Monthly Archives: November 2011

Perfect Sun UV Flyers

Perfect Sun UV is a line of pool cleaners that work by running pool water through a tube with a UV-C lamp inside. The UV-C lamp eliminates any organic organisms and compounds in the water as it passes through, making the water completely sterile. The unit works in tandem with the standard pool filter, which removes solid debris like leaves and dirt. UV-C pool filters are an economical and environmentally friendly alternative to chlorine or bromine.

I worked with the sales team on an entire package to support this product line, from sales flyers to order sheets to business cards. In the end, I had created around 20 documents so they could travel around to pool and spa dealers across the country to sell Perfect Sun UV-C pool cleaners. Here are just a few pieces.

uvc-1 Commercial UV sterilizer brochure UV pool cleaners preview sale

ShineWhite Micro Site

Shine White teeth whitening site

As the tanning industry became more competitive, salons needed new and different offerings to keep customers coming back. ETS Tan became a distributor for a new teeth whitening device that combined high-powered LED light with a light activated gel applied to the teeth. Tanning salons could add this simple device into an unused corner of their salon to generate revenue throughout the year.

I created this micro-site within the same Joomla! framework as etstan.com. The content was presented through a custom secondary template I created. As ETS no longer sells this product, it was removed from their site. Clicking the link below will bring up an HTML representation without a working form.

DermaStyle Product Page

DermaStyle site

DermaStyle was another product in the beauty industry aimed at clearing problem acne. Its red and blue LEDs promised to erase pimples without chemicals or adverse reactions.

This site was created simply to sell that one item and consisted of two pages, one with all the product info and the second with customer testimonials. Some supporting documents and videos rounded out the sales pitch. The company supplied all of the supporting documentation, but I had to take the product shot at the top of the site.

I didn’t want anything flashy to clutter up the design. This site had one purpose, and one purpose only… Sell the DermaStyle. I would not submit this site to any design review competitions, but it did what I set out to do. It actually performed quite well with a little pay-per-click traffic.

Exploded View with Labels

This particular illustration was a personal favorite of mine. I was part of a team that designed this tanning bed, as well as a full line of others, for the 2010 manufacturing year. Designed with ergonomics, energy efficiency and easy maintenance as their defining characteristics, the line of beds became known as e3. They were met with overwhelming praise throughout the industry as some of the best looking and best performing units.

Over in the web design section of this site, you will find a listing for a site called Tanning-Bed-Parts.com. This illustration was made specifically for that site to help customers identify key service parts. The Macromedia Freehand drawing contained a vast majority of the parts used to manufacture the beds. The detail that went into creating this drawing made it a wonderful challenge.

Exploded view of tanning bed

Rotomolded Base Assembly

One of the products the company I worked for manufactured was a spray tanning booth. At the base of the booth was this plastic tub that caught any over spray and cleaning solution. What made this particular piece challenging to draw were all the rounded edges. There were no square corners on the entire piece.

In the end, this drawing turned out as a nice example of my particular drawing style, devoid of extraneous lines yet quite detailed and easy to recognize if you had it sitting in front of you.

rotomolded base

Ratchet Strap

While I love creating fanciful and whimsical artwork, my formal training in college was in technical illustration. I learned how to read blueprints and engineering drawings and turn them into “3-D” illustrations.

Oftentimes I had no print to work from and had to simply observe an object and measure its dimensions, as was the case with this ratchet strap.

Most of my technical illustrations were done in Macromedia Freehand, which is, sadly, no longer available. I still keep an old copy of the software to work in as I find it so familiar and powerful for this type of work.

ratchet strap illustration

Robots

I have always been fascinated by robots. When I was a kid, I tinkered with electronics. There was this company called Heathkit which specialized in electronics kits, including an awesome robot kit. I never did get that kit, although I still have the digital alarm clock I made when I was in my early teens.

Adding robots to my site just sort of happened. I wanted to add a little whimsy and fun. What better way to do that than with robots and monsters? (maybe a few dinosaurs)

Each of the illustrations below were made in Adobe Illustrator and prepared for the web in Photoshop.

Robot illustration Robot illustrations

Drawing my face

Having worked for so long in a technical environment, I wanted to branch out and return to my roots as an artist. Art, for me, has always been about enjoyment. I wanted to create a fun site that reflected another side of my personality.

This image was developed as a logo for this site. Looking at a picture of myself, I sketched a cartoon version. After scanning I traced it in Adobe Illustrator and added a little style. Bringing the illustration into Photoshop, I further refined the image into what you see at the top of my site.

Here you can see the progression of things as I turned my face into a cartoon.

The making of cartoon me

etstan.com

ETSTan.com site

Etstan.com is the main corporate site for ETS Tan. This was the first major site I worked on and it went through many changes over the years.

ETS Tan was one of the largest tanning bed manufacturers in the world, and the largest in the United States. When I took over the site in 2004 it was all black with roll-over tanning lamps for menu buttons. I knew this was not where web design was going and launched a campaign to redesign the site to make it more friendly and bright. ETS was a tanning bed manufacturer, after all… not exactly a black site sort of business. However, the owner at the time happened to like black, so it remained that way for a few years although I made many changes to make it more inviting and updated.

Go see the site now

rejuvasun.com

Rejuvasun.com site

Designed as a micro-site, Rejuvasun.com showcased the combination tanning bed and rejuvenation unit known as Rejuvasun® with Omnilux™ by ETS Tan. Targeting the spa market I used soothing colors to portray a feeling of tranquility. This site was never meant to sell but, rather, to inform the salon owner of the benefits of red light therapy and how to promote it in a salon.

What made this site nice was its simplicity. I used only HTML and CSS to keep things simple and fast loading. The only extra bit of code was a small javascript that loaded a random image for the homepage banner. Refreshing the page (or coming back to the homepage) would pull up another random image. Three images mimicking the promotional posters were used.