rizzio.net » Tech

Night Kitchen Website Re-Skin

Dave — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:21:42 +0000

Summary: What’s that old expression? “The cobbler’s children have no shoes.” The Night Kitchen website had been neglected for more than a few years, and needed a refreshing. There were extremely tight restrictions on time and technology used, so this was definitely a “re-skinning” and not a full redesign.

We wanted a new look for the Night Kitchen website that would encourage visitors to explore our stories, interactive projects and designs in depth. Our redesigned portfolio promotes a selection of recent projects which highlight NK’s engaging approach to interactive storytelling, which aims to provide transformative and meaningful experiences that connect with audiences.

Tech: Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Actionscript, HTML, CSS
Role: Lead Designer / Lead Flash Designer
Link: www.whatscookin.com

Smithsonian’s NMAH ~ Educational Citizenship Website

Dave — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:21:27 +0000

Summary: Working in partnership with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Office, we developed an interactive, multimedia-rich website that supports aspiring citizens’ efforts to pass the civics portion of the new USCIS Citizenship Test.

Using content from the NMAH collections and working with a consultant that specializes in teaching English as a second language, we created a flexible, progressively scaffolded learning environment through which students move through learning, practice, and test stages commensurate with their mastery of the question topics. Given that the interactive experience should appeal to learners for whom English is a second language, and that the civics test is conducted as an oral interview, voiceover narration and closed-captions are provided, and learners have the opportunity to practice responding to the audio prompts.

The framework contains 100 vignettes, 19 activities, and 32 zoomable object explorations, that help extend learning beyond merely teaching to the 100 questions on the test. Instead, using objects and documents from its collections the NMAH offers aspiring citizens a vibrant look at our nation’s history, the functions of our government, the rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizens, and the power of democracy. By providing context to the questions on the test, prospective citizens can facilitate their learning of complex facts and concepts, and draw a deeper connection to the significance of becoming an American citizen.

Tech: Illustrator, Flash, Actionscript, XML, Photoshop, HTML, CSS
Role: Lead Designer / Lead Flash Designer
Link: Pre-Launch Website

SFMOMA Country Dog Gentlemen ~ Mobile Website Conversion

Dave — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:21:03 +0000

Summary: In 2009, with some of the 20th century’s greatest artists as inspiration, Night Kitchen Interactive created an engaging kiosk installation and website, bringing to life the works of Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Frida Kahlo and others. Roy De Forest’s colorful work acted as an aesthetic springboard, paving the way for vivid, lively animations. Each animated story reflects an individual artist’s unique approach, creating different extraordinary worlds to be explored. Performance artist Sebastienne Mundheim collaborated with Night Kitchen to craft the voices of two colorful canine characters from Roy De Forest’s work. With the dogs as guides, modeling behaviors of inquiry, this journey through modern masterpieces is reflective, whimsical, and insightful.

These stories and activities excite and inform young museum visitors, inspiring them to contribute their own creative responses to the museum’s website. Targeting children aged 6-10, a rare audience for modern art, this interactive experience engages younger museum visitors and their families with playful narratives and interactive activities. Each reinforces key learning points associated with an individual work and encourages visitors to share their own creative responses in a visitor-contributed gallery on SFMOMA’s website.

In 2011, SFMOMA was interested in adapting the existing Country Dog Gentlemen animations into an HTML5 experience, so visitors with mobile devices that do not support Flash can still partake in the enhanced rich-media experience. We implemented the main menu utilizing “responsive web design” techniques promoted by many of today’s most advanced HTML5 and CSS gurus. We used @media CSS queries in combination with Max and Min device-widths to create a single menu page (and CSS) with break-points that serve up different layouts and different graphics depending on the size and orientation of your device! It was really fun and exciting to be part of bringing this new technique to life while working to improve the museum and online experience for SFMOMA’s younger audiences.

Tech: Illustrator, Photoshop
Role: Lead Designer / Technical Advisor
Link: In-Progress

AnyPlace Platform Website

Dave — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:20:39 +0000

Summary: The AnyPlace platform provides a flexible, affordable way for historical and cultural institutions to share place-based interpretive projects online. Place is an important touchstone for memory, history, and culture. By exploring the memories and records of place, we educate the public and promote and protect significant spaces, sites, and stories that hold meaning.

Adapted from the codebase originally developed for PhilaPlace (www.philaplace.org), the AnyPlace platform allows organizations to establish their own interpretive website, using their own brand and visual aesthetic, and engaging visitors in exploration of their places, topics, curation, and media.

Each organization’s instance of AnyPlace would provide its visitors with a rich online tool for browsing place-based stories, images and videos on a map, by topic, or as collections. Visitors could alter content geographically and thematically, take virtual tours, save favorite places, print Google directions and submit their own stories and media for consideration.

