Character creation is a large passion of mine and cute things are fun to make! This 15 pack of animated iMessage stickers were created over a 3 day period.

Animated stickers require a great deal of optimisation and reworking to keep under the 500kb limit. They also need to keep within the theme, and work within the conversations we have. I had to cut down the animation to 6fps, in some cases only having 6 frames playing total.

From 2012 to 2015 the App.io (aka Kickfolio) website underwent many redesigns as we iterated the product. As a Co-founder, Designer (and CEO from 2014-2015), I spent many weeks crafting the message and tone of the brand.

Shortly thereafter, we realised we had a bigger market than anticipated. Our product had also expanded beyond portfolios and into testing, and we had also raised funding and moved to the USA. As such, a new design was created to reach an older target market.

In 2013 we pushed further into the testing market with a custom information page. This was well received, yet gained little traction being isolated from the main landing page.

Over the next 6 months, we had various major and minor updates to the website. During that time I focused on the customers using the product, and assisted in building the strategy of Kickfolio (which was renamed to App.io during this time). This next design focused on the many different ways you could use App.io, with direct customer quotes.

After many edits to the above design, we expanded our product into mobile advertising. In this design, I focused on simplifying the message, and demonstrated how powerful our advertisements were with well presented data.

Advertising was really striking a tone with investors and customers alike. As such, we made a controversial move to push completely across to the marketing and advertising side, and temporarily closed down our testing platform. It was at the time I moved into the CEO role.

Due to popular demand, we reopened our testing platform to paying customers. It was at this point we needed a design that reflected both our advertising and testing markets, without going into too much detail for both. While this design worked, we had always thought of it as a research point until we further defined our customers exact use cases.

For 2014 this design resonated very well with our audience and inspired many people to reach out. However, it failed to provide an interactive example (which we had been sending manually to those who asked).

After hiring the right candidate to step in as CEO, I took my last month at App.io to really flesh out a design that correctly identified our customers current use cases, explained in the simplest way. The result was a fresh design for App.io, with a renewed colour palette across the brand, and a flat, consistent layout.

The original LIFX app had the same simple text list design for over 2 years, with minimal interface changes. Over the years however, the LIFX app itself had many feature additions, including custom Scenes and Schedules for your home automation, which were unfortunately buried within the old interface.

As the app had been unchanged for many years, it was important to improve the user experience without removing functionality customers had become accustomed to. The design had to be focused on the base ability: Turning on one or many lights with a single touch.

If you play with the colours of your lights each day; Save a Scene so it’s only one tap to turn it on. If you turn that scene on each day at a certain time; Set a schedule so it does it for you. Automate waking up with your lights and coming home to a lit house without needing to reach for your smart device. This redesign brings the Scenes, Schedules and Integrations to the main list, into helpful collapsible modules.

During my research, I found that the trend in lightbulb packaging appears to be simple, often without character or warmth. There was rarely a focus on the benefits, often only a physical product shot against a flat colour. The redesign of the packaging aimed to set our product out from the herd by exploring warmth and something new.

The packaging went through 7 iterations, taking in feedback from unique customers and the internal team. We were able to speak with our merchants and get their valuable opinions based on their experience in stocking shelves and in-store layouts. A few of the key iterations are featured.

As the LIFX bulbs were WiFi connected products, they needed a focused and clear marketing strategy. One of the angles was creating traditional marketing booklets that could be referenced by the merchants and sales floor employees to speak to. This booklet resonated well and was able to field the basic questions while at the same time inspiring customers into purchasing a LIFX product. Some of the pages are featured below.

Corethentic (created by Flic Manning) is an In-Person and Online Workout Platform geared towards the fitness industry, with a focus on health & wellbeing. It contains User Accounts, Ticketing System, Memberships and Member’s Area Video content.

Building a fully-fledged membership website is no small task. All aspects of memberships, account management, member area, emails, checkout and sales systems need to be accounted for, including the Branding and Imagery across the entire platform.

