mrossana » design

Comic book artists need better websites

mrossana — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:06:41 +0000

As I venture out onto the Internet to learn more about my favorite comic book artists, I keep coming across websites that look unprofessional, outdated, or some that are just plain terrible. (Say what you will about Rob Liefeld’s artwork, but he at least has a pretty professional looking website — pictured above.)These artists clearly have more talent in their little finger than I have in my entire body and I think that they should have a web presence that appropriately showcases their talents. This could be something as simple as James Jean’s minimalist portfolio, in which he lets the work speak for itself, or something more like Marvel or DC‘s sites, where they have the art take up the majority of the page. After the jump is a list of some of my favorite comic book artists and screenshots of their websites. Are there any that I missed?!

New Balance iPad App

mrossana — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:27:24 +0000

New Balance wanted to create an iPad app to share some of their new products with their customers by creating this simplified, interactive catalog. For more information on this project, go here!

Latin America Area Studies Concept

mrossana — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:51:48 +0000

Our product team at Cengage Learning was exploring the idea of creating a product for Latin America Area Studies. My job was to create a mockup to help the team visualize what something like that might look and feel like. I wanted to capture the flavor and essence of the Latin American culture and what I created is one of my favorite designs I have ever done!

Playskool Play Snap App

mrossana — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:44:58 +0000

I designed this Facebook application for Playskool in which their users could upload and edit photos and create Play Snaps, or fun playtime tips, to share with their friends. The UI was built completely from scratch, so I started with doing some fairly in-depth, interactive wireframes to help translate the functionality to the developers that were building the app. For more information on this project, go here!

Nerf iPhone App HUDs

mrossana — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 17:37:12 +0000

Nerf was interested in creating an iPhone app and I was approached by their agency to create some screens for this concept app. While most people are used to Nerf’s typical orange, yellow, and blue color scheme, they were interested in exploring the use of a more sleek and futuristic aesthetic to appeal to a more mature user group.

Tall Tales From a Large Man

mrossana — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:19:38 +0000

UPDATE: AIGA Detroit posted my review on their blog. Neat!

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a talk, entitled “Tall Tales From A Large Man,” given by designer and entrepreneur Aaron Draplin. Draplin is a Michigan native, but now resides in the Pacific Northwest where he runs his very successful design firm Draplin Design Co. I hate to admit it, but I was not too familiar with Mr. Draplin’s amazing catalog of work until my buddy Nate clued me in. After watching this video and browsing through his portfolio, I knew this talk was something I could not miss.

The event was held at 1515 Broadway in Detroit and the setting was quite intimate (and a bit swampy). There was a little more than 100 people in attendance, including 17 members of the Draplin family! Before Aaron took the mic, he had his father come to the stage and tell some jokes. At this point, I knew we were in for something great. Aaron then loaded up his beautifully-designed (of course!) PDF presentation on the projector and he shared many interesting stories, discussed his work, and gave some great advice.

The two messages that really struck a chord with me were these: 1) Keep things simple. and 2) Do cool projects with your friends. I have no shortage of cool friend projects in my life, so I’m all set there, but I could not help but focus in on his simplicity message. He shared many photographs of his workspace where he had collected and organized many old samples of packaging and other objects that he had collected from yard sales and vintage shops across America. While digging through old stuff does not sound like my typical design process, one has to appreciate that simplicity that you find in old packaging designs and advertisements and how you can use those to inspire you. Draplin has found a way to take the simplicity of the past and give it a creative, very modern edge in his designs, which would explain the great success he has had with Draplin Design Co. I learned a lot during the 90 minutes he spoke, and look forward to following Mr. Draplin’s work more closely in the future.

Thanks to AIGA Detroit and Team Detroit for putting on the event! And check out this sweet poster that he was selling at the show.

Use the Google Font Directory to make the web beautiful

mrossana — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:36:09 +0000

Earlier this year, Google introduced the Google Font Directory, which offers users a selection of open source fonts to use online as web-friendly fonts. I finally set aside some time to find out more about it… only to realize that it takes about 5 minutes to integrate the fonts into your site! I used the Reenie Beanie font on some of the headers throughout my site. I initially was using it on more text, but quickly realized that getting too crazy with some of these fonts could result in very unreadable text. So, while this new free resource is very cool, best usability practices should still be kept in mind when designing your site!

Has anyone seen any other websites integrating these fonts?

Resources:

Where to download the Google fonts to use in Photoshop comps

Online wireframing tools are my new favorite

mrossana — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:07:52 +0000

After nailing down the scope and requirements of a project, I always start my designs with a wireframe of the homepage. In the past, this usually started with some dry erase markers on a whiteboard and then I would recreate those drawings using Photoshop. This is not always the fastest and most efficient way to work. My friend @schusterbauer, however, recently introduced me to Mockingbird, an online wireframing application, and it has completely changed the way I work.

Mockingbird’s simple UI and library of web elements makes it easy to rapidly mock up your designs and outline the basic functionality of the site or application. The user’s ability to quickly update the mock ups make it an ideal tool for brainstorming and “sharing” your projects is a great way to collaborate and get feedback from clients. I would highly recommend using this tool to anyone!

Other wireframing tools worth checking out are Hot Gloo and Balsamiq. Are there any others worth checking out?

Grzimek’s Animal Life

mrossana — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:54:13 +0000

Grzimek’s (pronounced “chi-mix”) Animal Life was the first project I worked on at Gale/Cengage Learning. We took an existing animal encyclopedia and turned in to a website. I had a lot of freedom with this design and was really pleased with how the header turned out. I was also responsible for creating the HTML/CSS for the website templates.

G.I. Joe Special Mission Game

mrossana — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 19:29:58 +0000

Hasbro launched a new line of toys and this game to coincide with the release of the live-action G.I. Joe movie. I worked on pretty much all the screens in the game and we did G.I. Joe and Cobra versions to match up with the two different story lines. What a great project! G.I. Joes were one of my favorite toys when I was a kid (it was hard for me to not just put Snake Eyes on every screen). Definitely the coolest project I’ve art directed for Kunoichi. For more information on this project, go here!