The Design Portfolio of Sarah Pellegrini: Senior Designer | Art Director

404 Pages

2012-02-22T09:20:00.000-05:00

I was asked to submit a sample of possible 404 pages to a company for consideration. They are a health care company and I wanted to play off of that theme for a few of the pages. For the other pages I played off their combined logos.

Click "Read More" below to view the sample pages.

Relaunch of Spades!

2012-02-01T10:01:00.000-05:00

Spades was a very fun game, but it didn't function well. There were a lot of bugs in the code and our players really didn't like to play it. Which was a shame because the graphics and the game mechanic were very fun.

The development team was able to completely overhaul the code and relaunch the game anew. The challenge to us is how to showcase the game in a way that's new when the game graphics themselves haven't changed at all. We decided to come up with a pre-launch "coming soon" promo banner set.

I wanted it to be completely different than any other graphics we've done for the game before so it caught the attention of the user and they know something different is coming.

I covered the spade in a sheet ready to be revealed at launch. I kept it mostly monotoned, with the exception of the red announcement banner and the red card backs to tie it all together.

Registration Flow

2011-09-30T13:38:00.003-04:00

This is by far the largest project I have completed for GSN in my 3 years with the company. Our site went through a major redesign last year and the one thing that was overlooked was the Registration flow. How a visitor becomes a registered user can effect how that user interacts with the content on our site! Social networking is fast becoming the preferred way of registering with a site, and we needed a simplified way of making that as painless as possible.

This also made design of the week

From the Registration Page, to the information screen and then up to a successful first log in, this is no longer a confusing turnoff for our users. It is instead an immersive GSN experience that clearly outlines what you need to do to register, how to use our site and the benefits you earn from your first log in.

The redesigned Registration Flow has been incredibly successful! New users are at 6,800 in just the first few days of launch. On average we see 5,400 a week. That's an increase of 25% in under a week's time!

After the jump (click on "read more" below), there are a few screenshots of the flow, but please experience it yourself! Register with GSN for a really fun user experience.

Games Page Redesign

2011-09-09T14:23:00.002-04:00

In the crazed timeframe of the new Games Page release, I forgot to blog about it! We wanted to organize the new games page in a way where a user can go straight to a game they want to play without being completely lost. At the same time, we wanted to retain the main mantle where we could showcase new or popular games.

View both the old games page here and the new games page live on GSN.

As you can see, the new games page clearly organized the games in a very organized and visually pleasing way.

Cash Competitions push to GSN.com

2011-09-09T13:51:00.001-04:00

There are 2 sides to GSN - free and cash. Our cash competitions side is a great opportunity to get really competitive with a the change to win real money not just virtual currency. However, there are some states that don't allow online cash gaming and we have to turn those players away. Well, instead of turning them away, cash competitions decided they wanted to send them over to GSN for some free gaming fun.

We have a lot of new, free casino games that use virtual currency instead of real money. I needed to create a page where these users tried to deposit money, couldn't and now we're trying to show them how much fun it can be to play for free. I took graphics from the GSN side and applied it in a solid treatment that screams "GSN" even though we're still in the WorldWinner cash competitions site.

Design of the Week

2011-09-08T19:14:00.000-04:00

My team is starting a new weekly design workshop where we talk about our specialties and where guests come in and talk about theirs. This week we listened to a presentation from Marketing on how their promos work and what they're looking for in a design. It was pretty helpful!

Debuting at this meeting was the "Design of the Week" picked by a couple of managers. I'm pleased to announce that I won the first one! I won for my Tiki Tuesdays promotion banners.

My "prize" appropriately enough, a pineapple! It's a fun morale booster for the team. I'll be speaking next week on what goes into an ad sales request and how to get a client's brand to work in harmony with ours.

A Google A Day Partnership

2011-09-05T14:05:00.000-04:00

Google has a great game called A Google A Day. It's a trivia game that encourages you to google the answer. Well knowing that GSN reaches 4 million UVs (unique viewers) a month, they decided they wanted to put their game on our site as well as having it on their own. I needed to show Google how it would appear on our site before the sale was finalized.

They loved it and it will be live on the site soon. Click here to play!

Go RVing!

2011-07-05T15:15:00.001-04:00

This month's sponsored game is SwapIt! by Go RVing. I had a lot of fun working with them on getting the right look and feel for their heavily branded campaign. The game matches all of their branded elements, from print ads to their TV spots. I think it turned out great, and it's really fun to boot!

Pixel Pop

2011-05-13T14:50:00.000-04:00

This is a new game we're still in the process of developing. Take a look the screenshot below for a sneak peek!

Mother's Day

2011-05-06T15:59:00.008-04:00

This year for Mother's Day, Marketing wanted to focus on Breast Cancer awareness. We decided to go with a simple but attention grabbing mantle for the homepage. I wanted to stay away from standard breast cancer awareness imagery and opted to go for a more bright and playful theme, since the point is to play games for a good cause!

May Bloom Sweeps

2011-04-27T15:37:00.000-04:00

I decided I wanted to take a completely different approach to this week's promo mantle. Instead of going with illustrated blossoms, I went with a more painterly look. I really like how this came out.

Happy World Penguin Day!

2011-04-25T13:08:00.000-04:00

Marketing is always trying to find new days to celebrate that are interesting. Today is apparently World Penguin Day and to celebrate, we're awarding our users! I love penguins. They are one of my favorite animals to watch. I didn't want to get too cartoony with this request since I think they're fantastic creatures to begin with. I added a stylized background with brilliant blues to get that icy feeling. It's one of my favorite banners I've done this month!

Charmin Mahjongg Dimensions

2011-03-31T21:19:00.001-04:00

One of our most popular games on GSN is Mahjongg Dimensions. It's a twist on the traditional game of mahjongg where your tiles are in a 3D cube that you need to rotate and interact with to make your match.

Charmin really loved the idea of the game when we pitched it to them. They bought and a few weeks later we went into production. The following screenshots are how the final game turned out. I created the backgrounds and icons. To play the game visit GSN.com

SwapIt!

2011-03-31T21:18:00.002-04:00

SwapIt! is by far and away our most popular game. We redesigned it for our own use when it's not being sponsored. The following are some of our most successful iterations. All were live on the site and some can still be played.

Fruit of the Loom

Stouffer's

Red Baron

Eat Pray Love

2011-03-31T20:44:00.001-04:00

To promote their new film "Eat Pray Love," Sony Pictures tapped us to make a promotional puzzle game that featured stills from the movie. We presented them with game stills and a custom GSN landing page.

Game Start Screen

Initial Game Play Screen

Initial Solved Puzzle Screen

Second Solved Puzzle Screen

Custom Landing Page Takeover on GSN.com

Chicken of the Sea

2011-03-31T20:06:00.004-04:00

Chicken of the Sea really liked our Undersea Treasure Game that we have on Facebook through our partner Mesmo. We worked with Mesmo to completely customize this game for Chicken of the Sea, replacing their icons with brand specific imagery. Chicken of the Sea loved it and the game has become one of the highest played games on our site. You can play here.

It's been the busiest of times

2010-11-09T10:22:00.000-05:00

This past year has been a WHIRLWIND! Let me tell you. I haven't had too much time to update this blog or my site at all! We have to catch up. I'm going to try to post a new project I have done in the past year once a week. Stay tuned for more regular updates!

GSN Vegas Style

2010-05-19T14:59:00.002-04:00

I've been able to work on a marketing campaign of sorts for GSN. We're targeting Vegas with our online ads. Hopefully the gambling crowd will like the idea of play games online and winning cash and prizes. I really like the ads I've done. They're Flash, but until they're finalized, I'll just post the jpgs.

Thanksgiving Takeover

2009-11-23T11:34:00.002-05:00

I love when we do themed homepages. Today and the rest of the week will be Thanksgiving themed. I love how it came out

GSN Halloween

2009-10-26T10:00:00.002-04:00

I finally got to update the GSN logo! They gave us the ok to make various holiday logos and first up was Halloween. There were a few different versions (below - coming soon), but we went with the version above and animated it.

I love it and can't wait to do more!

Activia Bifidus Blast

2009-03-10T15:51:00.010-04:00

My last update was in November. It was that long ago, not because I haven't had anything to show, but because I haven't had any personal time to actually update. I've done some really cool and fun things since my last update, but that's for another time.

