Hi! My name's Sarah Simmonds and I love websites.

I'm a freelance web designer & developer with over 8 years industry experience.

I come from sunny St Kilda, Melbourne & I can help your website flourish.

Find me on

Portfolio

These are just a few examples of my work in graphic design and web development that I can show you.

Cupco SplatAttack

Category_id

Type

Web design and development

Company

Cupco Games

Link

Homepage

Description

I designed and built a brochure website for Cupco Games to promote their recently released iphone app Splat Attack.

The primary requirement was for it to work equally well on desktop and mobile with a single codebase.

I worked closely with the Cupco Games designer to translate the cute, quirky feel of the app to a web interface.

This was designed in Illustrator and Photoshop CS5. Use of HTML5, CSS3 and JQuery to animate the header.

Id

Category

Major Projects

Category_src

projects-major.png

Children

Array

Hitwise Top 10

Category_id

Type

Logo design

Company

Experian Hitwise

Link

Hitwise Top 10 Awards

Description

Rebranded and redesigned the Top 10 Award badges released in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore twice a year.

These badges are designed to mimic the look of a real world prize 'ribbon'. Aids in recognition and recall, has an abstract shape which attracts the eye.

Effective use of the corporate colours blue and red for first and second place. A mostly spherical composition, intended to repeat the dots in the Experian brand. Designed in Illustrator CS5.

Id

Category

Major Projects

Category_src

projects-major.png

Children

Array

Quizlet

Category_id

Type

Web design

Company

Quizlet

Description

Redesigned the Quizlet branding and simplified the information architecture of their homepage to focus the user on understanding the product and getting value as quickly as possible.

New colour palette chosen for its soothing, neutral creams and energetic blues and greens. New logo designed to standout in a fun and memorable way.

Designed in Illustrator CS5.

Id

Category

Minor Projects

Category_src

projects-minor.png

Hitwise Social Space

Category_id

Type

Graphic design

Company

Experian Hitwise

Description

Poster designed for the company social space in Melbourne by the same name.

Has a playful take on the company colour palette at the time. Designed to embody the fun, energetic spirit of the social atmosphere and give staff a sense of pride in the space.

Designed in Zara 3D and Photoshop CS4.

Id

Category

Just for fun

Category_src

projects-creative.png

Children

Array

Knowledge is Power

Category_id

Type

Logo design

Company

Experian Hitwise

Description

Logo designed for the Hitwise GPD group to give a collective sense of identity and unity. Incorporated many of their social past times such as table tennis, chess, voting system metrics and beer. The Latin translates to 'knowledge is power' which refers to the large amount of data the GPD group deals with on a daily basis.

Colour palette chosen for its college likeness, repeated in the Greek and Roman embellishments such as the laurel wreath, banner and Latin serif text. The combination of the similarly scaled bats and owl can be read as 'hit' and 'wise'.

Designed in Illustrator CS5.

Id

Category

Just for fun

Category_src

projects-creative.png

Children

Array

Melbourne Hackerspace

Category_id

Type

Web design

Company

Melbourne Hackerspace

Description

I'm in the process of designing a wordpress website in the spirit of charity for a favourite local community group called Melbourne Hackerspace.

They've been very tolerant my enthusiastic tinkering with their 3D printers and CNC routers so it seemed like the most appropriate way to repay them.

Id

Category

Minor Projects

Category_src

projects-minor.png

Children

Array

Hotels Hooroo

Category_id

Type

User experience design

Company

Link

Hooroo, Jetstar, Qantas

Description

I was a member of the UX and Design team who laid the groundwork for the new hotel booking experience called Hooroo. I ran several user tests in-house and designed wireframes for the payment process, grid and card views.

We did the initial interface testing and development under the Jetstar brand and later we translated it for the Qantas brand. The findings from user analysis and usage statistics from these two sites paved the way for the Hooroo you see today.

A few key themes I explored during my time on this project include personalization, social integration, user loyalty, gamification, price transparency and best match sorting.

Id

Category

Major Projects

Category_src

projects-major.png

Children

Array

PlanBig

Category_id

Type

User experience design

Company

Bendigo Bank

Link

PlanBig

Description

I designed the layout and information architecture for the mobile version of PlanBig, a community website owned and operated by Bendigo Bank. Guided by data from Google Analytics, I stripped out some of the more complex and underused features of PlanBig and focus on those heavily used by visitors on mobile devices. For members, I designed a recent updates mobile interface so they can keep track of plans, conversations and people even more easily than on desktop.

Since performing this work, I was tasked to run over 10 formal usability tests on the current desktop website. The results of the tests unearthed several opportunities across the board, both long and short term.

Id

Category

Major Projects

Category_src

projects-major.png

Music Portfolio

Category_id

Type

Web design and development

Link

Homepage

Description

Designed and built a portfolio website for Bark Klepka, a music composer in the games industry. Primary requirement was for it to work on mobile as well as desktop with little duplication of code.

Use of gun metal grays and greens as preferred by the client. Use of HTML5 to play audio tracks and a custom CSS3 player interface design to look like a speaker. Liquid layout that adjusts depending on the size of the browser enables it to work on a mobile.

Designed in Illustrator CS5, built with HTML5, CSS3, JQuery and PHP.

Id

Category

Minor Projects

Category_src

projects-minor.png

Penny Blue

Category_id

Type

Graphic design

Company

Penny Blue

Description

Artwork for the branding of a bar in the CBD by the same name.

