Christopher Marques

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Graphics by Color Group

As this agile company continued to adapt with the times, so did their web presence. Our approach aimed to reflect the contemporary ethos of Color Group, providing a forward-thinking online platform that resonates with their diverse clientele and showcases their innovative services. A fresh look for an evolving business.

Overview

Established in 1946 as a small photographic color print house, Color Group, has evolved into 'Graphics by Color Group,' a comprehensive service provider, described as a 'Custom Design Shop,' with website design playing a pivotal role in showcasing their diverse and expansive capabilities.

Client

Graphics by Color Group

Role

Web Developer/Designer, Graphic Designer

Services provided

Web Design, Branding, Graphic Design

Year Completed

2020

Platform

WordPress

Visit Site

Challenge

Graphics by Color Group’s website faced several issues that limited its functionality and user experience. Many of the site’s internal links were broken, preventing customers from accessing essential portfolio examples and service details. Additionally, the layout did not reflect the company’s expanding range of services, which led to confusion for potential clients. The outdated design and poor navigation made it challenging for the company to communicate its over 75 years of industry expertise effectively.

Objectives

Our primary objective was to revamp the Graphics by Color Group website to better reflect their broad range of services and industry reputation. We focused on modernizing the design to create a cohesive and professional online presence while showcasing their extensive portfolio. A key goal was to ensure that the website would be easily navigable, allowing customers to explore the company's diverse offerings without difficulty.

Research

Color Group is a long-established print and design shop in Westchester, New York, with a rich history dating back to 1946. Initially founded as a small photographic color print house, it has evolved over generations into a full-service digital and graphic resource, now offering 14 categories of services, including Building Signage, Murals, Lobby and Tradeshow Displays, and Wayfinding. Their broad capabilities, combined with a reputation for custom solutions, made the website redesign a critical step in modernizing their online presence.

During the research phase, I analyzed their existing website and competitors in the signage and printing industries to understand common pain points and best practices. The goal was to highlight Color Group’s unique strengths—namely, their versatility and ability to turn client concepts into reality. Through interviews with stakeholders, I gained deeper insights into how they wanted to be perceived by potential customers and which services they needed to showcase.

Based on this research, I proposed a modern, user-friendly design that would organize their extensive portfolio more effectively and clarify their services. Wireframes were developed to align the visual aesthetics with Color Group’s rebranding, ensuring that their website would reflect the quality and professionalism that clients have come to expect from their longstanding legacy.

Design System

For Color Group we chose Acier for headings and Futura for body text, balancing modernity and readability to fit the client’s extensive range of services. With a wide range of services, we opted for a neutral color palette of blacks, greys, and whites was chosen to contrast with the vibrant imagery in their portfolio.

aa

Acier

Heading

size 60/50/35

Aa

Futura

Body

size 35/28/18/17/14/12

#0E0D0D

#111111

#888888

#EEEEEE

#00000000

Elements to be Addressed:

  • Outdated website with broken links and poor navigation.
  • Difficulty in showcasing the company’s wide range of services.
  • Lack of modern design to represent the brand’s full capabilities.
  • Inefficient use of the company’s extensive portfolio on the site.

Goals:

  • Create a modern website to better reflect the wide range of services offered.
  • Improve site navigation and repair broken links to enhance customer experience.
  • Integrate the company’s demo reel and portfolio to showcase their expertise.
  • Ensure the site is mobile-friendly and optimized for SEO performance to increase visibility.

Scope of Work:

  • Website Development: I designed and built a modern, mobile-friendly website that showcases the full range of services and provides an easy-to-navigate experience for customers. This included fixing broken links and optimizing the structure for SEO.
  • Portfolio Integration: Integrated their extensive portfolio and demo reel into the website, ensuring potential clients can easily access and view their work.
  • Design Modernization: Developed a fresh, contemporary design that aligns with their brand identity, ensuring a professional and visually engaging online presence.
  • Content Strategy: Updated the content to accurately reflect the company’s current offerings, ensuring clarity and ease of navigation for clients exploring their services.

