So I stumbled across something cool on my computer. About 2 years ago during design class I started futzing about with a scanner, and childishly scanning my face at ridiculous DPIs. And then messing around with the result in Photoshop. One thing led to another and soon I had a ton of friends in class taking their scans and printing posters of them. It was probably my first design ‘collection’…if you’d like to call it that.
Anyway I ran into those files while spring cleaning my harddrive and wanted to show you guys. Here’s my two favorite, but click the small one to see them all.
This is always something that bugged me. Regardless of what you think of Youtube, it’s the most widely used video sharing site and it’s here to stay. I personally like other video sites for their nicer visual player, but many people enjoy Youtube’s. I personally think it’s a little bulky, but it is easy to use. However, the design leaves something to be desired, so I tried my hand at updating it.
I kept the same size and overall look. I merely updated it to be more consistent, cleaner and crisper. It provides a nicer overall design that most people won’t find agitating to have within their clear websites. Most notable are the toned-down background and simpler slider. Here is a side-by-side comparison, with my updated bar on top:
This could be accomplished by Youtube easily with some small updates to their glyphs. A little bit goes a long way.
This is a simple portfolio website I did for Yamit Dardashtian, a graphic designer from NY. She makes lovely illustrations for a variety of mediums, usually book covers. She wanted something extremely simple and small, yet able to show her entire portfolio. I used a wonderful lightbox script called Fancybox and the results are fantastic.
You can view Yamit’s portfolio here.
The Sixty One is a digg-like music website, with a small twist: It plays like an adventure game. You level up and rack up points by bumping (digging) tracks, as well as everything else you can do on the site. It keeps you interacted while you learn some great new music. It’s a pretty nice concept, and actually one I thought of awhile ago (I was going to call it Atomic Radio…guess they beat me to it). Also when you are playing a song, it doesn’t shut off if you navigate elsewhere on the site, which is pretty awesome.
I had heard about the site almost a year ago when it was too new to the scene, and quickly discovered that I found the site unusable. My main problem with the site is the interface and usability. It’s horrendous. Navigating the site and design just hurts my eyes, and nothing grabs my attention properly, and I find it hard to find what I want to click on. The colors are bad, the typography too heavy…and overall its just plain poor design. Granted, the whole site is only run by 2 guys, so I can’t blame them too heavily if they aren’t designers. But the design itself ruined what should have been a fun, engaging experience.
A few of my friends have discovered the site and it’s gaining in popularity, so I decided to check it out again. Since that first time I discovered the site, they had made 0 changes. Probably a lot of backend technical advances, but not design. So, because I needed some practice, I redesigned The Sixty One. I kept true to the colors and general layout, but added enough interface features to completely differentiate between my design and theirs. The new navigation is probably the most useful aspect here, as theirs just didn’t make any sense. Mine slides open sub-navigation instead of splitting it into two lines. Makes a big difference. Oh, and I came up with an idea for a logo, as they currently don’t have one.
I will possibly contact theSixtyOne and see what they say. I like to do a lot of mockup and redesigns for practice, so if you like my style, contact me.
Buy or Don’t Buy is an internet blog run by a few friends of mine. It’s an opinion-based blog, with a strong focus on society, trends, gossip, and the media. Basically they talk about what they love and what they hate, but it makes for fun discussions.
They’ve recently had their official “launch” this past weekend, and to celebrate I redesigned the whole site. The navigation and usability is much easier now with added categories bar and many other features. It’s a Wordpress blog (as well as this blog) and the more I work on it the more comfortable I am with Wordpress. They are so easy to customize!
If you have need for a blog, I love doing them, so get in touch if you do.
PHP is an extremely popular scripting language used mostly in Web Development because it can be embedded within HTML. It is mostly database driven and works extensively with MySQL. If you follow the link, however, you will notice that the website and community look like they still live in the 90’s.
Well in this day and age scripting languages are becoming more advanced, and so have their marketing. My prime example is Ruby on Rails. Fairly new, but more importantly it looks fresh and new. Another example is Python which has at least a more modern logo.
This new identity pitch keeps the same feel as the old with just the letters php, and removing the beveled oval in place of beveled text. Also an updated, fresher color scheme.
This is my attempt at (finally) bringing the PHP identity into the 21st century. I will be contacting the PHP Group about it.
I had a few ideas for starting my own clothing company (like everybody else). I would also like to venture it into some industrial design. For now, here’s a logo I mocked up to get me started. More info on that to come. Game - take a guess where the name comes from.
Logo for my music moniker INVASION. More info on that to come.
Collection of older logos I have made.
