Web Site : Octave Communications

Next on my list was the website. Even if they didn’t have all the content needed too fill the website pages, Octave wanted an online presence as soon as possible. Following the content structure they desired, I quickly designed a simple static website (ie non-responsive) that would also express their identity and branding. The website can be found at octavecom.ca

 Copyright  Dany Pépin 2013

School projet S6 : Radio-Canada/CBC Re-branding

This project involved a re-branding exercise of a Canadian public company. The development of the new brand extended to the research of the character of the brand, the style presentation (moodboard), the creation of the new logo and applications including a presentation book. The new brand has undergone an evolution rather than a transformation in order to maintain the reputation of this Crown corporation. Below are some images taken from the presentation book. The video moodboard (see article) and the details presentation book (7MB 42 pages) are available in french.

 copyright Dany Pepin 2012

School project S6 – The graduates website

In this project, each student created a portfolio website that featured all graduating graphic design student for 2012. While a lot of students build their website around the same theme as the graduates exhibition, I decided to go in a completely different direction… a periodic table of graduating students. I must admit that my idea would have been more fitting for chemistry graduates, but since each student has its strenghts and weaknesses, certain elements mixed together could create a reactive design. This is the basic chemistry of teamwork. My website wasn’t chosen as the official website, but was a finalist. The official 2012 Graphic Design graduates website will be accessible here at the end of the semester.

The live version of my website can be accessed here. The animated introduction was made in Adobe After Effects. Note that only my student page is available on this website.

 copyright Dany Pepin 2012

School project S5 – Flash quiz

When we were tasked with building a quiz using flash, I chose the TV sitcom “How I met your mother” as the subject since I’m a big fan. The quiz isn’t easy, but can you achieve “legend… wait for it… dary ” legendary status? You can try by clicking the image below.

 copyright Dany Pepin 2011

School project S5 – corporate website

For this project we had to design and code a corporate website for a small to medium enterprise (real or not). We had 20 pages of content to create and each of them needed to be adaptable for smartphones and tablets via media queries CSS stylesheets. The teacher also wanted three flash banners inserted in the website.

I contacted my cousin to know if I could redesign the website of her casting agency for kids and teenagers and she gladly agreed. Now the work began. We had three weeks to create three maquettes, a prototype and the final 20 pages cross-platform website. In my case, I also needed to create a logo because the agency didn’t have one. Surprising since the agency is successful.

Here are the two logos I designed for this project.

Even if this project was focusing on corporate websites, I had to design one that would reflect the casting company I was working for. In this case, a business that is targeting kids, teenagers and parents and shows how fun acting for TV and movies can be at a young age. It needed a younger look. Below are the three maquettes.

The client gave me her preferences and I adapted the second maquette. Most of the hard work was from this point on. The prototype was fairly easy to do but doing different stylesheet for the smartphones and tablets was a bit harder. Hiding flash banners, showing new divs, moving divs and content around without screwing up of the other platform was frustrating at time. Below are the three version of the website. I still have some problem with IE8 and earlier versions which don’t support media queries. I’ll try and fix this problem and other fine details at the end of the semester.

 copyright 2011

The Making of «Encore une Fois»

As mentioned in a previous blog entry, I was chosen to design Paul Demers new music album «Encore une Fois». It was an interesting summer project I was looking forward to, but I didn’t expect the album to be redone from scratch. A monstrous task since I was working full time as a support web designer at La Cité collégiale at the same time. So after the meeting with Paul and his producer Jean-Michel Ouimet, we had an idea of the new direction: Paul’s return. I submitted the idea of having a logotype for Paul’s name which he could use later on for different applications including his album. With his blessing, I started to work on different word marks.

Logotype/wordmark sketches

Surface test with the word mark chosen by Paul

Paul really really REALLY liked the wordmark on the vintage wallpaper and he wanted THAT for the cover. I tried several alternate covers to keep the same look as my original cover, but since Paul and Jean-Michel were the artistic directors, I didn’t had any weight in the final decision. Even if you don’t agree all the time, the important thing is that you please the client.

