The Solution: By employing clear color schemes and clarifying the relationship between existing and proposed (new) elements, I attempted to simplify the design and construction impacts for project proposals, reports, and presentations.

Comments: These information graphics are from some of the big projects that are happening in Seattle right now. I had the privilege to work on a number of these in the preliminary stages. The seawall, the tunnel, and floating bridges. This is one of my passions: to clarify complex technical information in such a way that stake-holders and the public understand the processes involved.

The Solution: These designs were as much a product of interviews as sketches. I always get as much detail on the feelings and motivations of clients as I can, and how they envision their customers

Comments: Way before UX came along as a ubiquitous term, I was taught to always figure out who the end user is and to mentally occupy that role when designing. I always do detailed interviews with clients to see how they view their relationship with their customers.

The Solution: The first thing was to establish who the users were. Analysis showed there were three distinct user groups. Providing the users with the clearest path to the information they needed was the key. Presenting a clean design promoted THS’s experience and expertise. I designed the new site around clear pathways for each group with respective information arranged accordingly. Other features were added to facilitate user’s easy access to services.

Comments: Empathy and discarding assumptions about who accesses these services seemed key to creating a successful design that signaled to users that we earnestly wanted to connect with them. I did not in any way want to make assumptions, and I think the care I spent in selecting images was very effective. The rest of the site almost designed itself, as sometimes happens with good UX data. I kept to a color scheme dictated by their logo and introduced lots of white space. All this has resulted in and over 1200% increase in traffic with a bounce rate cut to less than half.

The Solution: The cover had to catch the eye, with imagery that was selected very carefully. Once that was accomplished the rest of the book was designed to let the information flow organically. The maps served to augment the text, of course, but took on their own parallel visual narrative that successive civilizations had inhabited the land.

Comments: The maps were like a big illustration job inside a book design project. But I love the way the maps make the point. The infographic nature of the charts I created were designed to show data in revealing combinations that tell a story that separate statistics might not convey. Converting it into an eBook was a huge challenge, transforming the book into a giant HTML/CSS document. I collaborated with a developer in the UK to create one of the first eBooks with a fully functional index. Getting the index to work was particularly satisfying.

The Solution: In the case of the Kew exhibit, I developed a simple map based on old engraved maps. I stuck with primary colors to code each area differently. This was coordinated with a PowerPoint presentation that also featured photos of the glass works. The New York Botanical Gardens exhibit was a last-minute design. Thinking fast, I used existing watercolor maps the Gardens for the backgrounds, tweaked them to remove extraneous details, and added the callouts for each exhibit element.

Comments: These are designs for in-house guides for botanical garden exhibits for a world-renowned glass blowing business is Seattle . . yes, that one. These were fun, fast-track projects.

The Solution: I began by researching eCommerce sites to understand common functionality and structure. I felt project elements had to be sequenced like they would be in real life, so I started with creating my own retail concept complete with name, logo, and other visual elements. Then I began to develop the web portion of the project. I started with creating user personas, functional specs, and IA based on relevant pathways I analyzed in my research. All this gave me clear direction to proceed to the visual designs and the website itself.

Comments: I created I site I would want to visit. existing sites. Keeping in mind the users (…well, me, actually), I envisioned a site that designers would love to shop at and talk about, a place where you could keep up with the latest cool gear. Curating all the products took many long nights, but I love how the whole project came together.

The Solution: I have so many presentations over the years it’s hard to keep count. I typically research the topic and discuss the fine points as much as possible with the client. I follow that with asking what most important part of the client’s story they want told, as well the parts that are easiest to misunderstand. Then I build my presentation around these two parameters.

Comments: I live in dread of having to watch too many PowerPoint presentations, so I try to focus on the storytelling and good images. I avoid too many charts, and usually turn to graphs and diagrams and concise text to convey ideas and establish data relationships. I think a good diagram can illuminate a concept better than almost anything else. But I think good images can convey emotion, which is the key to memory retention.

The Solution: The balance is to have enough detail that the layout is clear, but not so much that it doesn’t allow for the natural evolution of a design. With a highly iterative process, however, newer, more fluid prototyping apps are convenient since you can crank out versions and different pages quickly. Functionality and transitions have always been so hard to convey to clients who often have difficulty visualizing some visual concept we are trying to get across, but with modern prototyping apps, that problem has been solved.