We just hired a couple of new designers and I have an actual moment to update today. This is one of the most fun things I've done yet. I really got my creative juices flowing on this project. Activia, if you don't know, is a yogurt that helps to keep you regular. How in God's good name are we supposed to come up with a game that's not gross or a total joke? We actually have to try to sell this to Dannon as a legitimate means of advertising.

We have a creative team made up of designers, ad sales, ad ops, dev and project managers that meet up to discuss different types of options for comps. This was a particularly fun meeting given the topic of a product that makes you regular. We came up with a couple of ideas and the best is what I'm showing here.

This is a spinoff of a whack-a-mole game. The bad bacteria pop up from the stomach acid and you have seconds to whack them with your yogurt spoon. Seems silly in words, but the graphics make it really fun. I'm really happy with how this project came out, especially considering the nature of the product.

GSN Newsletter

2008-11-13T22:00:00.003-05:00

To go along with the site redesign, we need to rebrand all of our other products. That includes our newsletters which I got to work on. I didn't just redesign it though, I actually coded the email. I had to search the deep recesses of my mind to recall, from my Children's Hospital Boston days, how to code in HTML. Considering I haven't used HTML in about 4.5 years, not too shabby!

BEFORE | AFTER

GSN Logo Animation

2008-11-07T10:35:00.009-05:00

Yesterday, GSN revealed new branding. It's super fun and playful, it definitely represents our company well. We have a new logo that also alludes to our love of all games. Please visit GSN.com to check it out!

I get to animate the logo for the website! I'm super excited. I used to animate logos for Boston.com before they came up with a ton of rules and regulations about the homepage logo, which included no logo animation. I missed doing it and I am SO excited about the possibilities of this logo!

The animated logo didn't make it onto the site for the launch yesterday but it will be joining in very soon. I came up with a couple of different concepts, but here's what we're going to end up going with for the standard animation:

There's going to be plenty of opportunity to animate this logo in various ways, different themes and special occasions. I'm very happy to be able to do this for GSN.com and can't wait to see it live!

Mystery P.I.

2008-11-06T13:00:00.005-05:00

We're releasing a new game called Mystery P.I. It's based on the PC game where you’re a Private Investigator with a knack for finding hidden objects and solving mysteries. Your cases take you all around the world to solve crimes that need to be closed fast! Use your Private Eye skills to find the clues, and solve the mystery! - Basically there are hidden objects and you need to find them.

What good P.I. doesn't have his trusty magnifying lens? Probably not many! Therefore, I made the magnifying lens my inspiration for this round of ads. Take a look:

It's not perfect, but I think it works pretty well for our needs. It's interactive and fun and will hopefully draw the user's attention to play the game.

Meow Mix: Wholesome Goodness

2008-10-20T14:32:00.003-04:00

We've done a lot of Meow Mix ads since I've arrived here. It's officially been 2 months now (time flies). This time Meow Mix wanted a custom game and subsequent banners for their Wholesome Goodness product line. This is an all-natural cat food and their design speaks to that. Lighter colors, greens and yellows with a casual logo. The banners they had requested would have been pretty simple, so I decided to jazz them up a bit with a little alpha transparent mask and some simple animation. I also threw in the icons I made for the custom game here and there. Take a look...

Suds

2008-10-01T11:37:00.005-04:00

Dawn has a flash game that we're advertising for called "Suds." It's a very cute game with bubbles and word searching. The type of ads that were scheduled to be made were really basic and pretty bare. I decided to jazz it up a bit with popping bubbles. (sound familiar?)

There have been some minor edits requested, but for now, here's the first pass at the Suds ads.

*UPDATED*
Below is the final version of this ad. The client wanted to add some copy and imagery used in their print ads and TV spots. It's a bit crowded for my tastes, but I think it still works!

Bingo America

2008-10-01T11:06:00.009-04:00

I've been working my new job for just over a month and a half at this point. I'm kinda feeling a bit more settled in now, so I feel like I can take some extra time to apply some interactivity to the ads I've been making.

The first opportunity I got was with a GSN show we're advertising for called Bingo America. It's going into their second season and they want to have a strong online advertising presence. Game ads can be really tacky, it's a fine line between gaudy and fun. I try to walk the fun line myself.

I decided that the best way to get the user involved was to make the bingo balls interactive. They change their color and number randomly every time the ad loads. The user can also "pick up" a ball and throw it around the ad. It'll bounce around the stage. The only thing I didn't have time to figure out was how to get the numbers to rotate. That would have made it the most realistic I could get, but time ran out and we had to go with what I could do.

Take a look at one of the ads below and have fun.

Bush's Baked Beans

2008-09-19T14:44:00.010-04:00

I have been insanely busy at my new job and haven't been able to update as much as I would like to. They weren't kidding when they said they needed me. I haven't had one moment of downtime since I got here, but I like that.

Here's the latest work I've done. This is a sponsored re-skin of the GSN homepage. Bush's Baked Beans wanted to focus on beans being a healthy food, not just the standard can o' beans. I took their "vegetable with more" concept and ran with it. I LOVE the vines I came up with and I'm so happy with how it came out.

The Beginning and the End

2008-08-21T11:03:00.013-04:00

The last thing I worked on while I was at Boston.com was How the Grinch Stole Christmas: The Musical's sliding billboard and dual marquees. This was a really fun and challenging project. It was fun because it's taking a well known illustrated character and making it come to life. It was challenging because we only had one Flash movie from grinchmusical.com that I was able to take apart and use elements from. That means I only had one grinch image to use of him smiling. The client wanted him to go from frowning to smiling. I used a simple fade to go in between the two expressions, but I'm not Dr. Seuss. I had to attempt to create a believable Suessian Grinch frown. That was the hardest part, believe it or not. (oooh, a slant rhyme!)

Then the Whos down in Whoville will all cry, "Boo Hoo."

I know I'm not Dr. Seuss, but I think the frown is passable. Oh well.

Boston.com's core audience is VERY different from the target audience at GSN.com. We're targeting a lot of younger kids and stay-at-home moms. This week, I've been working on some Meow Mix ads. This concept was already passed by the client and they liked it, so when it came back to me for edits, I needed to rebuild and I took that chance to add a little "me" to it. So take a look and enjoy the funky font and blinking lights. Please click here to see the full sized version.

That's it for now, I'll update when I can!

Changes

2008-08-15T14:24:00.003-04:00

I have a new job.

I know. It really came out of nowhere and it happened so fast.

July and the first half of August was a ridiculously busy time for me and the company. The Congress St. building is no longer the home of Boston.com. Now, Boston.com is located in The Boston Globe building. It was incredibly sad leaving Congress St. knowing that I won't even be able to go back and visit.

The last day of June I received a message from a fellow Boston.com alumni asking if I knew anyone that maybe able to perform the type of job he described. He basically described my job. So I thought to myself, well I may as well reply; it'll probably turn out to be nothing, but it couldn't hurt. Well it didn't turn out to be nothing. It turned out to be a really good opportunity at GSN.com doing exactly what I was doing at Boston.com, but with the potential for a lot of future growth. I met with GSN the next week and had a good interview. I received an official offer only a few days later.

It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make. I love the Boston.com brand. I always have and I always will. I had so much pride whenever I told people where I worked. Sadly, it's been a rough couple of years for the newspaper industry and that ends up trickling down to all the other companies that are a part of them. There wasn't too many other things I could have grown into while this freeze is going on; so, even though it hurt, I gave my notice. Three weeks later I left Boston.com the same day the design team moved to The Globe building. Definitely the end of an era.

I am looking to the future though. I just finished my first week here at GSN.com and it looks like I made a good decision. I'm doing a lot of the same work I did at Boston.com, but just for a different audience. I'm driving to work now instead of taking the train. I haven't driven to work since High School, so it's a really nice change. I'm using a Mac now where I had been using a PC. I'm ambidextrous when it comes to OS's so I'm fine. It took the first full day to get used to it, but I'm good now. Of course, it's definitely helps getting used to a Mac by having a gorgeous cinema display to stare at all day! It helps, JUST a bit.

In addition to getting a new job, I was sick with an awful stomach bug, had all 4 wheels stolen off my car and we've had 2 weddings to go to. So the past month and a half was insane. Hopefully the 2nd half of August will be a bit slower and I'll be able to update more.

Look for some posts with some of the last things I did at Boston.com and then maybe even some work from my new job, we'll see!

