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I'd like to invite you to take a brief look at the creative process that developed the look and style of my website. I hope as I show you some of the stages of my thought processes, you can get a better idea of how it is I work and how I can help you on your next project.
When I was first planning out my site, I had surfed the web for alot of personal design and design firm/ ad agency sites to get ideas. At the time everything seemed so formulated. I mean there were great and awesome executions of vanilla, but vanilla nonetheless. Every site was either very slick, smooth and futuristic, glowing green on black a la The Matrix/ Xbox style or very light and airy with blurry close up macro photography as background imagery. I really wanted to try to create something different, a look that would stand out and have the definite sound of my voice.
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I thought to myself, “my portfolio would show how, like water, my design flows and can take many forms, but the container, the website itself is a chance to display my style and perspective”. I had begun to look around for inspiration, knowing I wanted a site that was a bit more urban and gritty, a theme that was futuristic, but not so typical and polished. Sitting in my room with my sketch pad, I noticed the label on my jean jacket and the ECKO logo struck me. A rhino? In a red field? seen sort of as a target through a scope...
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Yes, a rhino is strong, silent, at peace, but once you get them started, unstoppable. But maybe not a white rhino on a red field, but a RedRhino. The words RedRhino rung out to me, suddenly visions of Red, like RedRussians, RedArmy, Soldiers came to mind. I started sketching and this character started to flow from my pen.
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The RedArmy Rhino soldier idea began to solidify more and more. My passion for science fiction, comic books and history began to formulate an idea about a race of anthropomorphic rhinos living in a military dominated society. Russian war propaganda posters, with their striking red and orange and black reductive imagery hit me. So I mocked up this homepage to keep the ideas flowing.
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Now that i had a theme that could convey that gritty, urban feel that i was looking for, but still touch on my comic book/ sci-fi nature, it was time to work on a logo. I decided the full title would be RedRhino Alpha. Alpha being a nod to this being my first website and an outer space/military reference of sorts. The urban/industrial touch was the gear with the rhino-head silhouette. The reversed Rs came thanks to the russian propaganda posters. Another military, under fire touch is the radar/ target scope.
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Now that I had a logo, I could really focus on developing a homepage. Initially, I wanted the interface to feel like there was this device floating in space that held all the archives of the RedRhinos. The more I toyed with the idea, the more ungainly and complex I could see it becoming. I also started to realize, the floating in space deal, touched too closely to the kind of site I wanted to avoid and that I needed to develop the details more and simplify the interface.
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Okay sure, the logo I had, touched on the ideas I wanted to convey, but it was still too new, too slick. God is in the details and it needed to be developed more. The more detail placed on the supporting parts of the layout would help make a simple interface more successful. So with some photoshop work, a layer of grime and stains was added to the letters. The texture of the gear was turned into something between weathered stone and rusted metal. I was satisfied this was the logo to go forward with.
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Since i was already in Photoshop, in a painting, filtering, masking mood... I thought the initial soldier drawing that really helped spark all this deserved a place on the site and needed some color and texture.
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Since this site was going to be all in Flash, I wanted to show my passion for the movies, by using a letterbox style window containing all the action that would be the interface. Sticking with the original idea of website visitors interfacing with a device, I decided to dump the floating in space look and went with something engraved, embedded into a metal panel. A simple radar scope of sorts was tied into the navigation to add to the interactive interest level. Voila! version 1.0 of RedRhinoAlpha!
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So here we are at version 2.0, this html update of the site was mainly a chance to get some of my work from the past couple years into my portfolio. But this update also gave me a chance to revamp a few things and push a few ideas further. Firstly, the logo needed freshening. I had used a font for the "Rs" and wanted to make it more custom by creating "Rs" that hinted at AK47 rifle silhouettes which i created in Illustrator. Gave them the same weathered grimy touch. I really have gotten into textures as of late. I decided to take the idea of metal and rhinos's bumpy skin together in creating the background tiling. Changed the main titling font that overzealously gave a russian feel to something I feel is not only more sophisticated and subtle, but more readable and professional as well.
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