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ABOUT

SOME THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ME.

I'M ERICA, A DESIGNER AND DEVELOPER BASED IN PYLESVILLE, MD.

Where the heck is Pylesville you wonder? Well - don’t worry about it, the only
people that know about it or where it is are the people that live here. But more
about me....I am a quick-thinking, focused designer passionate about building
clean, valid and responsive websites and user interfaces. A “jack-of-all-trades”
I have the skills to build sites from scratch, from concept to launch. I have
been designing websites as a hobby since the early days of HTML 4.0 (1997 or
so…) and have been designing seriously for the past few years, through the
completion of my B.S. in Digital Media and Web Technology. Oh, and I love
coffee, dogs and crossword puzzles.

MY PROCESS AND TOOLS

DISCOVER
&
PLAN

PROTOTYPE
&
DESIGN

DEVELOP
&
TEST

LAUNCH
&
MANAGE

DISCOVER
&
PLAN

Ask lots of questions, learn about the client’s industry and figure out what the
client is after. Try to gain a deep and intuitive sense of their goals &
competitors. Plan out future tactics, budget, timeline and technology needs for
the project.

PROTOTYPE
&
DESIGN

Plan in hand - start skteches and wireframes testing out layout options and
visual hierarchy. Move onto the basic site design using Photoshop & Illustrator
constantly refining until objectives are met with a user-friendly design.

DEVELOP
&
TEST

Convert the design into a functioning pages built to clean web standards using
HTML & CSS. In most cases, other technologies are typically used such as
JavaScript, JQuery, AJAX, PHP, MySQL, Facebook API & GoogleMaps API

LAUNCH
&
MANAGE

Once the development is complete, the project is launched on a live web server.
Projects are monitored and continuously re-evaluated. Every user counts -
analytics are measured and optimizations are made accordingly.





PORTFOLIO

SOME OF THE WORK I'VE DONE


All Web Logos & Branding Graphics
Web Design Jess Cleans
Logo Design Keystone Generators
Graphic Design Jess Cleans
Logo Design Clean B's
Graphic Design Clean B's
Web Design Big Brother's Marble & Granite
Web Design Keystone Generators
Web Application Suess Builders


CONTACT



EMAIL: ERICA.SUESS@GMAIL.COM



Copyright © 2013 Erica Suess All rights reserved.




JESS CLEANS

WEB DESIGN

This XHTML site was designed around the company brand using the same bright and
lively color scheme and elements. The main navigation consists of list elements
assigned various sizes and positions and background bubble images. The bubble
shaped links that float on hover using the jQuery UI Bounce effect and "pop"
onclick with a jQuery switchclass call. For ease of use navigation links were
also included at the bottom of each page.

The jQuery UI Accordian Widget is used on the Services page with the long lists
of services divided into logical sections for viewing ease and to avoid
excessive page length and scrolling. The Contact Form is validated twice, once
on the client side using the jQuery Validation plug-in for user enhancement and
secondly within the php script on the server side in the case that user has
JavaScript turned off in the browser.

 * April 2012
 * XHTML, CSS, jQuery, Javascript, PHP, Photoshop, Illustrator
 * http://www.jesscleans.com




JESS CLEANS

LOGO & GRAPHIC DESIGN

Jess Cleans is a small cleaning business owned and operated by a young
entrepreneur. Her target audience consists of females thirty and over. She
wanted her company’s brand to be bright and clean, with a retro early 1960’s
feel. I chose to use blue with bubble graphics for the backgrounds to illustrate
the clean impression of soapy water. The rest of the overall triadic color
scheme is based on the blue color chosen color. The logo itself is based on the
Witched font by Mischa Hof, cleaned up in Illustrator, reminiscent of the
Bewitched television program. The character used in the graphics is a modified
version of a vector designed by ChihHang Chung.

 * March 2012
 * Photoshop, Illustrator




KEYSTONE GENERATORS

LOGO RE-DESIGN

Keystone Generators is a small company that sells and services generator systems
to homeowners, farms, and businesses. The company is located in Delta,
Pennsylvania, the reasoning behind the company name as Pennsylvania’s nickname
is the “Keystone State.”

Through gathering information for the website design, I became very familiar
with their business and their business philosophy. Though the company sells and
services generators to homeowners and businesses, they prefer to deal with
commercial clients and focus on service contracts versus sales. An example of
one of their largest contracts is the service of backup generators for several
Verizon cellular phone towers in the area. With this in mind, their primary
audience includes persons responsible for the procurement of contractors for
their organization. Persons in this category would more than likely be
predominately male, over thirty, corporate professionals.

Keystone Generators has used the same company logo since their inception in the
mid-eighties and their logo was in severe need of a makeover. The re-designed
logo is modern and simplistic. I tried to stay away from arcs and swooshes, as
seen in so many modern logos. I used a lightning bolt symbol for two reasons, as
a symbol of power and a symbol of thunderstorms (which create the need for
generators).