Last Day of June

2008-06-30T10:06:00.007-04:00

Wow. June went by WAY too fast. We had a burst of work that was very time consuming and not entirely creative. There's two major aspects to our department. We create ads when the client doesn't have a creative team. That's what happens most of the time and that's the fun work. The 2nd aspect, that's not as much fun, but still very important is to take creative from the client and kick it up a notch. If the client doesn't have access to flash designers, it's our job to take what they give us and work with it to make it something they envisioned.

Both MA Health Connector and Brigham & Women's Hospital had submitted simple creative and we needed to convert them to expanding ad units. Mass Health Connector wanted a quiz game and B&W Hospital wanted an expanding leaderboard that would play a video. Both were challenging because we work with a 3rd party company to enable the expanding portions. They ended up working really well and looked great. I only have this one test page I can show. This was designed by MA Health Connector and it was my job to take the PDF storyboard and create this ad unit. So, while it wasn't creative work for me, it was technical work. Which is definitely fun, just a different type.

I did a couple of ads for the Mayor's Office. Again, We didn't work on the creative. We received the pre-made PSD files from the Mayor's Office and needed to convert to an animated ad unit. I really enjoy how I got the shadows animate in.

I did some ads for Boston Interiors at the beginning of the month that was, again, based on a PDF. I took the PDF and animated the storyboard. Take a look.

The rest of my time this month was spent on some really quick things like fixing copy on a real estate ad or taking some holiday logos and altering them slightly. Plus, we wrapped up our involvement with the Red Sox Internship contest. The creative and site are finished, and it was passed to tech and marketing to assemble the results. I'm thrilled with how it came out and am so happy with the response we've gotten. This was a successful contest and I'm sad to see it end today.

June was eventful and very time consuming. I'm glad to see it come to an end and I hope July will be filled with more creative ventures. I'm finally taking a vacation next week. I'm not going anywhere, but it'll be nice to catch up to some of my personal life that I don't get to spend too much time with.

Red Sox Internship

2008-05-26T09:00:00.003-04:00

This month, my big project is working with The Boston Globe on a co-brand contest. Our readers have a chance to win an internship with the Red Sox. I can't really get into the specifics of the contest just now because we haven't begun promoting it yet. What I can show you is the great teaser page graphic I've built out. This is a really fun project and I can't wait to share more.

Be sure to check out www.redsox.com/intern now!

Sox Photo Shoot Sneak Peak

2008-05-16T11:16:00.006-04:00

Here's the sneak peak photo I promised. This is one of my photos, not the awesome photographer's, but you can get the style from this a bit.

Look for a new post around next week!

Fenway Photoshoot

2008-05-15T09:19:00.004-04:00

Today I am an art director.

I'm very excited as this is my first time co-directing a project with The Boston Globe design/marketing team. I have a post all written up for what this project is all about and it's scheduled to go live when the campaign starts, so look for that in the next week or so.

What I can say in the meantime is that we need photos of Fenway Park from the inside. Since my concept for this campaign was chosen I get to work with the heads of Globe Design and our Marketing teams as an art director. We hired a photographer and this morning we'll be putting together our requests for different shots, locations and shooting styles.

I'm really excited about this concept. All the mocks I have made using old stock imagery and photoshop tricks have come out been better than I expected, so I can't even begin to imagine how amazing this will look using new shots tailored to what we specifically need.

Hopefully today's shoot will go really well and I'll have a sneak peak to show later on!

Trane Fun Facts

2008-05-13T09:10:00.003-04:00

Trane had an agency create a quiz for their site. They wanted to take this large and in depth quiz and use it in an expanding leader. Doing quick math and knowing our site's specs, that just wasn't going to work. We approached them with a new concept to keep it a little simple version. Instead of a quiz of 16 questions with answers, we changed it to 8 fun facts and shrunk the size to fit inside an expanded leader, which conveniently enough was the size of a big ad.

I had to take their huge flash file and widdle it down to the bare bones. Most people know that adding script to a flash file is hard, but what they don't realize is removing script is harder. If you remove something in one function, it'll break wherever that's being called. I took this mammoth 5-page actionscript and got it down to 2 pages. I'm very proud of this work. Even though I didn't make the script or the creative, I had to get it to do something very specific and that's not always easy.

Trane Fun Facts

Connect the dots

2008-04-02T17:28:00.003-04:00

This is an interactive ad that I made for the newly redesigned Real Estate site on Boston.com that we're calling "Homes." This ad will not be appearing on Boston.com, but instead 2 popular real estate sites, zillow and trulia. We want to get the user's attention with a game. We came up with a connect-the-dots concept that I love and we applied it to the ad.

Click to play!

March LED Madness

2008-03-27T09:54:00.015-04:00

Last year I made an LED banner for the TD Banknorth Garden. This past week, I got to make LED banners for both Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium. As a sports fan, especially a Red Sox fan, this is a really exciting opportunity. Too bad I won't be able to see the banners in person, as I wasn't one of the lucky ticket buyers in this year's off season. My husband and I waited in that virtual waiting room for well over 5 hours and sadly never got the opportunity to buy. Oh well.

We decided to base the Fenway LEDs on our "This is Boston" campaign. You can't get more NOT Boston than the Yankees, especially when sitting inside Fenway Park. These went through quite a few revisions and a couple of back and forths with MLB just to make sure everything was approved by everyone. I think the revisions worked out great and I love how these came out.

They are meant to be running side-by-side instead of on top of each other, please see this page for the correct layout.

I will also be making another LED for the Fenway scoreboard that takes these 2 individual banners and makes them one. I'll post that when completed.

Gillette's LED was a completely different concept and layout. Where we used the "This is Boston" campaign for Fenway, we're using the Mobile campaign for Gillette. Marketing had worked with an ad agency for this campaign and wanted us to use the same copy and creative for Gillette. This was a challenge as our ad size for the campaign was a big ad (300x250px) and I needed to make a 4032x48px ad for Gillette. That's a huge difference.

So, what I ended up doing was split Gillette's board in half and had them repeat the ad, one on each side of the stadium. So I made the banner 2016px wide and was able to find photos and blow up the text so it worked in a stadium setting. Going from an online ad to a larger than life LED screen encompassing a major NFL stadium, was a definite challenge, but I think it came out great. Now if only I could see it in person...

Gillette's LED Banner - Remember to scroll to the right, it's a looooooong ad

B2B Mailer

2008-03-26T10:09:00.003-04:00

My manager has to gather all the print work we've done this year for a meeting they're having in April. He's having us look through our files and pull out any print work we've done for Boston.com. I have shown the Events Campaign and the 2 Million Registered Users Campaign, but I haven't shown the B2B Mailer I created for Boston.com Travel.

Exterior

Interior

Included Luggage Tag

Please click on the images to enlarge. This is all part of a B2B mailer Boston.com Travel Sales Reps wanted to send out. Knowing that most of these advertising mailers get overlooked or thrown out, I wanted to make sure those receiving them noticed and wanted to look at them. I chose a blue that still represents the Boston.com brand, but also makes the mailer pop. If that showed up in your mailbox, you'd notice. When opened, if the receiver notices it's just an "ad," it'll end up in the trash, so I made sure to give them a little something to keep their attention, insert the luggage tag.

I really enjoyed working on this and my manager submitted it to the Step Inside Design 100 call for entries. Travel loved how it came out and sent them to well over 5000 businesses. The Sales reps received more responses than they originally thought they would. So this was a pretty successful campaign.

Patriots Place

2008-03-21T18:31:00.002-04:00

This was a rush request for Sales to show to the Patriots organization for the new Patriots Place. They wanted a homepage takeover of all the ad units. The goal was to have these ads appeal to both men and women, especially women.

I didn't want to take the old fashioned "while your husband is at the game..." approach, being a female sports fan myself. The message I wanted to send was Patriot Place is dining, shopping, entertainment, and it also just happens to have football. I think I got that message across.

I used as much of the creative from their site as I could since they would likely want to match to their site as closely as possible. I had to take apart a few graphics and reassemble to a good size for what I was creating, but I think it worked out great.

Patriots Place Takeover Mock

*note* the big ad was meant to be an expanding big ad, but due to constraints with the mock up template, we were unable to have it expand.

Cardi's Furniture

2008-03-07T10:54:00.002-05:00

This was a really fun project.

