Some projects for SBD while I was still there.
Here I'll add some images and information about some projects I worked on while at SBD.
Aside from working with their webpage, optimization and programming I was part of several other projects that varied in difficulty and proved challenging either because of the time they needed to be completed on or due to some complexity that added to the usually short time frame made them rather difficult.
Political promotional material concepts and design:
This is one of many projects that required me to work on political campaign graphic design. The challenge here mainly being that I'm a completely apolitical person and it tends to go against my nature to actually help such efforts. My professionalism and my conscience were constantly at odds on these projects because as a professional I like to make quality products that take the message and gets it to the people however as a person I am completely against political campaigns and how they are aimed at manipulating the ideals and minds of people for the benefit of a specific group. Which in turn gets me pleased at the quality of the work I made and displeased at the use its being given. I have very strong ideals of how things are, should be and I can see past the shrouds placed in by people with my own skills who are also payd to create images that display a "controlled" image of reality.
During this period I made several products which include but are not limited to:
Program user interface and design:
Services Application
This was a particularly challenging thing to work on. It had many "moving parts" to apply design to and to make work. I even went as far as to directly program some of the applications functionality myself along with the programmer whom I worked with hand in hand to make sure every part looked as good as it needed to and kept a level of consistency and efficiency for the client and users not to get lost in the many depths of the program application itself. Achieving this was very challenging while keeping aesthetic values in check because the time frame and the complexity of a completely new product were keeping tensions rather high. Everyone had to take part in one way or another on this product and the end result is a combination of the efforts, ideas and coordination from all the team members involved.
A similar product was developed later which required some adaptations as well. Fortunately the experience from the original product helped speed up the development cycle.
Skills used during this product development:
Progressive development and design:
Here I'll include some projects that were a bit too advanced for the time they were considered. These projects usually require higher amounts of research and development time for the concept to be finalized.
Augmented Reality:
I had the opportunity to research and play around with augmented reality as a marketing, educational and informative media. This allows for a simple product like a bottle of water, a postcard, a poster or even a sticker to be able to expand upon itself and the information it provides by adding digital elements to the physical world. You could say I was able to work with interactive enhancements to the real world that are rendered in the digital world. As abstract a concept as this is, its also a very real and useful tool. Some museums, advertisement agencies and even educational institutions are testing, implementing, and innovating on this field. This is what I call experience that will be really useful for the recent future that I wish most designers got a chance to be able to work with.
Game Application:
Project Freefall Bird:
Yes it came to be that as a special project I managed to develop my own game under the SBD name. The process took me a while to get the kinks out but the end result was a fully functional game app that you can download for free from the Google app store. This project involved many hats:
I did not get much sleep time or time to make the game gather hype tho. Eventually I'll have to make a publicity strategy to make the game more known.
As of march I moved to another job as a web architect which will prove challenging as well however the experience and acquired knowledge will be useful for the challenges ahead.
[update: 4/2017] I did however keep contact with them and some freelance work has been done after the date.
I'm currently working on implementing an online course platform for them.
Aside from working with their webpage, optimization and programming I was part of several other projects that varied in difficulty and proved challenging either because of the time they needed to be completed on or due to some complexity that added to the usually short time frame made them rather difficult.
Political promotional material concepts and design:
This is one of many projects that required me to work on political campaign graphic design. The challenge here mainly being that I'm a completely apolitical person and it tends to go against my nature to actually help such efforts. My professionalism and my conscience were constantly at odds on these projects because as a professional I like to make quality products that take the message and gets it to the people however as a person I am completely against political campaigns and how they are aimed at manipulating the ideals and minds of people for the benefit of a specific group. Which in turn gets me pleased at the quality of the work I made and displeased at the use its being given. I have very strong ideals of how things are, should be and I can see past the shrouds placed in by people with my own skills who are also payd to create images that display a "controlled" image of reality.
During this period I made several products which include but are not limited to:
- Campaign and group logos
- Social webpages
- Banners in different formats for several groups (3x6, 6x3 3x12...)
- Promo brochures
- Id cards
- Stationary
- Video and sound editing
- 3d placing concept for a big event.
Program user interface and design:
Services Application
This was a particularly challenging thing to work on. It had many "moving parts" to apply design to and to make work. I even went as far as to directly program some of the applications functionality myself along with the programmer whom I worked with hand in hand to make sure every part looked as good as it needed to and kept a level of consistency and efficiency for the client and users not to get lost in the many depths of the program application itself. Achieving this was very challenging while keeping aesthetic values in check because the time frame and the complexity of a completely new product were keeping tensions rather high. Everyone had to take part in one way or another on this product and the end result is a combination of the efforts, ideas and coordination from all the team members involved.
A similar product was developed later which required some adaptations as well. Fortunately the experience from the original product helped speed up the development cycle.
Skills used during this product development:
- Concept design
- Interface design
- HTML/CSS and Jquery programming
- Programming logic (used to interpret the lead programmer's code to implement modifications as needed for performance or aesthetic optimizations)
- Graphic design
- Digital image optimization
- Mobile interface design and prototyping.
- Project management and tool development. (made a change and but tracking sheet in excel to simplify the process and quantify progress)
Progressive development and design:
Here I'll include some projects that were a bit too advanced for the time they were considered. These projects usually require higher amounts of research and development time for the concept to be finalized.
Augmented Reality:
I had the opportunity to research and play around with augmented reality as a marketing, educational and informative media. This allows for a simple product like a bottle of water, a postcard, a poster or even a sticker to be able to expand upon itself and the information it provides by adding digital elements to the physical world. You could say I was able to work with interactive enhancements to the real world that are rendered in the digital world. As abstract a concept as this is, its also a very real and useful tool. Some museums, advertisement agencies and even educational institutions are testing, implementing, and innovating on this field. This is what I call experience that will be really useful for the recent future that I wish most designers got a chance to be able to work with.
Game Application:
Project Freefall Bird:
Yes it came to be that as a special project I managed to develop my own game under the SBD name. The process took me a while to get the kinks out but the end result was a fully functional game app that you can download for free from the Google app store. This project involved many hats:
- Character Design
- Interface Design
- Game environment design
- Game assets design
- Level design
- Concept art
- music and sound effects(the music was composed by a co-worker but I was involved in the creative process and the final decision as to which music was applied to which stage)
- Database and mysql setup(this is for further expanding the capabilities of the game)
- Beta testing(lots of bug hunting and squashing)
- Prototyping, Social webpage design, and website inclusion in the SBD main page.
- 3d design to get the character prepped for promotional 3d animations that are still in development.
- Lots and lots of research and development including lots of forum diving in the development community.
- Documentation and project management.(made a modified version of the excel sheet we made for the Cidra product so that we could track the changes and progress of this product)
I did not get much sleep time or time to make the game gather hype tho. Eventually I'll have to make a publicity strategy to make the game more known.
As of march I moved to another job as a web architect which will prove challenging as well however the experience and acquired knowledge will be useful for the challenges ahead.
[update: 4/2017] I did however keep contact with them and some freelance work has been done after the date.
I'm currently working on implementing an online course platform for them.
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