CONTENTS Who I am & What I do DeliveryCrowd Practice Makes Perfect College Radio Day R&R, Inc. Lettering Enthusiast Lessons Learned
WHO I AM & WHAT I DO
Well, hi, I’m Bri Piccari, graphic & interactive designer & front end dabbler. I’m a problem solving addict, turning over to the side of front end development. I doodle icons, get way too excited over lettering, and have a playlist for everything. I also drink (way too much) coffee. We’ll call it caffeine fueled creativity.
Visit me at bripiccari.me, e-mail me: hello@bripiccari.me Let’s get social. You can find me on:
EXPERIENCE
To date, I’ve completed five internships, a number of freelance projects and given presentations on importance of learning to work in multidisciplinary teams. I’m constantly learning and looking for new trends and styles to dip my toes in. I like to consider myself a hybrid designer, but I don’t think I’m quite there yet. For now, I’ll call myself a front end dabbler.
DeliveryCrowd Lancaster, Pennsylvania Food Services Start-Up
Role(s) Played Graphic & Interactive Designer Front end Developer Illustrator Software(s) Used Photoshop CS6 Illustrator CS6 InDesign CS6 Sublime Text Editor Omnigrae Twitter Bootstrap Collateral Created Branding & Stationary Marketing Materials Responsive Website Mobile Application Animations
Beginning in the summer of 2012, another designer & myself worked with a local start up company and two computer science students as part of the Software Productization Center at Millersville University. The company came to us with a name. We created branding, a mobile application, responsive website, stationary and marketing materials. The SPC program began in May 2012 and lasted until December. DeliveryCrowd then invited me to continue the internship for another semester, ending my internship with them in May 2013.
At the beginning of the program, the company had an idea of a name, and ideas and aspirations. We worked with them to create branding, marketing materials, a responsive website built off Twitter Bootstrap, a mobile application, and a few additional materials. It was a great learning experience to start from the very beginning and having it all unfold as it did.
Practice Makes Perfect Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania Inovāt Internship Project
Role(s) played Graphic & Interactive Designer Front end Developer Illustrator Software(s) used Photoshop CC Illustrator CC Terminal Sublime Text Editor Compass & SASS/SCSS Collateral Created Responsive Website Additional Websites showcasing various HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript technologies
During my last semester of college I interned with a digital agency in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania (about thirty minutes west of Lancaster), Inovāt. I was assigned a self-directed project, and this is the result. I love learning new technologies but felt the small experiments I did to learn didn’t have enough substance to stand alone in my portfolio. So why not create a small micro-site specifically for them?
Speaking of internships
I never had the ‘fetch me a coffee’ internship experience. During time spent at each of my five internships, I had experience with re-designing (or creating from scratch) a website reflecting the company I was interning for, along with active client work. Hands-on is an understatement. Every step of the process, I sat in on meetings, gave input and worked collaboratively with respective teams.
College Radio Day
Worldwide Non-Profit Organization
Role(s) played Illustrator & Graphic Designer Front End Developer Software(s) used Photoshop CC Illustrator CC Edge Animate CC Sublime Text Editor Collateral Created Limited Edition Run Poster Adobe Edge Animations
College Radio Day (now known as the College Radio Foundation) is an international non-profit raising awareness and support for college, and high school, radio stations. While working towards my degree at Millersville, I was a college radio DJ for seven semesters for the university’s station 91.7 FM WIXQ. I developed a strong passion for college radio and was incredibly thrilled to work with the organization. During the summer of 2013, I was asked to design a poster specifically for an Indie Go Go campaign to fund a CD corroboratively made by various stations worldwide. I later took the poster a few steps further by using the illustrations as a chance to learn about Adobe Edge Animate (this has been tied in with my Practice Makes Perfect project.)
R&R, Inc. Fictitious Outdoors Company Role(s) played Mastermind Graphic Designer Front End Developer Software(s) used Adobe Illustrator CC Adobe Photoshop CC Terminal HTML5/SCSS JQuery Sublime Text Editor Collateral Created Case Study Website
This case study created for an outdoors company website encompasses the fictitious local brand, while acting as an e-commerce solution for users. Although the brand has the charm of a mom and pop shop, it combines this with the ambitions of a larger company. The company often hosts local events for their customers, such as the current promotion, a yoga weekend retreat. Sideways scrolling is not always the best model for a website solution, I felt it really helped tell a story, which is what the brand is about. Just as we read left to right, the page continues
to scroll left, until you reach the very end. The horizontal design adds a lot to the story telling factor. As a designer, this site raised a few challenged I hadn’t yet come across, the first being, how do you tell a story horizontally without seeming like the different pieces are chunks thrown together awkwardly? How do you accomplish that goal of a smooth transition to each section? As a developer, the concept of a sideways scrolling site was a new, but exciting, challenge. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for some time, so getting the chance was exciting The hardest part was starting. (Hint: the secret is a width wrapper way larger than your typical website, and having a fixed or auto height).
Lettering Enthusiast Role(s) played Graphic Designer Illustrator Software(s) used Adobe Illustrator CC Adobe Photoshop CC Wacom Tablet Bamboo Rdio Collateral Created Various posters
Over the last year I’ve really taken a liking to lettering and have been trying my hand at it. I love to dabble. I love to try new things, I love to fail at doing new things. It’s all experience and something to learn from. A few years ago, I started playing around with hand lettering and digital typography alteration. It’s not just understanding the fundamentals of typography, but understanding where (and how) to break them. It also pushed me to further learn Adobe Illustrator, and understand it’s capability for hand drawn elements. After countless tutorials and Skillshare courses, I began to create my own process.
Process creation is always interesting. Sure, many people have process, and processes that they call their own. But, when you go and try to take an existing process and either tear it apart or manipulate it to be your own, you’re really immersing yourself in that part of design thinking. After understanding how numerous other artists go about ideation, execution, etc., I began to figure out what worked for me.
Lessons Learned Digital Publication Role(s) played Writer Graphic Designer Illustrator Software(s) used Adobe Illustrator CC Adobe Photoshop CC Adobe InDesign CC Wacom Bamboo Tablet
Although it only has three articles at the moment, each were written myself. The first, “You Got Your Code in my Design�, is a written component of a presentation I gave in April of 2014 at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research. The abstract was selected from 4,000 applicants. At the conference, I was the only presenter presenting on graphic design or front end development. The article details the time I spent working with the Software Productization Course and, comparing that to a course I later took that was based on the Center.
Collateral Created Digital Publication Print Publication
YOU GOT YOUR CODE IN MY DESIGN. DESIGN
A MULTIDISCIPLINARY LOOK @ DESIGN
CODE
Throughout the last two years, I’ve bounced between development and design. With that in mind, I came up with an infographic to help explain the difference and similarities between the two fields. The last article was a blog post I wrote while interning at Inovāt. Something I love about my field is that it’s necessary to always keep yourself motivated to continuing learning once your formal education is over. Technology is always changing, as well as the user’s needs.
Never Stop Learning “I just like to know things.” – Op-Ed by Bri Piccari “Over the last four years (five if you count the art school year), I’ve come to realize design is just one of those fields in which you can never stop learning...” If you do, you’ll easily get left in the dust wondering why on earth you’d want to design anything mobile-first. What I know, right now, will probably be outdated a year, six months, maybe even a week from now. Technology changes everything, it’s impossible to guess where we’ll be in five years, even one. If college has taught me anything, it’s that you have to at least like what you do. Like it
enough to spend hours after work learning new concepts and ideas to keep up with the crowd. After all, if you’re going to have to motivate yourself to keep learning about it for the rest of your design career, you’re going to have the hardest time if you don’t at least enjoy it. I’ve come to grips with the fact that what I’ll know when I graduate this May won’t be applicable in a year, maybe even six months from then. A
This isn’t all I do. Or I’ve done. Or will do. Get in touch: hello@bripiccari.me www.bripiccari.me blog.bripiccari.me twitter: @brisayswhaat
All works in this nifty little book are property of Bri Piccari, and/or the corresponding client. © 2014 Bri Piccari
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