Cardi's Furniture is big in Rhode Island and they're trying to move into the Boston market with their new store in Braintree. They're known for their comedic ads. My manager, who lived in RI, said that their ads are like parodies of movies and TV shows. They created these South Park-like characters called "Ni-Ro-Pe" (pronounced nye-row-pea). This is a pre-sale which means the Sales Rep will be contacting Cardi's and they will hopefully want to buy when they see what we can do for them.

This was a great opportunity for me to flex my character animation muscles. Especially since they're basic shaped characters. It's been awhile since I've gotten to do anything like that.

Sliding Billboard Mock with Marquees
Overlay Ad Mock with Big Ad and Marquees

Take a look at some of the closer details like Ro's eyes. I love putting little details into this. Makes it more realistic, at least for a cartoon.

Sports Authority

2008-03-05T10:06:00.004-05:00

I'm really excited at how this mock turned out. One of our goals for this year is to incorporate user interactivity into our ads. The Mass Lottery ads are a good example of that.

The sales rep for Sports Authority wanted something that would drive users into the store opening in Marlborough. The mock request was for a sliding billboard with dual marquees. I always like to make each marquee unique. I hate seeing repetitious ads especially in units next to each other, running at the same time. The right marquee acts as a "replay button" for the sliding billboard allowing the user to view the billboard again after it was retracted. Knowing most users just close the ad. I added some mouse-over effects to get people's attention. I added those effects in the billboard and left marquee. In right "replay" marquee, I used a bold red and animation to gain attention. As a user of the site myself, I hate intrusive ads. I really do. So, while I want to get the users' attention and click on the ad, I want to do that with good design and smooth animation, NOT flashy tackiness.

Homepage mock

I was lucky that Sports Authority's homepage had an intro graphic that gave me a sense of their style. I was able to use their messaging for baseball and golf. Since this would be up around the time of the Marathon, I added running and used their reference to "gear up" from another graphic on their site.

As I mentioned, I really like how this turned out. I was able to adapt their graphics for use in this mock and was still able to add a touch of my style as well. Not to mention interactivity which is always fun. Coding this ad was not too bad. I hit a couple of snags in the coding of the left marquee, but I was able to work around that so it still looks exactly how I wanted it to, it's just coded differently.

Individual Ad Units
Sliding Billboard
Left Marquee
Right Marquee

Target Goodbuy

2008-02-27T10:12:00.002-05:00

I'm sure you've seen the Target ads on TV that use a version of the Beatles song "Hello Goodbye." The premise is that for every "hello" there's a "goodbuy" at Target. Sales wanted us to make a mock of 2 types of homepage ads, an overlay with big ad and a sliding billboard with dual marquees. Both ads are effective as they're right at the opening of the homepage, but depending on the creative, one could be more effective than the other.

In this case, since they're going to sell it as an addendum to their Boston Globe post-it ad, they wanted to go with post-it themed creative. In my opinion the overlay is more effective visually, but there's no "replay." When the user closes the ad, it's not coming back. The sliding billboard has one of the dual marquees as the "replay button."

I attempted to create the big ad dynamically. It was working really well, but with time constraints on when Sales needed to show the mock to Target, I had to can the whole thing and produce the same ad, sans actionscript. They look identical, but the one I had to can was a little ways away from functioning the way I wanted it to, so the timeline coded ad won over the scripted ad.

I really liked working on this campaign. Target has such a great branding strategy that it was easy to replicate. I hope they like the mocks and I get a chance to make them real.

Overlay Ad with Big Ad
Sliding Billboard with Dual Marquees (and big ad)

Children's Hospital Boston

2008-02-22T16:21:00.002-05:00

I used to work at Children's Hospital Boston when I was a Senior in college. One of our sales reps wanted to make a mock of some ads on the homepage for Children's. When I mentioned I worked there, it was logical for me to work on the ad since (even though it's been about 4 years) I know the brand. I really like what I ended up creating for them. It's simple, but effective I think. Doesn't hurt that there's a super cute kid photo at all.

Children's Hospital Boston Sliding Billboard

This is just a mock, it's not a true functioning ad, yet. Children's hasn't advertised online and when the sales rep went to speak with the Hospital reps, the meeting went really well and they seemed to really like what I did. The Sales rep mentioned that the hospital reps were jokingly saying that I created something better than their own creative team. It may have been a joke, but it's still a good feeling that they like my work.

Mass Lottery

2008-02-22T16:11:00.003-05:00

Mass Lottery is doing more ads with us this year. They had some print ads they wanted to see as online ads. They were crossword puzzles, really easy crossword puzzles. That was their tagline, "Finished with that crossword? Here's one that's even easier." Gene proposed to Mass Lotto we go with an actual functioning crossword puzzle.

I thought it was a great idea. With some minor headaches in the beginning from trying to use another person's code. I stopped and just started from scratch. It's not the perfect crossword puzzle, but it doesn't need to be. I don't need to generate random puzzles; just one for each ad. I made a total of 4 ads, and I think they're fun.

Puzzle 1
Puzzle 2
Puzzle 3
Puzzle 4

The creative was based on the print ads they already had made. Just this past week, they wanted an additional ad (not interactive) for their Celtics scratch ticket. I based it on the crossword creative to make a noticeable link between campaigns.
Celtics big ad

Cheapflights.com

2008-01-25T22:40:00.001-05:00

Most of January, Design was working on Cheapflights.com creative. They're a new client and they signed through the end of the year. We're creating a couple of different concepts for them that will run this year. One is a branding campaign that we can keep up all year long. The other is specific special events ads, like Spring Break. I've been working on the branding campaign portion. They asked us to come up with some mocks for these new campaigns, but in the meantime, they still wanted some kind of ads running in January.

Their in-house designer basic mock-ups of a snowglobe ad. They weren't to spec and they weren't in all the ad sizes they wanted to run on the site. The designer sent us all the creative they were working with. I usually don't like to purchase stock imagery of illustrations, since we're good about designing our own illustrations, but since that's what they were working with, we used the stock graphics they bought in the ads. These are based on her concept and will be running on the site through out winter.

Snowglobe concept ads:
Big Ad
Sliding Billboard
Dual Marquee 1
Dual Marquee 2
Leaderboard
Skyscraper
Headline Ad

The other concept I mentioned above was the branding campaign. That's still in the works, but here's the ad we showed cheapflights on Wednesday. The appeared to like it.
Branding Big Ad

The goal of this ad was to use iconography from their newly redesigned site. Linking their ads to their site. The icons aren't animated on their site, so it's more fun but still relevant. We have planned on making other ad units for this campaign, so look for a skyscraper, leader, etc. coming soon.

Happy New Year

2007-12-31T17:12:00.000-05:00

Today is the last day of 2007. It was a pretty good year I think. There have been better, but there have also been worse. This was definitely a busy year at work though. I think my body decided it had had enough for one year. I have been very sick for the past 2 weeks. It's "just" a cold, but according to my doctor a pretty nasty one. It stopped me from going to work for 4 days. It was horrible. I'm slowly getting better, very slowly. I have been back at work for 3 days since the holidays and luckily it's been nice and quiet.

Today was the first day that I got to work on a normal ad in awhile. It wasn't even due until the 4th. The ad is a sliding billboard for Disney on Ice. High School the Musical on Ice. They sent over a disc with a simple photoshop file. Took the elements and just reassembled and animated into a basic billboard. I like how it came out. The creative was already set, I just needed to make it web ready and animate. Simple but fun.

Disney's High School Musical on Ice

Beowulf in IMAX

2007-11-14T12:50:00.000-05:00

Jordan's Furniture advertises with us on a regular basis when a new movie is coming out in their IMAX theater. We've done Superman, Spiderman, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Beowulf is the new addition to our Jordan's IMAX theater line.

This was a tough one. Superman we used the "S" logo. With Spiderman we used the movie theater poster. Harry Potter was great because the poster was very minimal. It was the 6 main characters from the film against a dark background simple detail. The detail was pretty easy to clone, so I was able to separate the characters and arrange them as needed and play around with the movement of the background. Beowulf was a whole different bag of tricks. The background was pretty detailed so that caused some restrictions. I had to make a floating ad, big ad, leaderboard, skyscraper, and dual marquee. I started with the most difficult, the floating ad. The reason why the floating ad is the hardest, especially in this case, was because of the location of Beowulf's hand.

