Web and graphic design

April 2017

Over the years I have done a bunch of graphic and web design.

The Cambridge Union

The Cambridge Union is the oldest continuously running debating society in the world. In 2019, I made banners, posters, and images for social media.

Highlights for me were the announcement poster for Bill Gates’ scheduled appearance, and the full-page ad for the Tab newspaper.

TEDx Cambridge

I made mockup posters for TEDx Cambridge. Using the image we settled on, I also made a short ‘theme reveal’ video with clips from previous speakers and an animated version of the poster.

Alyson Hallett

https://www.alysonhallett.com/

Alyson Hallett is a poet and writer.

I was briefed with making a personal website where Alyson could list her books and publications, promote her work, and post news and writing.

I built the site in WordPress, making it easy to add books and news. All the book covers are scanned images of an original copy of each book.

Trivia: the header font is Averia, which is the result of taking the average of every font that comes with most computers.

Refundraising

Shortly after the coronavirus outbreak, a friend of mind had an idea for a charitable initiative that encouraged event organising platforms to include a clear option to donate some part of a refund to effective charities responding to the virus in the developing world, or working on mitigating future biological risks. The idea was inspired by the psychological effect, a close cousin of the sunk cost fallacy, where unexpected refunds are more liberally spent or donated during the period while they are still treated as windfall. Since the project was time-critical, it required a website to be designed and built rapidly (i.e. within 48 hours). Having been involved with developing the idea, I took on the brief and designed refundraising.org (note: this site is no longer live).

Shortly aftwerwards, the ‘refundraising’ idea merged with cancelcorona.org, who added a page addressing refunds to their (wonderful) website. I’ve let the original website stand– not as an example of a polished finished product, but as an example of the kind of proof of concept which can be achieved in a day or two.

Shopping list app

I made a grocery list app for my family when I was learning React. It’s hosted on a free Heroku instance that requires a cold start, so you might need to wait 10 seconds for it to get working.

I used React, Redux, Webpack, React-Router, and Firebase.

Making this app taught me Hofstadter’s Law:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.