The Corethentic branding needed to stand strong, and lean towards an easy-to-recall icon shape. The result focuses on a strong, angled ‘C’, wrapped in a magazine-style black box (with comfortable padding). To soften the edges, a slightly rounded font with large letter spacing was chosen.

As fitness is a physical yet visual industry, large imagery and a focus on people was selected. This allowed the trainers section to come alive and really connect you to the platform.

The magazine-layout really allowed exploration into the human side while still presenting a premium experience. The Creator section allows viewers to see and connect with who’s behind the program.

One of the aims for the About section was to clearly showcase the background of Corethentic, while highlighting the quotes. Flic requested that we convey a connected platform, with a personal touch.

Purchasing a ticket to the In-Person Classes should be simple to do and easy to find. I decided to focus on a simple boxed element, with the key pieces presented in an expanded format to the Find A Class page.

The Blockchain space pulls together two exciting passions of mine. I’m fascinated by the merging of fresh technology and the speed of investing and transactions. One of my other passions is creating characters – so it seemed like a natural fit to work with a small team to create a platform for digital collectibles.

With new, emerging tech combining with transactions there’s many things to be aware of on the development platform. With the characters, there are limitations on sizing and layout. Yet, aside from these constraints, the larger limitations are really in our imagination – how far can we take this technology through this platform.

Users can navigate through the Marketplace, making bids on the Yumi’s they love – or they can Unwrap their own (prices shown are only conceptual). Yumiblocks is built on the Ethereuem blockchain and works well with MetaMask (or a browser/plugin that handles Ethereum transactions).

Want to be notified when someone has made an offer on one of your Yumi’s? Creating an account with an email address connects your Ethereum address to Yumiblocks, allowing you to receive notifications from offers and sales.

Each Yumi layer is created separately in Sketch and constantly checked and merged with all other layers. To make sure there are no oversights, we run a script that allows us to generate all the combinations and check for any glaring or minor errors. The Exclusive Yumi’s are complete pieces inspired by pop culture, famous celebrities or characters.

The Yumiblocks Marketplace is just the beginning. We’re working towards a larger goal with a focus on longevity, replay-ability and more – but I can’t give those details away just yet! Let me know if you’re excited by Yumiblocks by appreciating it below.

Playing card decks are traditionally a lot more involved than they seem. I set out to create a custom deck of playing cards using some more advanced vector techniques. They combine elements of simple recognisable shapes and patterns with complex Face cards and suits. There needed to be a focus on consistency, while at the same time making key elements unique to stand on their own.

In this project the constraints can also be seen as a blessing. There are 4 suits and 2 core colours. Making up the deck are 53 unique cards (Including the 1 Joker) and 1 Back design. The box art is often a simple Tuck box. Proper placement of each suit, number and face card is critical to ensure the deck is still functional.

I modified each suit to individual, minimal shapes. After moving to outlined versions I expanded by connecting the paths. This led to the key design of small suits, displayed on the corners. Later on, an outlined version became the core focus – to draw a connection back to the line work on the Face cards.

After the suits were set and a lot of the numbered cards were laid out it was time to work on the Face cards. I already knew I wanted the Face cards to be retro inspired and multi-lined; now I just had to experiment with the widths and ends.

Playing cards often have a simple yet unique feature; mirroring. By mirroring the designs they cater for the quick scan, without mentally or physically needing to rotate the card. It’s a lovely bit of design consideration with the user experience top of mind. For my early line-work I drew on a 45 degree angle , quickly changing to 65 degree to keep the design centre-aligned.

The overall designs seemed to hold together, yet the thin ends made the design look weaker on certain angles and harder to see at distance. As this was to be a fully functional deck, a quick scan on a card should be without hurdles, no matter how small they are.

The back design was a great place to bring together all the elements from the various cards and the dual colours. The inspiration came from a mixture of the retro multi-lined designs and the “Gatsby” aesthetic. The ‘eye’ visual allowed a sense of depth, while also hinting at a “hidden” metaphor.

The Affluence Deck project was completed over a 4 week period. If you would like to see this brought to life let me know by tapping the Appreciate button!