The branding is based on highly valuable 1 penny stamps which were printed with a picture of a young Queen Victoria on a royal blue background. This artwork is a high-res remake with a unique artistic take on that original stamp.

Done in Photoshop CS5.

Id

Category

Just for fun

Category_src

projects-creative.png

28 Days in Europe

Category_id

Type

Web design and development

Description

In excited anticipation of a 4 week long holiday in Europe, I had the idea to write a web app so I could upload photos to a website and allow friends and family to track my progress each day.

The days show on the Google Maps API as icons drawn from the city I was in at the time, revealing the photos on click.

This app presented a number of fun challenges. I had to pull out and dust off the old trigonometry in the process, but the results were well worth it.

Id

Category

Just for fun

Category_src

projects-creative.png

AAMI home insurance

Category_id

Type

User experience design

Company

Link

AAMI website

Description

I had the interesting task of investigating how users approach and compare insurance policies and what attracts them to AAMI's unique offerings.

Among many findings I uncovered, when choosing insurance users become short term experts but remain long term novices. They spend more time with insurance policies they understand and tend to use that as their basis for comparison. Most users will try to match exact phrases between competing websites.

As a result of my findings I delivered a set of Axure wireframes for AAMI's insurance product range. These have since been developed and deployed by AAMI's development team.

Id

Category

Major Projects

Category_src

projects-major.png

Children

Array

HOYS Website

Category_id

Type

Web design

Company

Dermatology Institute of Victoria

Link

https://www.hoys.net/

Description

I designed the user interface and visual artefacts for the HOYS web app and website, enabling cosmetic patients to perform skin examinations on themselves and review treatments with their doctor.

HOYS is a medical application intended to be used by patients and staff of all ages. Colour palette was chosen for its clean, professional whites and soothing cool blues. Gradients and rounded corners added selectively to give a soft, tangible appearance. The symmetrical composition is also intended to be easy on the eyes. Designed in Illustrator CS5.

Id

Category

Major Projects

Category_src

projects-major.png

Children

Array

Day Trippin

Category_id

Award

Type

Web design

Company

Lonely Planet

Description

I entered my first 24hr hackathon with two friends the weekend after a short road trip. The hackathon was run at the Lonely Planet head quarters. They had just released a new Destinations API which allowed websites to query their database of popular places.

Inspired by our trip and with the absence of better ideas, I suggested to our team that we make a pseudorandom day trip planner. It can start in a predefined location and plan a day trip with various activities and places to go throughout the day. As it was pseudorandom, the trips it planned would be different each time.

We presented our prototype to the room and with the highest votes from the audience and Lonely Planet organisers we took out the grand prize - the entire Lonely Planet book collection. We built a turret out of them the day they arrived.

Id

Category

Just for fun

Category_src

projects-creative.png

Children

Array

Hitwise Talent

Category_id

Type

Web design and development

Company

Experian Hitwise

Description

A simple photo directory allowing easy search and one click select on staff details such as name, email address, title, etc.

Designed to look fun, friendly and a little quirky. Done in Illustrator CS5.

Simple, low maintenance php5 implementation that populates from a directory of photos of any size. Connects to the local LDAP record to supply staff details if available. Uses HTML5 Canvas and JQuery Javascipt library.

Id

Category

Minor Projects

Category_src

projects-minor.png

RTG Art Competition

Category_id

Award

Type

Graphic design and product design

Company

Red Thread Games

Description

Red Thread Games is a young indy games company and much to the delight of tens of thousands of fans, have the rights to make the sequel to the highly acclaimed PC adventure game Dreamfall: The Longest Journey.

As part of their kickstarter campaign they ran an art competition to help raise awareness. My first ever art competition. There were roughly 145 entries and I had only a week to enter two traditional art pieces and one 3D printed jewellery prototype.

Finalists were chosen by the RTG team and winners by the community. My jewellery prototype was one of the final five winners with over 300 votes. Due to popular demand I have since finished it in sterling silver.

Id

Category

Just for fun

Category_src

projects-creative.png

Children

Array

Hitwise Product

Category_id

Type

Web design and development

Company

Experian Hitwise

Description

I was a developer and user experience designer on the Experian Hitwise SAAS product which offers usage data from millions of websites across the internet. I was fortunate enough to participate in redesigning the information architecture and look from scratch.

Key themes included rewarding user exploration, automating the hard work put in by expert users and surfacing the gold in the mine early.

Much the site was originally designed to be a complex analytical tool but 80% of users remained novices. I spent my time simplifying data and infographics for easy consumption.

Id

Category

Major Projects

Category_src

projects-major.png

Lion in a suit

Category_id

Type

Graphic design

Description

An illustration done for a book release. The suited lion is for a modern remake of the Lion and the Unicorn nursery rhyme.

Done in Photoshop CS5.

Id

Category

Just for fun

Category_src

projects-creative.png

Snooze

Category_id

Type

Web development and UX design

Company

Get Started

Link

Snooze website

Description

I was fortunate enough to be the Lead Frontend Developer on Snooze's new responsive website, heading a team of 5 very talented individuals. I worked closely with the Graphic Designer to translate a set of complex interactions to a single codebase that works across all modern devices.

Among many very exciting features of the codebase, some of my favourites are SVG vector images with PNG fallbacks, JPG images for retina devices, CSS3 animations using hardware acceleration with JQuery fallbacks, font-based iconography and javascript logging to Google Analytics.

So much fun.