Comments: I love me some wireframes! They bring you to the place where the design starts to become real. I like to use pencil and paper at first, and then progress to Illustrator, Axure, or AdobeXD. I enjoy laying these out, like drafting for websites. They are fun to do and provide so much direction over the course of a web project. It’s incredibly effective that carefully analyzing how the different UI elements will perform at this stage can eliminate so many future problems

The Solution: After listening to the group practice, and getting advance rushes of their recordings, we began to discuss the emotional and geographical content in their music. For the cover illustration they wanted a design that spoke of folk art and hand-painted signage. The sound certainly evokes elements of The South, but the budget kept us in the Northwest. They didn’t have a photographer, so I got out my gear and started shooting. We took trips out in the country and found shot locations that worked with the theme. Thankfully it was summer and we had some sun.

Comments: I think every graphic designer wants to do band graphics. I was lucky to connect with The Believers, who are a really great alt-country Americana duo who started in Seattle. We began with an illustrated cover design and then the project expanded until I ended up doing all the photography. Later I was called in to design their poster graphics and fliers. This was such a wonderful project.

The Solution: Since the clients of the studio would most likely be musicians recording new songs, I decided to take the approach similar to album cover art, with a rough and retro feel. The primary imagery focuses on iconic instruments and equipment that musicians use, and then the second-level images are more about the studio. This layering employed older musical images that hinted at the breadth of Garey’s recording experience.

Comments: After a long graphic design career, this was my first web design with a real client. The website design and implementation went very smoothly. The client loved the rough-hewn design and the imagery. Unfortunately, the construction of the new studio was never completed. The fate of the website is still uncertain.

The Solution: Designing a book cover is all about generating curiosity while telling a small slice of the story inside. A story about a homeless man got me out in the streets, capturing images of their broken environment. A history of one person’s voyage in the Age of Exploration had me researching old maps and engravings. The demands were always different and led to visually stimulating adventures. Crafting the interior of a book is almost like a website, developing the architecture, and then designing visual elements relating to the theme. While working closely with authors, I assisted in editing some of these projects. I also represented the publisher at national and international publishing trade shows.

Comments: There are few things I love as much as books, and designing them is a wonderful thing. I enjoy jobs that require many hats, giving me the opportunity to create ancient and modern maps, some technical illustrations and photographs.

The Solution: I created an app for kids to interactively explore an imaginary zoo. To start, I created an illustrated map of the zoo, with circles that appear on hover to zoom into different areas where you see the animals and get information about them. I designed the landscape with different environments, Africa, Asia, and The Americas, populated with animals indigenous to each. Then started to add JavaScript functionality a little at a time.

Comments: I am not a great coder, but projects like this keep me at least aware of what is possible. When I see a feature I like on a website, I will check out the code. As a designer, I feel I need to have a basic understanding of what I am asking others to develop.

The Solution: We began by taking notes while watching the exploratory session over a few days. These sessions revealed a lot about the site. There were quite a few areas of that had interface issues. Once in the testing we all observed and took notes. This also served to orient us to the particular testing process we were focusing on. After notetaking we acted as test monitors. At the end of each day we discussed the issues that came up in all the sessions. Sessions took place over two weekends. After all the testing was done I wrote a report of my findings based on my notes.

Comments: I really like testing. It is an experiment. You get real-time reactions and can change things right away based on real data, and not just some hunch. This is the thing about UX that I like the most: for years in print work there was talk about designing for users, but the method was imaginary. We basically guessed what types of users would want. I love that now we are getting real responses and designing from live data. It makes design so much more alive.

The Solution: I usually sketch out a lot of iterations during the design process and see what strikes me as the clearest. Then I get into the color scheme since color translates to categories and differentiation of objects. I take special care to try and establish data interrelationships to spur connection and memory.

Comments: When I am designing these my natural curiosity starts to take over and I begin to ask questions about the process or concept I am dealing with. How much of the process can we show in each stage or should we isolate stages? Are there other aspects we can illustrate that take this deeper?