The sales rep wanted the animation to be of Beowulf's arm (with sword) to come down and slice the page open. 1. I can't slice the page open because it's a live site and This is floating over the page. 2. His hand is right below his mouth stabbing, not slicing. I decided that I would animate this by having his face come in first, then "stab" the page and then the movie info would come in last. Again we have a time limit of 10 seconds. I didn't have to worry about any of this for the other ad units, just the floating ad. I needed to some how make the lower portion of Beowulf's face that was missing. I went to IMDb.com, found another hi-res shot of Beowulf's face in remotely the same position. A little bit of cloning here, healing there, a dash of color balancing and a hint of colorization and I think (considering the time I had to work on it) he has a pretty convincing chin.

The rest of the ads can speak for themselves.
Floating Ad
Big Ad
Leaderboard
Skyscraper
Marquee 1
Marquee 2

This was fun, like all the movie ads are, for me at least. I love movies. I've got another one on my list of things to do. It'll be posted by next week, if not sooner.

Nemo on Ice Sliding Billboard

2007-11-14T11:40:00.001-05:00

So, aside from not being able to get this image out of my head while working on the project, I think this was incredibly fun.

This will be running on the A&E page next week to promote Disney On Ice's Finding Nemo. It will be an expanding billboard which means it'll be open on arrival to the page and it will close either on user click or automatically after 10 seconds. When it closes it'll push all the content on the page back up. I usually don't like this ad position since it's intrusive, but I love Pixar and Finding Nemo is just too cute not to like it.

Nemo Sliding Billboard

We were given a hi-res photoshop file of the poster. I had to take these static stills of the characters and animate them so they look as if they have life. It's hard and I think I was successful considering the time and size constraints. I only wish that Marlin's face was less "happy" as they're supposed to be finding Nemo. If we didn't have size or time restraints I would have liked to see the animation of their movement cleaner and less jerky.

This was really fun and I think I was able to keep the Pixar/Disney feel which is important when dealing with a client with such a high brand standard.

Alpha Omega Cutting Event

2007-11-07T14:30:00.000-05:00

Alpha Omega is holding a diamond cutting event and wanted a big ad to draw attention. The visuals are simple and elegant.

Lazare Cutting Event Ad

L.L. Bean Sled

2007-11-06T11:05:00.000-05:00

Written 9/19/07 at 11:14am - posted after Boston.com finished redesign.

L.L. Bean came to us last year with a store opening they wanted to advertise. This year they wanted to repurpose that ad, but with a different product.

See the Before and After

I really like the sled and how wintery it looks. I'm glad they wanted to update a bit.

Cod for the Cure

2007-10-23T11:03:00.002-04:00

Shreve, Crump and Low is a local jewelry company. They sell a cod pitcher that's somewhat of a signature thing. For breast cancer awareness month, they're selling a pink cod pitcher. They wanted to have something similar to some J.Lohr wine ads I did last year.

J.Lohr example - This was just a mock, the real ads were much better quality.

So I had the cod "fill up" the big ad as well.
Cod Floating/Big Ad Mock

TNT Vacations

2007-10-23T10:52:00.000-04:00

I've said before how hard it is to make ads for a campaign you don't really like. TNT Vacations is a pretty tacky brand. I guess can see why they want to go in that direction. Some people, especially vacationers go for bright colors and ocean scenes.

This was a rush request so I didn't have much time to work on the ads. TNT was incredibly picky. They needed to have a tropical view, a beach ball, and a pink font. Not having any of those things weren't an option. sigh.

Here's what I was able to do with my limited creative control
Leaderboard
Skyscraper

Sam Adams

2007-10-23T10:25:00.001-04:00

Sam Adams beer doesn't do online ads. They have ignored calls from Sales reps for years. One of our new reps really wanted to try and bring them into online by showing them that online advertising can be as beneficial as TV ads.

To gain their interest, we decided to appeal to their new Homebrew Contest. They're having a contest for people to submit their homebrew to Sam Adams. In turn, they will pick the winner and have his/her beer at Gillette Stadium for the 2008 Patriots season. Pretty nifty contest, so we wanted a strong ad to back it up.

I decided to use their style of creative they have in their TV commercials since they are very particular about their brand. I really like how it came out.

Sam Adams Homebrew Contest Big Ad

According to the Sales rep, we received a call back. That's the first time Sam Adams has returned a call to us in years of trying to sell. That's a good sign I think.

Something non-work related for a change

2007-10-22T22:13:00.002-04:00

This is obviously a blog for my daily job. I record projects and ads I work on at Boston.com. While Boston.com is obviously where I do most of my work, I do have other interests.

I've found that the past few months, maybe even years, I haven't been artistically creative. I'm creative with the ads and marketing projects I'm given at work, but I haven't really felt like doing anything for me or anybody else in awhile. When we were visiting our friends in VT last weekend, we went into this really cute curiosity shop in No. Adams, MA (20 mins away from Bennington, VT). I saw a stuffed animal of a mallard.

I love ducks. Anyone that knows me knows I have a borderline unhealthy obsession with ducks. My first word was apparently duck, not mama or dada, duck. Anyway, getting back on topic, I thought, "A mallard duck? That's awesome! I never see this type of stuffed animal. I want a picture!" So my husband was kind enough to take front, back and side photos of said, stuffed duck and I was inspired.

I don't know what it was, but I wanted to draw it. I sketched out the pose I wanted him in. Then I took the scan of the sketch into illustrator and traced the basic shapes. I then took those layers, imported them into photoshop and texturized it. I added a subject matter (courtesy of Illustration Friday), a background and there you have it.

This took my about 6 - 8 hours over the course of 2 days. I'm really happy I was able to take some time off from the usual daily grind and make something for me for a change.

Click the photo above for more detail. And now back to the usual work stuff...

Red Soxtober

2007-10-17T15:23:00.000-04:00

The Red Sox have had an amazing year. Their post season is looking a little less promising, but they're still hot enough to be featured plenty on our site. Boston feeds on sports, especially our Sox.

Marketing came to me asking for a special logo showing the Red Sox as AL East Champions. I was obviously reluctant being a superstitious Sox fan, but it's work, so I did it. That night they lost and the next morning everyone was claiming Marketing had jinxed it.

Luckily, they won that night and we did in fact win the AL East Championship for the first time since 1995. The banner was up the day after.

Sales wanted to be prepared as well. The following mock up was only going to be shown to potential buyers if the Sox were looking really good heading into the ALCS. They aren't quite performing like they should so it's not looking like this will have a chance to be sold, but it's still pretty fun. It could work for the Patriots who are looking much more likely to bring a Championship home.

Congratulations mock up for potential Client

Alpha Omega is also hopping on the Red Sox band wagon. These ads have been running on our site since the beginning of October and are now running on MLB.com.

AO Sox Jewelry Big Ad (also running on MLB.com)
AO Sox Jewelry Marquee (also running on MLB.com)
AO Sox Jewelry Intro Ad (ran on Oct. 12)
AO Sox Jewelry Email (sent out Oct. 15)

And last, but not least, probably the most fun ad I've done this season. It was in the Globe Monday, Oct. 15. I'm not crazy about the copy they came up with, but I like the layout and how I incorporated simple graphics.

Red Sox Print Ad

Nominated for an MITX Award

2007-10-05T14:25:00.000-04:00

We just heard that we've been nominated for a MITX award for our Events Campaign. Our award category is Best Integrated Campaign. Wish us luck!

I've been nominated and won 2 other MITX awards with co-workers for Boston.com.

In 2005, we won the Cross-Media Campaign Strategy award for "Boston.com's Campaign for a World Series." I contributed to the award by making ads for The Boston Globe as well as creating a "Believe" poster that was distributed to over 30,000 Fenway Faithful during one of the Post Season games at Fenway Park. As the Red Sox went on to win the 2004 World Series, we began to notice my "Believe" sign everywhere. We saw it in windows of buildings, in a Vanity Fair photo collage, the cover of Sports Illustrated, in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. We recieved a letter from Red Sox co-owner Larry Lucchino thanking us for our loyalty.

In 2004, we won the Integrated Interactive Media Strategy award for "Boston.com Real Estate." That was actually my very first project at Boston.com. I was hired as the "flash-go-to" person back then and I was thrown into the deep end by having to take this campaign and making some Pointroll interactive ad units. I did, I got to keep my job, and the rest is history.

These award nominations mean a lot to me, and I'm sure, the rest of the company. It shows continued appreciation for the work we do. Whether we win the award this year or not, it shows that we are very capable at what we do. Thanks!

