Shortly after graduating from Purdue University, I received a position at the Fairmount, Indiana corporate headquarters of fire truck manufacturer S&S Fire Apparatus Co.. While originally hired as a CAD engineer and database developer, it only took four months for me to be placed in charge of Information Technology. At six months, I was promoted to Marketing Coordinator, in which position I became responsible for all company graphics. My portfolio also features some of the print ads I created for the company; however, a great deal of my time was spent redesigning and maintaining their web site at SSFire.com.

In addition to creating the new version of the web site, it was also my responsibility to promote it. As such, I added several internet-based resources to our promotional entourage. It took of couple of months to kick in, but SSFire.com went from about 2,000 unique visitors per month to over 18,000, with up to 150% increase in qualified leads.

Despite this unprecedented success, recent downsizing caused my department to be eliminated in favor of third-party contractors. S&S, however, continues to recognize my skills and maintains a strong professional relationship: I continue to do all their design work, but I do it from the comfort of home, on a per-job basis. While their budget no longer allows for frequent updates to the web site (hence the aging “Latest News” and “New Deliveries” sections), SSFire.com remains in my capable hands.

A New Scentsation is an internet-based business selling homemade candles, bath & body products, and gifts. Their initial web site was a simple design: it was perfectly functional, but just needed that professional touch. I was asked to come up with a new logo (shown here) and a basic layout for the updated site. Since the proprietor has some HTML experience, my continuing support of the site would be minimal; however, she did require that it be easily updated by someone with only a basic knowledge of HTML. To this end, she and I collaborated to create a more professional design around the familiar, pre-existing content. While she still contacts me for help with updates from time to time, this combination of her basic layout with my graphical flair resulted in a friendly, easy-to-manage site.

Weddings and Wee Things is one of those businesses that, unfortunately, just never got off the ground. I was asked to design a new logo (shown here) and a web site that would tie together the various product lines into a cohesive, easy-to-navigate unit. I completed functional drafts for several pages, but work on the site was postponed indefinitely when the proprietor decided to concentrate on a different business model. The drop-down menus (the first ones I ever designed) were never completely formatted, and the wedding pictures I used as placeholders (on the left side of splash screen) are actually various members of my family!

Here is the completed portion of the site.

My senior year at Purdue, I became friends with a member of the University’s ice hockey team—a team which, to be quite honest, I hadn’t previously known existed. This friend and I received an assignment for a class in which we were to choose a web site and analyze the visual appeal of its splash screen. Once he showed me his team's web site, I knew we had a winner.

Shortly after graduation, I contacted the web master for the ice hockey page. I went over some of my friend's and my thoughts about the current site and proposed a replacement layout. He was very excited by my proposal, but alas, before we could complete the site, I was hired at S&S Fire Apparatus Co. and moved away. We were unable to continue meeting, and the redesign eventually fell through.

In early 2002, I became aware of a sport called “Donkey Basketball.” Since my wife and I have a humorous affection for donkeys, I decided to Google for it and see what I could find about such an hysterical sport. To my surprise, there are many donkey basketball troupes; however, the first one to come up was Ohio's Buckeye Donkey Ball Co.

As soon as I saw their curent web site, I knew I had a candidate for a portfolio piece. Like many web sites, it was perfectly functional; it was just that, in my humble opinion, it could be improved upon. I downloaded some of their pre-existing images, Photoshopped them to my liking, and e-mailed them my proposed replacement. I never did hear back from them…. Their loss, I guess.

When I’m not busy doing something with graphic design, one of my many passions is family history. However, when I looked at all the family history sites on the web, I noticed that they all had something in common: none of them were specifically about me. That’s when I came up with the idea for Jeff’s Family Tree. I worked on it constantly over the summer of 2001, and when the time came for a final project in the Fall, I knew what I wanted to do. The redesign took the entire semester; I just wish I could have found a functional GEDCOM-to-HTML converter so that it could be more complete. So much time was spent on data entry that I never did get it to the point where I wanted it. (One of these days, I’m going to have to go back and redesign it with all the information stored in a database back end.)

In January, 2001, while I was still a senior at Purdue, Professor Mark W. McK. Bannatyne (who now serves as interim department head) asked for several students to volunteer for a special project. The International Visualisation Society (of which he is a prominent member) needed a new logo, plus a simple, frame-based section added to their web site to advertise their upcoming conference in London, England. Hungry for portfolio pieces, I volunteered for the project.

After a few planning sessions, my proposed logo was selected from among the submissions. In keeping with the (very) simple feel of the existing site, we settled on the flatter-looking version (see my logo design page for a comparison) and based the navigation bar on the shape and color of the letter “I”.