. I was always inspired by the Swiss design style so in order to stand out from all the noise, I incorporated strong visual images with clean sans serif typography. It was a distinct look for the time and helped their flyers stand out. As the years went on, it slowly became the style many tried to emulate.