Six Flags Fright Fest

2007-09-17T10:40:00.000-04:00

Halloween may still be more than a month away, but in New England as soon as the leaves start to change color and fall to the ground, it's hard not to think of that scary time of year.

Six Flags New England is having their Fright Fest from Sept 29 - Oct 28 and they wanted to run a campaign on Boston.com. They didn't have too much of an idea of what they wanted to do so they asked us to come up with a concept. They have a few "rides" that are the center of attention at Fright Fest that I figured they wanted to feature in their ads. What's great about each of these rides is they have their own logo. The rides are Wicked Woods, Midnight Mansion, and Creature Cove. What I did was have their Fright Fest logo shake, and have the logos rotate with a "goo" type of mask, so they melt into one another.

The client was fed the first pass and had a very minor change. These are the final ads in the package.

Floating Ad with Leaderboard
Skyscraper
Marquee

I think they came out pretty well and hopefully this will get some users to take a trip for a fun and scary Halloween to Six Flags.

Boston Fashion Week Update

2007-09-11T09:25:00.000-04:00

It's currently Fashion Week here in Boston and all parties involved in the mini-site construction have aligned and the site is live, kicking, and works wonderfully.

http://www.boston.com/advertisers/buick

Thanks to my co-worker Greg for coding everything and sticking to my design so flawlessly. Also for creating a completely amazing photo gallery application.

Editorial Content

2007-09-07T09:19:00.000-04:00

In one of my past posts, I mentioned that I would show some of my favorite editorial projects I had made. I realize now that I had never posted them. I was reminded this morning when the editorial editor for travel asked for my flash file of a previous application I had made. They need to update for this Fall and I obviously am not available for edits. I won't go into too much detail here since the situation is explained in the previous post mentioned, but as of last January, we no longer create editorial content. I am strictly a designer for Sales & Marketing. It's better that way, but I still made a bunch of different projects for editorial that I think were really fun. Listed below are a few of my favorites, starting with the project requested this morning.

Fall in New England (2006)

Your Perfect Beach (2006)

Where They Went (2004)

Freedom Trail Tour (2004)

Academy Awards (2006)

Crossing Divides (2004)

Globe 100 (2005)
Fall Arts (2006)
July 4th Fireworks (2006)
New York Times Building Showcase (2005) *freelance* (this has been slightly altered by nytimes, but functionality originally designed remains the same)
Ski Map (2006)
Pet-Friendly Travel (2006)

That's about all I have for now. Enjoy looking at the past.

The Big Move

2007-09-06T17:08:00.001-04:00

The Boston Globe has "The Big Move" every Fall. It's a special section in the paper used to drive people to our Real Estate (RE) section. RE isn't always the most profitible portion of our company so this is a huge event for The Globe, and, ultimately us. They have print ads that are being run in the paper that wouldn't really translate well online. We took their logo in-line concept and decided to "draw" upon that.

http://www.boston.com/images/ads/Marketing/realestate/RE_bigAd_090607.html

It's very simple and minimalistic, but I think when you're promoting something like a RE section in the paper that not everyone is getting, the key is to have it be interesting. The user will want to follow the pencil and see what it's getting at. Hopefully it'll inspire some people to visit The Big Move section online, or maybe even buy a paper.

Boston Fashion Week

2007-09-05T22:54:00.001-04:00

September 7 - 14th is Boston Fashion Week, presented by Buick. This was a sold campaign. We hadn't mocked anything up for Buick or the Boston Fashion Week committee. The sales rep sold the client on the promise that we'd deliver a mini-site. Time was very short and we had less than a week to come up with something. I worked with our HTML developer and came up with a concept that would work with his coding and wouldn't hinder the creativity of my design. I'm really excited to see this up and running online in the coming week, but for now here's a screenshot of what it will look like. The top two photos are just for proof of concept. They will be replaced with photos from the event.

http://www.boston.com/images/ads/bostonFashionWeek/homepage_thirdPass.html

Boston.com Cars campaign

2007-08-13T19:15:00.000-04:00

Lately we've been able to do some pretty fun things for Marketing. The last project was for the Events campaign.

This time around, we worked with the same ad agency. Again, they created the concept and we executed the online portion. There are a total of 7 online ads. The saw concept ad (below) is what we're featuring on the LED board at Fenway Park. This is the 2nd time I've had an ad running on the LED board at Fenway (I'll link to that ad at another time). That ad, plus the other concepts will be running on other sites such as Yahoo.

I wish we would have been able to create our own concept, but Marketing believes that with our time constraints it's better to have an agency to work with. I really do enjoy this campaign, so I really don't mind it being from an agency.

Concept 1: Saw
Leaderboard
Big Ad

Concept 2: Boston Driver
Leaderboard
Big Ad

Concept 3: Eyes
Leaderboard
Big Ad

Concept 4: Quick
Leaderboard

It's clean and colorful. Understated and it says more than the flashiest ads ever couold.

Bibendum Floating Ad

2007-08-13T18:51:00.000-04:00

Sullivan Tire sells Michelin tires like most auto supply companies. Bibendum is the Michelin Man. Sullivan Tire is a Red Sox sponsor and they seem to enjoy baseball themed ads. I have done a couple of other ads for them and they've all been baseball themed. This ad is no different. What is different is they wanted Bibendum to be animated. Michelin is going with a 3D Bibendum these days and since we don't do 3D animation, this was kinda tricky. Some subtle gradients and a couple of well placed fills and we had a 3D-like 2-dimensional Bibendum. They wanted him to pitch a ball at the screen and have it morph into a tire. I WISH I had more than a couple of days to work on this but the sales rep was pretty set on a date and didn't want to allow more time. I did what I could in the time I was given.

Click here to see the ad

If given more time I would have worked on his pitching more. Now, it's just one object animated to seem as though it's throwing. I would have more than one object (shoulder, elbow, arm, wrist, and hand) all moving together and expanding/rotating as needed for the correct throwing motion. Sadly, in the online advertising field, especially when connected to a media company, time isn't readily given. Quicker is better.

I still think this is successful, but given another week, it may have been better.

2 Million Registered Users

2007-08-02T11:03:00.001-04:00

Boston.com now has over 2 million registered users. It's a huge milestone and marketing wants to be able to capitalize on that success. Businesses large and small advertise on Boston.com now without even knowing how many users we have. With 2 million registered users, we're able to target specific advertising based on age, sex, location, income, etc. Anything you choose to submit when you register with the site. In that respect it good for both big and small, local businesses to invest in online advertising with us. To get to the word out, Marketing requested some mocks from design as possible campaign ads. All 4 of us (3 full-time and 1 freelancer), submitted ideas. I was lucky enough to have my design chosen. I have created ads that will be appearing sometime next week in the Globe, Globe Magazine and the Metro. There will also be online ads that will be featured on sites such as yahoo.

This is one of the ads being featured in print. Click on the photo to see full size image.

Here's a link to the first pass at an online ad. Still not approved, but along the lines of how it will end up looking

Suffolk Downs

2007-08-02T10:20:00.000-04:00

Sales would like to approach Suffolk Downs about possibly buying a "roadblock" on the Sports Section Front. A roadblock is really another term for takeover. Since my manager is out this week, we're taking on a lot of his stuff too, so I didn't quite get to do as much as I would have liked to with this mock-up, but I think it's still got the right look.

http://www.boston.com/images/ads/suffolkDowns/mock_sports_080107.html

Another issue I had with this is the horse animation. I think I have the motion down, but because of the logo's ending position, animating the legs weren't as realistic as I would have liked. Because of time and the nature of the logo, I had to let it go. If they buy, I'll have to see if I can do something more realistic.

I also think that the ads all together are a bit too much animation going on at the same time, but the roadblocks are usually only run for a day, then the ads are placed separately on other article pages. Individually these ads work, and that's what is most important; how they'll look after their debut.

Busy Summer

2007-07-24T23:04:00.000-04:00

Summers at work are traditionally slow. Each year there's a large rush to get work in before everyone decides to go on vacation. This year is completely different. It seems like everyday we're getting in 3-6 requests. Not just simple edits, revisions or new ads from templates; no, we're getting in brand new requests and mocks. It's like the sales team decided not to take any vacations this summer and haul in as many new campaigns as possible. I haven't had too much time to post anything I've done since the last I wrote. I was also on vacation the first half of last week.