Some of the alternate covers

Website that was never used.

 copyright 2011

I know what you did last summer (part 2)

One of the things I designed while working for the IT department, was their website portal. It was just awful (white page with blue hyperlinks) and needed a revamp. I created over a dozen maquettes and one of them was chosen by the employees after two rounds of votes. I was surprised to see that the IT employees had chosen a really dark background since the college identity is dominated by a light color palette, but hey… that’s democracy for ya! I have no clue as to when the page will be implemented within the college website. NOTE: All these designs were created with Adobe Illustrator.

 

Discarded (some of my designs left out of the vote)

 

First round (my designs included in the vote)

 

Variations of the chosen design

 

Final choice

 copyright 2011

I know what you did last summer (part 1)

Oh man, what a busy summer! The word “vacations” wasn’t part of my vocabulary during the last months. I worked full time as a support designer for the IT department La Cité collégiale revamping the website, doing updates and some designing. But in addition, I was designing the new album of French-Canadian singer/songwriter Paul Demers during evenings and weekends. I also designed my brother’s bachelor party invitation as you can see in a previous blog entry.

As my 5th semester quickly approaches, here are some of the things I designed during the summer. NOTE : I will be adding a blog entry for the new Paul Demers album when it comes out.

Graphics (organisational chart)

I redesigned an ugly organisational chart created in MS Word into something more visually attractive. It may or may not be use.

Back to school banners

One of those banners may or may not be chosen for the school homepage, but I had a lot of fun experimenting with photoshop.

HDR photography

I did some photography of the campus to refill the college’s image databank and experimented with High Dynamic Range (HDR) toning with some of them. I kept the effect subduded to enhance the image and not make it surreal.

 copyright 2011

School project S4 – Flash Website

For this project we had to create a flash website that would include different notions learned in class. The subject was to our choosing. I decided to design a movie website and I was hesitating between The Matrix, Aliens and Back to the Future. The choice was made randomly as the teacher picked The Matrix out of a hat. The result is the website below. There is a light version (fixed background) and a heavier version (animated background). My biggest problem in creating this website was the embedded fonts for dynamic text which didn’t work. I’ve spent a week trying to fix the problem and even the teacher is dumbstruck. Apparently having to many fonts on a Mac can cause problems of that nature. Oh well.

The information included in this school project was collected from these websites: Matrix 101, Matrix Mythology and the Matrix Wiki

 copyright 2011

School project S4: Student web portal

This project was an actual contract for our school student web portal. We (the 2nd year students) had to design something that wasn’t corporative and felt younger. We each created several maquettes in photoshop and chose the one we wanted as our official prototype (Html/CSS). The latter would be judged for this competition and graded by our teacher. Here are my four maquettes and my official submission (see below).

This is my first concept (called “concrete”), and now that I think about it, the one I should have chosen as my prototype. I think my chances to win would have been greater. This concept was one of the few that was made an example of by the teacher after the disappointing first round of submissions.

I don’t quite like this concept (called “Graphic Pizza”) because it is too busy. But from what the teacher told me, the clients found it interesting because of the icons which would be good for an iPhone version of the student web portal they were thinking about creating. The teacher did not like that one at all. 🙂

This is my favorite concept (called “Black board”),… and the teacher’s favorite also. I like this one because it reminds me of my old days in school (late 80’s). Unfortunately, the client though it was too dark/black for the color palette of the school identity. Good point.

So I changed the “Black board” concept to the “White board” which is closer to what we see nowadays in classrooms. The light color palette works better with the identity of the school and so I decided that this would be my official prototype for the competition. A big surprise would be next. The client announced that the design students (our class) would be choosing three finalists and those three student designs would be then submitted for the school vote (all students). It was an extremely tight finish for the 3 finalists in which I was a part of. Unfortunately I didn’t win this competition, but one of my closest friends did.

 copyright 2011