Current color theory suggests that the color blue conveys a sense of trust and
loyalty, men prefer the color blue, and that blue produces a strong buying
intention. With these factors in mind, I chose a shade of blue as the logo’s
primary color. The colors of the lightning bolt where chosen according to a
triad color scheme. My first attempts with the redesign included a basic linear
gradient along the lightning bolt. I opted not to include the gradient as
Keystone Generators uses their logo on screen-printed T-shirts, embroidered
items and other marketing items. The use of the gradient may make printing some
of these items more complex and costly. I also provided a greyscale version of
the design for use when printed with black and white laser printers, faxes, etc.

 * September 2012
 * Illustrator




CLEAN B'S

LOGO & GRAPHIC DESIGN

Clean B’s is a small cleaning company based in Baltimore. As the owner wanted to
include a bee in her logo, I designed a semi-abstract curly bee in Illustrator.
The text of the logo itself is a simple black. The text is based on the font A
Yummy Apology by Gem Fonts, which coordinated well with the curls of the bee
illustration. The text was edited and cleaned-up using Illustrator.

The business cards and postcards were designed in Photoshop. I chose a lilac
purple background to complement the yellow of the bee. For the business card I
chose Lucida Sans for the remaining text to balance out the heavy flourishes of
the logo text. For the postcard design I used a combination of Lucida Sans and
Lucida Bright to separate informational elements.

 * January 2010
 * Photoshop, Illustrator




BIG BROTHERS MARBLE & GRANITE

WEB DESIGN

The basic design for the Big Brother’s Marble and Granite is based on a template
by Pixelentity The project did, however, require heavy modification to suit the
client’s needs.

The company carries thousands of products including various types of natural
stones and engineered stone, some only available in slabs, some only available
in tile and some available in both. The also carry a wide array of cabinets,
sinks and faucets. The first task was to determine the navigational layout of
the site. So that the drop-down main navigation was not extremely long, I
separated the products into five categories. The stones are split into the two
categories of slabs and tiles each with their own page that then contain links
to the various types of stone available in each category. To ease site
navigation, each specific category page contains side links to the all of the
other product categories. As well, the home page also includes links to
thumbnail links to every product category. Each stone product page contains the
designs available in both slabs and tiles, separated into two tabs using jQuery
UI Tabs.

The client supplied me with a range of stone product images in a variety of
sizes and quality. All images needed to be modified and optimized in Photoshop.
Images and data pertaining to the sinks, faucets, and cabinets were extracted
from the distributor web sites, with permission. I created a MySQL database that
contains all of the product images, titles, descriptions, and other date, the
pages are populated using PHP. The thumbnails of product images all link to
larger images using PrettyPhoto.

The faucet and sink product pages contain filterable content based on type,
material, etc. The filter options are generated based on categories within the
database and generated with PHP. The product results are loaded into the main
page with AJAX.

The Contact page includes a Google map with Address AutoComplete and Geolocate
using the Google Maps API. The directions are generated inside tabbed content
using JavaScript. JavaScript is also used to create nicely formatted printable
directions by writing the contents to a new window.The 3D Countertop Simulator
was created with Demicron Wirefusion. I created the 3D models in Blender and the
tileable textures in Photoshop. The textures are sent to the Java application
using JavaScript. The jQuery Plug-in qTip by Craig Thompson was used to generate
the custom tooltips.

 * June-July 2012
 * HTML5, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, AJAX, PHP, Google Maps API, Photoshop
 * http://www.bigbrothersmg.com




KEYSTONE GENERATORS

WEB DESIGN

Keystone Generators supplies businesses and homeowners with generator systems
and provides generator maintenance and repair services. The purpose of this site
is to promote Keystone Generators and enhance customer communications. Their
primary audiences include business owners, corporate management, and homeowners.

Keystone Generators wants to focus on Generator Maintenance Services rather than
sales. With this in mind, I placed the Services navigation link first and
ensured that all page titles, meta-descriptions and index page copy text are
worded to emphasize generator maintenance. The website design for is based
around the modernized redesign of their logo I had done earlier, including the
colors and fonts. Copy text and gallery photos were provided by Keystone
Generators, while data and photos pertaining to Kohler generators will be
procured from Kohler through their Distributor Resources. Some of the photos
used were obtained through stock photo libraries. The slider on the home page
uses the SlidesJS jQuery Plug-in and the photo gallery makes use of PrettyPhoto.

 * November 2012
 * HTML5, CSS, jQuery, Photoshop




SUESS BUILDERS

WEB APPLICATION

The Suess Builders Web Application is a PHP application designed to upload
photos and messages to the Suess Builders Facebook, Twitter and Blog from a
mobile device. The application is designed using jQuery Mobile and photo
uploading is accomplished via Aurigma Up mobile application. The Photo Posting
page allows the user to choose which Facebook album to add the photo to from a
list dynamically generated using the PHP and the Facebook API. The posting pages
also include a character count created with JavaScript for use with Twitter. If
the character count exceeds the maximum allowed by Twitter the post title is
used with a link to the blog.

 * December 2011
 * PHP, jQuery Mobile, HTML, CSS, Facebook API, Twitter API, Blogger API