I love to implement 3d into some of my designs. Here’s a small showcase of some recent projects.

A simple logo for Soap News on Globaltv.com. I employed a really easy gradient technique and a soft backend shadow to give the impression of depth.

Test logo for a member on a forum. Showcasing the power of subtle and easy photoshop layer effects and dropshadows.

The graphic I created for my Nutella t-shirt, I made it float to look cool.

The dropshadow underneath the main navigation, cool and clean – with a not so in-your-face shadow.

Last year a friend and I decided to take on the gaming industry and start development on our first ever video game. Taking inspiration from Bizzare’s Geometry Wars, we took that concept of a shoot em up to a whole new level. We felt certain elements were lacking from the genre, so we introduced a whip that the player can hurl around. Adding to that are mines you can hold behind you ala mario kart and shells. Then the next logical step was to enable the player the ability to use their whip to smash the mine around. Once hit, the mine becomes even more powerful and gives you a nice padded style bonus; which, you can use to upgrade certain elements of your ship. That is just a small example of what we plan on adding to the game, and the industry. I don’t like when developers try and define what I think is fun. That’s why we gave our players the option to leave the battlefield and rethink. I’ve never seen a game do that, and why not? Sometimes you just need to cool down and rethink your strategy.

We want to create the games that we have always wanted to play, and that the bigger game companies fail to create. Stay tuned for more information on my newest venture and check out the site when you have a chance.

The Jamhammer Logo and Branding I created.

The content team at GlobalTV.com asked me to create an infographic for their upcoming season of Survivor, entitled Survivor: Caramoan. Looking over a few important details, I researched past Survivor seasons and put together a working package of themes and visuals. Have a look and read the article, linked here.

The header image of the Infographic. I extracted the base logo from previous seasons and added a 3d effect in illustrator, and then added the wood texture to give it more oompfh.

The middle section of the graphic gives readers info about the odds of becoming a survivor on the show. I sourced some high res wood textures and burned them into the wood to give it a more authentic look. The fabric plates use the look and feel from several props on the show, including the hand created torches.

The final section of the site shows a call to action to get readers to interact with the article and potentially win a prize. Wood textures, obviously an important theme here played a role in rounding out the look and feel of the graphic.

See the full image and read the article here.

I feel that if you are a web designer you should know at least the basics of html and css in order to build what you’ve designed. This way, you fundamentally understand how a site is built from the ground up and can appreciate the inner workings of front end design. I’ve had arguments that go both ways, and they usually end up with someone feeling insulted.

Personally, I take a front end design path when creating a new website. Firstly, I create the brand and two versions in photoshop – the desktop and the mobile versions. I then start coding my framework and css and begin sending my clients the progress. I let them know it is a work in progress and they understand, barring I explain in detail why something hasn’t been implemented yet. I find it incredibly arduous to create multiple photoshop documents for one site and often hear designers complain about such a task. Smart objects were introduced a few Photoshop versions ago and should be used in everyone’s daily workflow. Despite some shortcomings, they make reusing assets within one document incredibly easy and efficient.

When I say that all designers should know how to build the site they design, I come from when I was looking into becoming an architect. I thought being an architect back in my naive days was just to draw fancy looking buildings, and then have them magically appear. What I learned was that architects are basically artistic engineers, and they need to know the physics and math in order to design something that won’t kill everyone inside OR defy the laws of physics. My point is that they understand the medium they are designing for and understand what makes things tick.

This line of thinking can relate to front end developers with no skills in design. Often my designs are not cut out right, and look quite different to what I mocked up in photoshop. Someone recently said to me that it’s very uncommon for a final design to look identical to photoshop in a browser. I disagree in that I hope that front end developers use those mockups as a perfect representation of what should be on the final screen. If front end developers learn how to properly dissect a psd file, I believe our woes will dwindle, and; most importantly  our sites will look great when multiple people are working on them.

We all need to take steps to learn one anothers crafts in order to have the best of design and code out there.

I created this graphic a while ago for my love of Nutella. Let everyone around you know it too, they might even have a story to share.