The Portfolio of David Cole
Clickpass
I'm currently a designer at Clickpass, a Y-Combinator-funded startup making OpenID consumer friendly. It's a really engaging job because I've been responsible for huge chunks of the design work. I'm doing a lot of UI design, which is great because I've been able to return to iconography. As well, I've been doing illustration and heavy heavy brand work. My first week there we spent building the brand and coming up with a cohesive approach for the site.
These are pages from various pieces of the site, including the home page, the account page, the documentation and the embedded buttons our partner sites use.
Being able to work on such diverse tasks has been very exciting as I've never had the opportunity to manage not only a brand but that many dramatically different designs. Designing CSS for flexible and dynamic UIs is also a new challenge and one I'm really enjoying.
This is also my first time integrating with Rails, which is surprisingly fun. Templating can be a very satisfying way to put things together.
Funnybook Babylon
Funnybook Babylon is a comics blog run by some very dashing gentlemen out of high-falutin’ New York City. Not only is the blog really great, but they also have a regular podcast that may very well be the only comic book podcast worth listening to. As a fan first, getting involved with FBB has been a pleasure.
Initially a pet project, the site had grown rapidly and their basic WordPress theme was beginning to feel inadequate and amateur. I was asked to refine the site and bring in an air of... how you say... professionalism?
The original design's shtick was resembling the paper comic book artists use to draw pages. Maintaining that premise, I focused most of my attention on refining the typography and customizing the smaller pieces, pieces that are often left behind when customizing a blog design and end up feeling generic.
Pictured here are the main page, the favicon (my favorite part), the random quote design and the podcast design. In order to personalize many pieces of the site, I had to crack open plugins and twist 'em around. I don't often get to work in PHP, which is probably for the better, but variety is the spice of something something.
Little Otsu
My first foray into storefront design, this is actually just a modified version of Dropify, one of the default Shopify themes. Nonetheless, I was excited to be working with Little Otsu, a stationary store here in San Francisco (with their headquarters in Portland).
One of the artists Little Otsu works with is Jason Munn of The Small Stakes. A huge talent and one of my biggest art heroes, I looked to his work to inspire this design. Not to say I ripped him off (at least, I don't think I did!), but there's always plenty to learn from other artists and the geometric perfection of his portfolio is absolutely stunning.
Mission Pie
Mission Pie is the greatest place on earth. No, really. At first a pie shop, then a supporter of all things local and sustainable, followed by an educational resource for local high school students, all of which are extensions of the mothership project: Pie Ranch, a farm where the same students learn about gardening, agriculture, food systems, economics, cooking and more. Simply one of the most important pieces of my life, I couldn't be more honored to contribute to their efforts.
This site is very simple, featuring mostly basic information about the shop. Smaller bites include a list of the current flavors of pies (irregularly maintained by yours truly), a photo stream from Flickr and a blog powered by WordPress.
Pictured in the bottom left is a personal project inspired by the shop. My first foray into pixel art, the piece took me roughly one million hours. It was incredibly satisfying and the full piece, along with more information, can be viewed on Rad Nauseam, my blog.
I Hate Tourists
This is an identity/design for a music blog focused on the independent Boston music scene. This was a really fun site to make because it was an amalgam of aesthetics: the tiling punk backgrounds behind the playful vintage logo with a grid-heavy magazine-ish content section.
This was actually my first time consciously designing on a grid (horizontal and vertical) and it was definitely a challenge at first. I toyed with some CSS frameworks but got frustrated with their restrictive nature and went back to all my own code. This was also my first time working heavily with Movable Type 4, which was a nice change from WordPress; though, until RightFields gets updated for MT4, I'm sticking with WP.
Another standard early designer move here: using Avant Garde; though I don't think this is as overplayed. I absolutely love Avant Garde when its used very selectively. Scott Hansen is a big influence of mine, for example.
Sadly this site isn't running yet, as the client's projects changed. I look forward to seeing it flush with real content.
I'm Trying To
I'm Trying To is a personal XHTML/CSS reference page. I kept the design process really short and basic, as is visible, so I could get back to doing actual work. I was able to have fun with the logo, however. I'd been trying to find a new tube for an old record player and while sorting through old boxes I discovered some really amazing examples of product design. I was eager to work in some elements from those boxes into some design and this was a great opportunity. I wanted to avoid overbearing nostalgia, though, so I tried to keep the type treatment modern. Well, as modern as the font Trade Gothic can be.
Dana Street Roasting Company
This site (top right) was the first design project after I really nailed down a solid understanding of CSS. I had labored for hours on an older version with an incredibly sloppy mix of tables and inline styles; afterwords, I spent a much-needed period studying CSS. Next, I went back and recreated it from scratch in under half an hour. After that, I started spiffying it up and I'm still pretty pleased with the results.
The other items here are posters I made for the café while I was working there. I fall prey to the ‘young designer who only wants to use Futura’ phenomenon in a couple of them. The hours sign I'm still very proud of, which features the awesome Letterhead Fonts' Ambrosia while it was still free on their site.
Mixtape Site
This is a design for a mixtape sharing website. This was my first time doing UI-anything, albeit in a minor way. This is when I realized I really enjoy making icons.
If it isn't obvious enough, I love combining grayscales with really bright colors. And, neon green is one of my favorite colors with which to do that.
Delightfully illegal!