Today I finished a mock-up for Bath Fitter that I really hope they buy. I like how this came out. I really like when I get to use illustration in an ad. Too many companies are heavy on the photos and try to cram as much text as size restrictions will allow. Since this is just a mock, I took the Sales rep's suggestions, took a peek at the company's site and went for it. Here's the result:

http://www.boston.com/images/ads/bathFitter/mock_halfPage_072307.html

My co-workers seemed to like it, but they both thought the "old" bathroom was more interesting visually and that the "new" bathroom was too sterile. I think they were half teasing, but I can see their point. If I had another day to work on this without falling behind in my other assignments, I would have liked to have added a bit more to the shower walls, maybe some loop rug textures. Maybe if they buy I'll add more detail.

June Homepage Logos

2007-06-21T16:54:00.001-04:00

Like I said in my previous post, June has been hectic and I haven't had much time, but I was able to do a couple of easy fun logos.

Chosen:

Father's Day

First Day of Summer

Happy Summer! Hope it doesn't go by too quickly.

Alternate:

Summer Ads

2007-06-20T16:46:00.000-04:00

June has been a really busy month for me with large campaigns and rush ads, so the next couple of ads were a welcome relief. Summer starts tomorrow and clients are getting ready.

Maine Summer Vacations wanted a leaderboard showcasing some of their hotels. It's a simple ad, but it's classy and will get people in the mood to relax on vacation.

Cruise Travel Outlets have this site they wanted us to make a Boston Traveler email from. It's a pretty harsh site on the eyes so I prettied the email up a bit and worked on the layout. I really liked making this ad. It was almost relaxing believe it or not. Boston Traveler Email.

Lowes Grand Openings

2007-06-13T16:29:00.000-04:00

We pitched an interactive expanding beltway ad position to Lowes 2 weeks before their store's Grand Opening in Saugus. They liked it and bought a campaign. This was one of the fastest turn arounds I've had to do since they needed it days before it was running. I had 3 days to complete a large package comprised of the expanding beltway, a sliding billboard, leaderboard, skyscraper and marquee ad positions. Various versions of each since the grand opening was only one day and they wanted to run before and after.

Marquee Example
Sliding Billboard (scheduled on the homepage by a 3rd party company)
Expanding Beltway
Big Ad
Leaderboard
Sponsorship Box
Skyscraper

This was a lot of work, and I'll need to update for their W. Bridgewater store opening on June 28th, but I really like how it came out and the functionality of the expanding beltway and the sliding billboard.

Gorilla Family

2007-06-07T16:20:00.000-04:00

Franklin Park Zoo has an exhibit called Gorilla Family. They wanted to promote this on our site with an ad package. They have a great website and I was able to use a lot of their creative to keep the look and feel, connecting our ad to their site. I really enjoyed doing these ads.
Floating Ad
Big Ad
Leaderboard
Skyscraper
Landing Spot

Orbitz Mock-Up

2007-06-05T16:12:00.000-04:00

Our Travel rep really wanted to propose a floating ad to Orbitz. They met and expressed interest in having a Floating Ad similar in concept to the ending of their current TV ad (see it on YouTube).

That was a challenge since a) I had about 3 days and b) they did it using some 3D program. We don't do 3D. I had taken 3D classes and could possibly have done some basic modeling and animation, but not in 3 days time and we wouldn't have been able to get a 3D program anyway.

So, that meant a lot of finagling and adjusting, but I think this translates pretty well.
http://www.boston.com/images/ads/orbitz/mock_floatingAd_060507.html

Saved Account

2007-06-05T16:02:00.000-04:00

It's happens, on occasion, that a client won't be happy with the amount of clicks an ad will generate. They will talk about pulling their online campaign because they can't see investing money in something that doesn't seem to be paying off.

AAA had created some pretty basic online ads. Basic to the point of being a tad boring. This would be the reason no one was clicking through to their site. The sales rep asked if I could "flash" it up a bit in hopes of salvaging their campaign.

They were running 2 ads, a mortgage ad and a student loan ad. They liked what I came up with and decided to stay on. So far click rates have increased and seem to be doing well.

http://www.boston.com/images/ads/AAA/mortgage_bigAd_060507.html
http://www.boston.com/images/ads/AAA/federalPlus_bigAd_060707.html

They're both pretty simple concepts, but a user is much more inclined to look at (and then click on) an ad that catches their attention in a fun way. I really enjoyed working on these and I'm glad I could salvage the account.

Sprint Homepage Takeover

2007-06-04T15:40:00.000-04:00

I always find homepage takeovers a hit or miss situation. Sometimes they can be a hit (see jetblue), but sometimes they can be a miss. The client or the sales person in this case, will focus on their most recognizable aspect. In Sprint's case, that would be yellow. A lot of yellow.

I had originally done this without the backtile, just the ads and it was fine. But I received an email from the sales rep saying they also wanted to show Sprint the backtile with their color and logo. *sigh*

Here is an example of designs I do that I may not be particularly happy with, but will hopefully get us a sale.

Events Campaign

2007-06-01T14:13:00.000-04:00

Around the middle of May, our Marketing manager came over and informed us that we had inherited a "Station Domination" from The Boston Globe. Apparently the Globe had bought an advertising package where they would control all the ad positions on the Commuter Rail and Red/Silver line platforms at South Station. They never used it and so they gave it to us. Marketing decided they wanted to promote the boston.com/events page. It works, it's great and they wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. We, along with Marketing, worked with an advertising firm to solidify a concept. We then took the concept and created all the mechanicals needed for the campaign. The first step was to work on all the print ads since a printer in CA was being used, they needed extra lead time. We sent them off and got all the test prints back and June 1, 2007, the Station Domination began.

Take a look at the photos here.

After we were able to get the print portion of the campaign all set up, it was my job to do all the online ads. Here's a couple of examples:

http://www.boston.com/images/ads/eventsCampaign/24_sky_052507.html
http://www.boston.com/images/ads/eventsCampaign/30_leader_052507.html

A few people didn't know if we'd be able to take this challenge, but I think we handled it incredibly well and have a lot to show for it.

How to Buy a Diamond

2007-05-21T15:16:00.003-04:00

*update and new link at the bottom*

I believe I've mentioned before that Alpha Omega is one of our largest clients. I am their primary (and usually, only) designer. Last year they had the idea of coming up with a "how to buy a diamond guide." They wanted it to look similar to Daily Candy's site and newsletters. My co-worker is an illustrator and she uses watercolors all the time. She designed the current diamond guide. While it's cute, it's not very functional. I added a little flash element (they wanted sparkles) and they were happy. Now they've realized that this is a bit on the girly side. The majority of their target audience are men that are going to be buying the diamonds for the women, not women buying diamonds for themselves. So, we needed to make the "mens" diamond guide. I would rather it be non-gender specific so I came up with the following.

The new and improved How To Buy A Diamond Guide.

This is still being updated, but look for this link to be fully functional in the next week. I love it. This is the type of stuff I really like to do. Hopefully they'll like it and we can get it linked up and viewed.

They were also going through a redesign of their website and needed us to make a temporary portal site for the ads to take them to. They wanted to base it off of and include the Diamond Guide.

Alpha Omega Portal Site

Bud Select Boston

2007-05-21T15:01:00.000-04:00

We're pitching to Budweiser using their "Select" brand. This is their very stylized logo:

With their other ads for TV and print being the only reference points, it became clear that turning the crown into something was our best bet. We're Boston.com, and about as "Boston" as you can get, so I opted to do something "boston-y" for the crown as opposed to something generic. I thought about the skyline and took different buildings into consideration. The following sketch is what I came up with.

That was sketched on paper. I scanned it into the computer and cleaned it up in photoshop. Added some filters and made it the "bud crown" red and voila we have a floating ad.
http://www.boston.com/images/ads/budweiser/select/AE_floatingAd_051107.html

Movie Floating Ads

2007-05-08T15:24:00.000-04:00

The past few weeks we've been getting a lot of requests for summer movie floating ads. I take on half and my co-workers (and boss) take on the other half. My co-workers have done floating ads for Transformers and Hot Fuzz.

I started the blockbuster season off with a A&E takeover mock-up for
The Simpsons' Movie

Then we had a Jordan's Furniture presents Spiderman 3 in IMAX floating ad with Leaderboard landing position (feat. their "See...Hear...Experience." tagline)
(simplified version that was approved)

Then I did a floating ad for Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean, At the World's End

And today, I just finished my absolute favorite floating ad thus far for Pixar/Disney's Rataouille

Even though floating ads by nature are pretty annoying and interfere with usability, they can still be fun. I really really enjoy doing these mock-ups. Even if they never get sold, this is where I can be the most creative.

