Illustration
Exploring Visual Style
Flat Design in Motion
This first example is a loading graphic done for DICK’S Sporting Goods that utilized flat design versions of sports equipment found in the company logo. Created initially in Adobe After Effects as part of a design competition among colleagues, this loading state is now used in the e-commerce content management system.
This second example was a student project and my introduction to Adobe After Effects. While this video introduction to a design principle has its fair share of problems, I am never the less proud of the illustrations I was able to produce and set in motion in just a few weeks.
Botanical Illustration
One of the great benefits of having worked at Phipps Conservatory is having the opportunity to take advantage of their adult education classes. I have taken Botanical Illustration classes in graphite, pen and ink, as well as watercolor and mixed media.
Botanical illustration is, at its core, a form of scientific illustration used for plant identification. While some illustrations may feature cross-sections and diagrams, others might have a more fluid and natural composition.
Archaeological Illustration
After I graduated from Boston University in 2010, I joined the Central Lydia Archaeological Survey (CLAS) in Turkey for several months. I spent much of that time walking through agricultural fields that surrounded known and suspected archaeological sites, collecting and counting artifacts discovered on the surface.
The most distinctive and diagnostic ceramic sherds were then cataloged, photographed, and illustrated. After returning to the United States, I was tasked with digitizing these illustrations in Adobe Illustrator and converting them to CLAS’s preferred format for publication using the protocol that I had helped develop.
Comics for a Cause
During my Master’s program at Carnegie Mellon University, I was part of a team which put together this comic as a way of educating middle school-aged children and their parents about the HPV vaccine. We worked with the Allegheny County Health Department to do research, and put together a multi-modal solution of which the comic was a part. My partner wrote the content and I produced the illustrations.
Presentation Illustrations
While working as a UX Designer at DICK’S Sporting Goods, I participated in an engagement with Pivotal Labs in Washington D.C. Part of my job after returning was to help enable the rest of the technology organization in the human centered, lean, agile product development process I learned there. Below are some samples of illustrations I did for a presentation on ‘Discovery and Framing’ (D+F) , which is the Pivotal branding of the double diamond approach to problem solving. Stylistically, I wanted to practice showing expression using simple human caricatures.