Website Design

Before

After

Client Feedback:

Conclusion:

The redesigned website resulted in an easier client experience, with organized content that showcased Graphics by Color Group’s services. We also integrated the company’s demo reel prominently to highlight their history and achievements, alongside improving the site’s functionality by fixing broken links and optimizing the content for SEO performance. The improved layout and new design system ensured that visitors could explore the company’s vast portfolio without confusion.

Beat Vortex

Previous
Next

Beat Vortex is the working title for a rhythm game I began working on in 2018. 
I picked back up work on the project during 2020 to see how much further along I could get. 

After extensive research, I was able to implement multithreading for the song loading and analysis.  
This took load times on mobile from 7-12 minutes depending on the song to 50-90 secs. 

I later use a similar technique to improve the terrain generation, which yielded similar results. 

Tools used: Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, Unity, Visual Studio, Trello. 

Honor Lore and art

During the pandemic, I took the opportunity to freelance and work from home as a way for me to focus on finishing up one of my passion projects.  

One of the first steps along this journey was to develop more of the lore and background of the world. 

Honor Rulebook

As progress on the game began to pick up steam, I shifted focus over to refining the rulebook I had previously thrown together during the original development. 

As part of the process, visual and grammatical improvements were made to improve the flow and clarity of the rules. 

After completing the revisions of the rulebook, the project moved forward into play tests and further refinement. 

Journal App

This past year I started working on developing a productivity app. I felt that the to-do list’s or habit trackers I had tried were very narrowly focused on doing one thing well. This often left users needing multiple apps to handle simple planning and task management for their day to day. This creates a lot of opportunities for confusion,  wasted time, and more pain points than their software solves. 

The goal of the Journal App is to give every day users the same depth and control over planning of their schedules as we have for corporations with software like Jira, Trello, Monday, or Asana. 

This project has been a great test of my UI design and implementation. It has also given me a chance to further improve my workflow for loading/storing user data. 

Tools used:  Photoshop, Trello, Unity, Visual Studio. 

Tulipanov Virtual Gallery

For this project, I was asked by the painter, Igor Tulipanov, to create a virtual gallery space where he could host private exhibitions of his art. 

I used a concept image he gave me to model the exterior off of. I then designed an interior that worked well for that space and fit his unique art style. 

The final goal for the project is to be able to embed the gallery on the homepage of their site. This proved to be the main challenge of this project was setting up the ‘multiplayer’ aspect, due to it being webgl. 

 

Tools used: Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, Unity, Photon 

Pip42 - 1 : Building design

PIP42 – 1 gives players the ability to place down structures and create bases on a foreign planet. To do this required a modular building. 

I started off by building a mood board of space structures that I felt fit the aesthetic I was looking for. 
Since the game is top down, I need to design with the ability for the  roof of all the models to be removable. 

Tools used: Autodesk Maya. PureRef. 

Honor Stats Rebalancing

After the first few play tests, we found the stats for Honor needed to be rebalanced. 
Using google sheets allowed me to visualize the distributions of stats for classes, weapons, and armor. 
I was able to do this using conditional formatting, which I set to shade cell based on their value. 

The original stat calculations took a considerable amount of time to work out. 
Developing a new system cut down the time substantially. 

Tools used: Google Sheets

Honor Card Design

Over a few months, I worked to refine the card designs for my tabletop card game. Here are some iterations of the early stages. 

After not seeing much progress towards a suitable design, I decided to create a mood board to help define what I wanted to create. 

I’ve settled on a simplified look with minimal framing, allowing more room to let the art shine. 

After settling on the new design, I began implementing those concepts across the rest of the card types from the game.

Tools used: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Pureref

Graphics by Color Group

Before
After

This was a project for a local business. They wanted their site updated to something that was more modern and fresh than their old site. 
I designed and built out the new site remotely, then swapped the site out over night to prevent downtime and users seeing a broken site. 

www.ColorGroup.com

Museum of Bops

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Next

Museum of Bops was a freelance animation project for the painter Igor Tulipanov.  

Igor wished to see the characters from his paintings come to life. 

I modeled the character, built out a museum and animated all the characters.

The video is the intro of the project where the characters enter the museum before climbing into the paintings to interact with their fellow bops

Tools used: Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, Unity, Visual Studio, Trello.