In this screencast I give a quick overview of how to apply for an opportunity on WorkFu and how the internal messaging system works. As usual it would be great to hear your feedback!

Viewing Opportunities

In this screencast I give a quick overview of how viewing opportunities works. Hopefully you’ll get the idea! Would be great to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

WorkFu is a project that involves myself (Designer), Neil Kinnish (Developer), Pete Nelson (Developer) and Adam Martin (Community Manager). Together, we’ve spent the last three months designing and building WorkFu. The foundations and supporting walls are all up and we’re now on to the final push. You might already have a profile a bit like this. If you’re not entirely sure what Workfu is, I gave an interview to @netmag which will give you the lowdown.

The next stage is is getting ‘Opportunities’ live and I wanted to share a couple of the page designs with you.

Opportunity Listings

Below you’re looking at the ‘opportunity listings’ page. This is what a user will see when they click ‘View Opportunities’. The opportunities on the system will automatically display to the user in order of Fu Score. The higher the Fu Score the more relevant the opportunity. I explain how the Fu Score works in that .Net article.

You can filter the way you view the opportunities by location, type or view your favourites.

View the full size screenshot here.

Opportunity Detail Page

On clicking ‘Details’ you are taken to the ‘Opportunity Details’ page. Here you have the job/opportunity description which details all the usual stuff you would expect, along with links to similar opportunities.

The cool thing about his page is the ‘application window’ in the sidebar. Using WorkFu you can apply to an opportunity with one click. There is a pre populated note to the opportunity poster (which you can edit) and all you have to do is press ‘Apply Now’ and it’s done. The person or company who posted the opportunity will receive your application along with your WorkFu Profile.

View the full size screenshot here.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I’ll try and keep you up to date with our progress over the next few weeks as we build up to the launch! If you don’t already have a WorkFu profile you can get one by signing up here.

I created a concept around the phrase “The art and science of app creation” in which a series of a images are animated on the homepage to revealing an insight of what goes into creating an iOS or Android app.

Illustrations and Animations

I created the illustrations in CMYK to create of overlay effect that features in many of the them. I then carried this theme through the entire website.

I hired the talented Ryan Taylor to do the dev on this project. For the animations on the homepage I put together a simple choreography and Ryan painstakingly animated the illustrations using CSS keyframe animation. No mean feat!

Responsive Design

The site is also responsive for an optimal mobile experience.

You can check out a bunch of screen shots below and view the site here.

It was great to have the chance and do some illustration for print. It’s weird, even though posters at a bus stand don’t have the same reach as the web, there’s something strangely satisfying about having your work in print like this.

Here are the poster designs below.

Ryan hired me to design and build the front-end of Treehouse. Alan Johnson (Developer) had the mammoth task of making it all work. I designed the style guide for the badges and then handed the actual badge design over to Allison Grayce. The whole Treehouse team was involved in making this a success! We also brought in Neil Kinnish who did browser/device testing and bug fixing.

I designed the entire app in the browser, mainly because the app is responsive and it’s easier to design in the browser. It’s still possible to design in Photoshop and hand work to a developer but today more than ever, designers need to know how to code and understand the principles of responsive web design.

Something else I used on this project was Sass. With Sass you can add nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance etc. Your .scss files are translated to well-formatted, standard CSS using the command line tool or a web-framework plugin. It generally makes life a bit easier, especially on larger stylesheets.

Anyway, here are a few screenshots from Treehouse. You can view Treehouse here.

I’ve just designed the new Kicksend homepage!

Firstly I redesigned their logo. The typeface used in the is Appetite by Dzianis Serabrakou. I then heavily customised the letter K to create the ‘flaming’ logo icon. I really wanted to avoid using some sort of ‘file’ type image/icon for the logo as that would make it indistinguishable from other products in the same sort of sphere.

The guys at Kicksend wanted a design that quickly communicated the benefits of using Kicksend. They also needed a bold design with a strong visual impact. I always find that using a simple and bold colour palette really helps create a strong impact with a design. It’s tempting to keep adding colours and graphical details to a design but again I think this dilutes the essence of the design and the message you’re trying to convey.

Finally, the page is responsive for the viewing pleasure of those on mobile devices. HTML & CSS by the very talented Neil Kinnish.

This was a really fun project to work on and the guys at Kicksend were amazing to work with!

You can view the new Kicksend homepage here.

It’s going to be a bit of a departure from my day job of Graphic/ Web Designer and Illustrator but I can’t wait! Those of you who know me will know I’m pretty much an Instagram addict, so an assignment like this is perfect for me.

I’ll be photographing behind the scenes and capturing the atmosphere of the build up to the main event as well as the show itself. If you’re interested in seeing my pictures from the event, then follow @burberry & @mikekus on Instagram.

What is GiftRocket

GiftRocket is the invention of Nicolas Baum, Kapil Kale and Jonathan Pines. With GiftRocket you can buy a friend a gift card to any shop, bar, cinema, coffee shop anywhere in the world.

You can either email them the gift or send it via Facebook. The site is integrated with Facebook and if you give the site permission, GiftRocket it will pull in your friends from Facebook for you to choose who to send a GiftRocket to.

For a person to redeem a GiftRocket they need to go to the business location. For example, if I have a GiftRocket for my local pub – I go to the pub, get out my smartphone, open up my GiftRocket email and press ‘Redeem’. GiftRocket uses my location to check I’m actually at the pub and when my location is confirmed I get my gift. The GiftRocket amount is transferred into my Paypal account and I pay as normal.

It means you can buy your friend a gift card for something they’re really into and that actually means something to them!

The Design

I was responsible from creating the GiftRocket brand/logo, designing the main website and mobile site.

My aim was to create a site that had a strong brand, was fun, vibrant and super easy to use. The site is actually more of an application than a website, so there was a fine balance to strike between creating a fun and meaningful visual design and a simple and easy to use UI.

I think GiftRocket is a great idea and I really hope it takes off! It was a really fun project and the guys at GiftRocket were amazing to work with.

I’ve included various screenshots from the website and mobile site in this post and you can check out the finished live site here: GiftRocket

Zero App

When Ian and Ben came to me, we talked at length about what we wanted from a task app. It had to be super quick to add tasks, have the ability to add notes, add reminders and sync with iCal.

I was surprised at how different the experience of designing the UI for an iPhone app was. It’s interesting because you’re far more restricted in where you can place certain elements of the UI. There’s no room for error. If you need to add an addition feature at a later stage without having thought about it from the beginning you risk having to completely change the design of the app. It was definitely something I enjoyed and would be happy to do more of.

As well as designing the app itself I also designed the Zero logo and website. I always enjoy creating a visual style/ identity for products like apps, because they are what you make them. There is a lot of creative freedom which is nice, especially compared to designing the app itself!

Anyway, If you want to try Zero app, it’s available in the app store now.

View the Zero website.