Emma Sherwood-Forbes: Design

I joined Zannel Inc. as an in-house designer shortly after its inception in 2006. One of the joys of working at a startup is that you get your hands in everything, and those hands get quite dirty. There is no clear division between product design and interface design, between interface design and visual design, between visual design and marketing; any and all talents a designer has are brought to the table and there is ample room to cultivate more.

This site catalogues my work at Zannel and a few other projects I've worked on in recent years; keep your eyes peeled for a full site coming soon. Contact me if you have interesting design problems to solve.

Zannel Site, 2006-2009

Zannel today is a mobile-friendly social networking tool based on picture, video and text updates in the style of communication made popular by Twitter. We started as a social gaming site, transitioned into a social network, then added features to make Zannel a networking tool rather than a destination in itself. We are currently working on a new site, tap11, which will take the utility concept even further.

What you see below is Zannel's fourth iteration. In the process of bringing the site to this state, I researched competitors, generated wireframes, provided art direction and visual design, and handled design production. The element I am most pleased with is the dropdown navigation; in previous iterations we had as many as 19 actions available in the nav. Combining them into dropdown categories dramatically reduced the visual clutter, and allows users to navigate deep within the site without unnecessary clicks. See more at zannel.com.

Zannel Mobile Sites, 2006-2009

Zannel has two mobile interfaces in addition to the website, one for javascript-enabled phones such as the iPhone and one for those without java. Both sites contain a much slimmer set of features than the website.

Designing for mobile requires using a very flexible layout to accommodate varying screen sizes and minimal graphics to avoid long load times. Shown are a few sample pages; see more on your phone at mow.zannel.com or wap.zannel.com (you can view these sites on web, but you will not get the full experience).

The VIP Pass iPhone Application, 2009

The idea behind the VIP Pass app was to create a rich, interactive, brandable fan environment using Zannel’s microblogging platform. Artists can select different features depending on their needs; available feature sets are the feed (social media from Zannel, Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere), buzz (fan club/community), tour (schedule and tickets), and media (produced photos and videos, albums). Published VIP Passes include Dane Cook and Keith Urban, with KISS and more coming soon.

CityWatch iPhone Application, 2008

At the time we released CityWatch, Zannel was positioned as a microblogging mobile social network in competition with Twitter. The emphasis on browsing reflects this mindset, and for the application we featured location based browsing to highlight the iPhone’s then-new gps and mapping features. The application launches with city scape sliding up to reveal hotspot locations on the home tab; users can browse updates by location or post updates of their own.

fig&ficus, 2009

Logo for fig&ficus, a sustainable, eco-friendly party planning company.

Box Dog Bikes Tee, 2009

Tee-Shirt for Box Dog Bikes, a co-operative bicycle shop in the Mission. I worked with shop members to create this spoof of the classic Air Jordan image for a limited run of shirts.

Custom Lettering, 2008

I created this lettering while taking a Typography class at the California College of Arts. It is an homage to Marian Bantjes, the noted designer and typographer.

Thanks for taking a look at my work; a full site with more design work, illustration and personal artwork is coming soon (you can see some of it on my old site). Contact me for more info.