Pets as a marketing tool

2007-04-12T14:01:00.000-04:00

I don't do as many real estate ads as I used to. They're tend to be on the basic side when requested and something that my co-workers usually do since it doesn't require Flash as much. However, this week has been kinda crazy and I've had some downtime since I finished the majority of my work at the beginning of the week, so I've taken on some of their projects to help out. This ad was one of them. It's pretty basic and nothing special at all. It just goes to show that when you put a cute pet in an ad, it sells.

Enjoy.

More baseball related work

2007-04-09T16:28:00.000-04:00

So like I've mentioned before Boston.com is a very baseball friendly site and most baseball design related work comes to me, because I'm a Sox fan whereas no one else in my dept. follows the game at all. Well, if you remember last year's blimp crash, the Hood Airship hasn't flown since. That is until now, this season the blimp is back for Sox games. We mocked up a floating ad for Hood if they'd like to advertise. I hope they buy since this is actually one of the more fun (less invasive) floaters I've done.

The blimp is back.

Check it out.

Baseball Season begins

2007-04-03T10:19:00.001-04:00

Just a quick post to let you know that baseball season has begun and in Boston (and especially to the users of Boston.com) that's huge. This year, we designed countdown clocks. There were 3. Two designed by myself and one designed by my co-worker. I coded all 3. Currently only one is online. It's counting down to the Red Sox homeopener at Fenway. The other 2 were for baseball's opening day, which was obviously yesterday and obviously they missed the deadline. Sad, because I really liked them. Here is the clock currently available to bloggers.

And here are the 2 expired countdown clocks. Set your computer clock back to Apr 1st, 2007 if you'd like to see them in their countdown mode.

It's finally February

2007-02-12T15:00:00.000-05:00

January was a very long month for my husband and I. We had family health issues on both sides and it obviously took a toll on our mental and emotional states. But, it's a new month and I'm back and feeling ok.

There's been quite a bit I had worked on while being away from the online world. Some corporate stuff, some marketing stuff. I got a cat who has been the focus of quite a few photo ops.

Let's start with Valentine's Day since that's the focus of advertising the entire month of February. I created quite a few ads for Alpha Omega. They're one of our largest clients and luckily they allow me to be pretty creative with their ads. We decided that we wanted to build out non-themed ads, but place a little "Remember Valentine's Day on February 14th!" drop down. I created about 40 ads in the past 2 weeks, but here are some highlights.

Levitt Engagement Ring (big ad)

Tycoon Engagement Ring (big ad)

Valentine's Day themed Diamond Studs (marquee)

Pearl Necklace (marquee)

Three Diamond Bands (leaderboard)

Fantasy Reality 3 stone rings (big ad)

Lazar diamond floating ad (on hold until March)

The last two ads are "online counterpart ads" to print ads I receive in PDF form. I then interpret and come up with the animated version. I try to be as creative as I can with the restrictions that are often in place. I also came up with an ad for their "official jeweler and timekeeper of the Boston Red Sox" campaign. It's still in the approval stages, but I like it.

*update* this ad was in fact approved and several new ad units are being created with the same creative. This ad will not only be appearing on boston.com, but redsox.com, mlb.com and other Alpha Omega advertising sites such as the Boston Phoenix.

For Valentine's Day we want to run some logos, of course, on the homepage. I submitted 4 based on ideas marketing had. They're going with the first one, my favorite is the 2nd. I did a couple of others, but they were along the same lines as #1.

So apparently Boston.com is having a baby boom of sorts. A lot of our staff is having babies and Marketing wanted to welcome the little ones in to the world in style. I created boys and girls onesies. I need to take a photo of the actual product, but in the meantime, here's what they sort of look like:

and last, but certainly not least, my kitty. The muse for my photography these past few weeks. Not work related at all, but who cares. She's cute.

happy new year!

2006-12-28T11:31:00.000-05:00

Because of the beta redesign of the site, we can't put up any flash logos just yet. They're worried it may break the site. So I made this static logo instead. Still pretty nice, but I miss my falling confetti

jetBlue

2006-12-28T11:17:00.000-05:00

http://www.boston.com/images/ads/jetblue/homepageMock_110906.html

Every once and awhile we'll try to get a client by showing them what we're capable of. Sales came to me and asked if I could do a homepage takeover for jetblue. Since we don't have any of their creative or instuction from them I try to keep it simple and just get their branding across. I recreated jetblue's patterns from their plane tails to showcase their style and added their logo for simple branding. For fun I made the marquee ad (top right) interactive. The big ad (middle, center) is static just to show they'll have the entire page to themselves for advertising. Then, of course, is the floating ad. This one is their Airbus A320, I illustrated the plane, flying across the page and landing in the static ad. A lot of users hate when we have the background tile takeover, so I made simple clouds floating over our homepage background color. I think this enhances the ad, more so than plastering their logo all over the backtile.

This was probably my favorite mock to date.

healthworks

2006-12-28T11:07:00.000-05:00

so i haven't really shown any corporate ads i've done. i've done a lot. i could fill a whole blog about all the ads I've done for alpha omega. but i'll save that for another day when i have more time. here's a couple of ads i just did for healthworks. the quality is a bit off because we have such strict standards on file size. only 30k is allowable for a leaderboard and a skyscraper. since it's flash, i can squeeze out 35k, but no more.

http://www.boston.com/images/ads/healthworks/leader_122806.html
http://www.boston.com/images/ads/healthworks/sky_122806.html

Bulletin Board

2006-12-28T10:48:00.000-05:00

so my company is fairly young. in general there's not too many people over 40 and most people are in their late 20s and early 30s. that means there's a lot of weddings and babies. we have a bulletin board in the kitchen which had really outdated photos of people that are no longer at the company. they want to update. one side of the board for babies, the other for weddings (etc.) so they asked me to come up with a couple of variations to our logo.

i really enjoyed how the babies one came out. i think it's quite cute. for the celebrations, i just pulled symbols from illustrator so i could get working on some other more important things.

Best of 2006

2006-12-27T13:00:00.000-05:00

Well as 2006 draws to a close, so too does my relationship with editorial design. A few months ago we were transitioned from editorial/content/product designers to either editorial or sales & marketing. After many meetings and interviews, I chose to stay on with sales & marketing. As such, I will no longer be making any editorial designs as of Jan. 31st.

In a few days, I will update this blog with some of my 'best of' editorial content I created as a farewell.

In the meantime, we're still getting some last minute requests. This header for the site's 'Best of 2006' is going to be one of the last site headers I'll make. *le sigh*

Holiday Logos

2006-12-22T15:58:00.000-05:00

so for the holidays or any type of fun event, we tend to make fun logos, a la google (although, apparently we did it before google, but whatever...)

i made one for hanukkah, first day of winter, christmas and kwanzaa. the first day of winter never got to go up because we needed to do another logo that day, but they're going to use it for the first big snow storm.

i really like the winter logo (click on it for more of the other logos i'm talking about next). it's fun and not to overwhelming. the hanukkah one is also great. simple, to the point. the christmas one, i disagree with their choice. they went with the santa hats, which to be is so overused and bland. i would have gone with the lights or the tree lights. then kwanzaa was really hard to design. i would have gone with the one with the cup, but their choice isn't too bad. all in all, some decent ideas i think.

i couldn't do flash. because of the redesign, everything is still in 'super-simple' mode. so flash would have been too annoying for the programmers to schedule, eh. whatever.

Media Bowling League

2006-12-21T16:19:00.001-05:00

This site was in desperate need of a makeover. We're a very laid back company and I wanted to do something fun that I knew everyone would appreciate. My inspiration came from the 50s obviously. Bowling was so big back then and the designs were fun and funky. I brightened up the colors a bit, more 80s than anything. The flash was the tough part, you can see the design in all it's functioning glory here. I like to say that there are 2 kinds of Flash people; Designers and Developers. I'm definitely more of a designer than a developer. I'm not a programmer, I don't pretend to be. I was able to figure out some nifty XML stuff though, and here's the result. I'm happy with it. I would have loved to do some additional stuff, but my skills in programming can only take me so far.

Below is the "before" shot of the old site. Decent, but obviously needed updating.