Infographics & Educational
Solar System Bead Kit
Featured by MAKE: & NASA
One of my favorite independent projects, a Solar System Bead Kit & Pattern, demonstrates the proportional distances of the Solar System in beads. I designed the original necklace, created the step-by-step pattern and instructions, and developed a kit of project materials.
Planets, moons, and asteroids are included on the necklace, with each bead representing approximately 20 million miles.
The Solar System Beadwork project has been featured by MAKE:, CRAFTzine, and The Planetary Society. Kits have been shipped to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center Gift Shop, and other locations around the world.
I was particularly honored to be interviewed by Emily Lakdawalla of The Planetary Society, a Space research group started by Carl Sagan.
The Solar System Bead Kit is available through Chain of Being Jewelry Co., which specializes in infographic beadwork based on patterns from Nature, such as the Solar System, Planets & Moons, and Earth's Latitudes.
Speck Products
Product Infographic Pages
Before and After: a sketch and the finished design for an informational page about Speck Products' line of MacBook cases.
The goal of these pages is to help visitors discover which cases and bags will fit their computer or device most perfectly.
Find the perfect bag! This page helps visitors discover which bags and colorways are available for their laptop size.
This page helps distinguish the many different types of iPod models, and shows which cases are available for your model.
A page dedicated to one particular product model, and all the cases available. Check out more tasty hi-tech products at the Speck Products website -- SpeckProducts.com
Educational Courses
College Courses in Art & Design
I've been teaching college courses in Art & Design since 2002, often focusing on web design, graphic arts, and drawing. Here's an example of a class demonstration for a beginning-level Animation & Motion Theory class at Expression College for Digital Arts.
While teaching a class on Interface Design for the Art Institute of California, I created a decorative theme for the Firefox Browser incorporating my decorative magic-realist characters rendered as pixel art icons.
A classic demonstration for graphics courses shows the steps of creating a repeating graphic tessellation.
In addition to teaching, I've also designed and devleoped a department blog site for the Motion Graphics Department at Ex'pression College for Digital Arts.
Glow Beadwork Kit
Available via Maker Shed
The Glow Beadwork Kit was inspired by conversations with the wonderful people at MAKE: and CRAFT:zine magazines, and their store, the Maker Shed. They liked my Fire Skirt design, and hoped that a smaller project could be made as a kit.
The beadwork pattern is designed to reflect and distribute the light of a common directional light-emitting diode (also known by the acronym "LED").
The kit has been featured by fun edgy fashion blogs such as Craftzine, Talk2myShirt, and Toxiferous.
The kit can be found at Maker Shed's online store, as well as at Maker Faire events: Visit Maker Shed
Mythical Sirens for Firefox
Mozilla Firefox Artist Themes
While teaching a class on Interface Design, I created a decorative theme for the Firefox Browser incorporating my decorative magic-realist characters rendered as pixel art icons.
Here are all the windows and icons involved in the design. Tiny flowers and mythical creatures adorn every button, bar, and checkbox.
Over 400,000 people from all over the world have downloaded the Mythical Sirens theme. I still get emails from grateful users thanking me for making their browser more lovely and magical!
Get the theme from Firefox Artist Themes: Firefox Artist Themes
Fire Skirt!
Glow Fashion Design & Tutorial
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9
I created the original "Fire Skirt!" designs with the intention of making something classically beautiful that was also visible in darkness. This awesome photo was taken by Joel Crisp, and the model on the left is the lovely Mary Elisa.
Fire Skirt! has been featured in ELLE Argentina, in an article about electronic fashion: "Lo Que Viene Tech-a-Porter" by Natalia Iscaro.
The Fire Skirt! design has also been featured in ELLE DECOR Italia, in an article about lighting in textiles: "Nuovo Relazioni" by Jacopo Filippo Bargellini
After many years of presenting the Fire Skirt! design at art exhibits, fashion shows, and technology conferences, I created an online tutorial for the design for Instructables.com.
The Fire Skirt! tutorial includes a video of my lecture at Maker Faire 2007, which was recorded and distributed through ArtFuture.
The tutorial earned a brief honorable mention in the book "The Best of Instructables, Volume I".
Connecting & soldering the Electroluminescent wire, on Instructables.com.
Finishing the seams, on Instructables.com.
Detail of the Electroluminescent wire and stitching, on Instructables.com.
Scientific Learning Co.
Interactive Illustrations
Go ahead and click on the illustration above to see the morphemes taught at different reading levels. This interactive illustration is one of a series I created for an online training program, "The Reading Brain" by Scientific Learning Co.
Here, you can click on the types of writing systems to see examples of each. It's amazing how complex we humans are in the languages we create and understand!
In this interactive illustration, you can click on the symbols to see the transformation of Sumerian script over different eras. Developed for "The Reading Brain" online training program by Scientific Learning Co.