The design challenge was to create an aesthetic that had enough of a “brand” to promote as a branded product, but not so much that potential clients felt that they would not be able to break-out of the AnyPlace look. The result is an exercise in subtlety and minimalism.

Tech: Illustrator, Photoshop, HTML, CSS
Role: Lead Designer
Link: anyplace.whatscookin.com / demo.anyplace.whatscookin.com

Minnesota Historical Society ~ 3D Fort Snelling Website

Dave — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:19:53 +0000

Summary: The Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) needed to develop a robust online presence for its 3D Fort Snelling Project to provide an innovative way to showcase digital history by integrating three distinct, but interrelated components: historically accurate virtual 3D models, a collections database, and a data visualization tool. With that goal in mind, Night Kitchen teamed up with key stakeholders from MHS and the Virginia Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) in a collaborative process to establish a Technical and Creative Project Plan that would be used to guide the design and development of the website.

It’s an exciting project to bring to the world, the on-site living history program of Fort Snelling, by building an interactive content-rich, collections-based website, and identifying innovative ways to engage visitors of all ages in Fort Snelling’s rich history. My main contribution to the Project Plan was through the creation of high-fidelity wireframes for client approval and UX by-in and with the creation of the preliminary visual creative treatments.

Tech: Illustrator, Photoshop
Role: Lead Designer / Preliminary UX Designer
Link: In-Progress

My very first SlideShare presentation!

Dave — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:41:49 +0000

Looky here! My first ever SlideShare.net presentation! It’s a little ditty I created to help our traditional media buying folks transition over to the brave new world of online banner ads and all the specs they have to understand and bring into their Work Orders. It’s pretty basic, and it assumes I’ll be talking through some of the details, but it’s hopefully still somewhat informative… and maybe a little entertaining.

An Intro to Online Media File Types

View more presentations from Dave Rizzio.

Saint Clare’s – Site Redesign

Dave — Sat, 29 May 2010 19:03:26 +0000

Summary: Create a full website redesign to build off of the Saint Clare Health System’s rebranding and refocusing. A new brand was developed, built around a sky blue color scheme and the phrase “Turning Promise into Practice”. The website relied heavily on that sky blue aesthetic, and brought in a triadic color scheme for emphasis elements. The new design had to be clear, professional and a lot more usable than their previous design, and reinforce the new focus of turning promise into practice for their patients.

Tech: Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Actionscript
Role: Lead Designer / Flash Designer
Link: www.SaintClares.org

The future of “Print”?

Dave — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:33:58 +0000

Wow. Talk about deep content. This little visualization of what Sports Illustrated could turn into on is completely “Game ON!” (sorry, had to do it) This is exactly the type of thing that has so many people excited about the prospect of some sort of Apple “Tablet”. Really nice work Time, Inc. and WonderFactory!

But I tell you this… to create a magazine like this would be no small endeavor. To have content that runs this deep would require a whole lot of people working real hard, probably around the clock. But imagine if Wired magazine were like this? Or how about US News and World Report? Or maybe online news magazines? Like the Huffington Post?

Google Wave

Dave — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:32:04 +0000

Can’t speak for it’s actual usefulness, as I don’t have an invite yet… but from the videos I’ve seen (good overview video below) it looks like it could be a really amazing new communications shift. Almost like going from paper letters to email… but I’ll hold off judgement until I actually get to try it out. :-)

Total Surface Area Required to Fuel the World (until 2030)

Dave — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:08:30 +0000

According to the US Department of Energy (Energy Information Administration), the world consumption of energy in all of its forms (barrels of petroleum, cubic meters of natural gas, watts of hydro power, etc.) is projected to reach 678 quadrillion Btu by 2030 – a 44% increase over 2008 levels. That’s a lot of energy. Saw this really interesting article that tries to project the total surface area required to fuel that 2030 world with ONLY SOLAR PANELS!

Below is a surprisingly sparse diagram. It’s kind of amazing to me how small the little squares are! Makes me think solar panel production companies would be a good thing to invest in! Germany, Japan and China seem to be in a really good place to reap the rewards of forward thinking… and dare I say it… socialistic government subsidies and legislation? Maybe a little socialism sprinkled on top isn’t the end of the world?… maybe it’s even the beginning of brave new world? Oh I’m sorry, government help in an industry is the wrong way to go… you might as well hand the country over to the pinko commies! Oh wait, what would you call the help we’ve been giving the corn / high-fructose / ethanol industries for the last 30 years? How about the auto industry? Savings and Loans? How about the financing industry in the last 2-3 years? Oh yeah, and what about that pesky military industrial complex our tax dollars have been funding? …so confused…ARGGG…don’t know who to hate…RRRARR…tree huggers…socialists…bankers…farmers… FOX News can you help me find a target for my rage?

And things don’t look quite as easy for wind turbines: