One of the greatest projects I’ve been privileged to be a part of was in recent months was to help design, implement, and optimize the UX/UI for the Tribute Portfolio Homes beta site experience.
Working alongside an amazing (and incredibly lean) team at CX and our partners at Hostmaker, we were able to rapidly move from early concept ideation, to wireframes, to launching Marriott International’s first venture into the Home Rental Service space in a little under a year!
Today we are still testing, learning, and iteratively designing in order to optimize our site experience for our users.
Design Team:
Katherine Rodriguez
Tony Kellaher
Komal Zehrah
Guest Experience/ Operations Team:
Janet Roller
Eric Dekker
Tech Lead:
Bryce Barrand
All Images © Copyright 2018, Tribute Portfolio Homes/ Marriott International. All rights reserved.
Note: Any trademarked images or logos displayed are only intended to be used in the context of my portfolio and not intended to be used for commercial purposes.
I’ve always been fascinated by optical illusions and tricks of the eye. This single color screen print embodies the frenetic pace and perennial cool of my hometown Washington D.C. through a zig zag pattern that seems to be perpetually in motion.
Washington D.C.’s own Fugazi is perhaps the world’s most influential independant band. This poster series draws on the band’s DIY aesthetic and D.C. iconography to give the band a strong visual identity.
On the Marriott CX Innovation team we often are called upon to facilitate “co-creation” sessions to help brainstorm, ideate, and refine potential concepts for both our brands and partners.
For the Future of Wellbeing co-creation session, our team wanted to examine ways in which health and wellbeing perspectives have shifted for our Luxury guest traveler. As part of the effort, I was tasked with creating a design identity for our collateral materials that could present our findings in an elegant but easy to understand way. Fully embracing the brainstorming/ workshop format I designed a packet of cards that the user could spread out across an entire table.
Street style for the Great Outdoors. This five panel cap design for D.C. lifestyle brand definition company was inspired by witnessing the sunrise at the volcano Haleakala (the House of the Sun) in Maui, Hawaii.
Photography credit: Bennett Pang
This poster series highlights four classic films from director Quentin Tarantino.
Conceptually, I sought to create a poster series that would be eye catching from afar, but slowly reveal more and more information the closer you get. The neon colors may capture your attention at first, but the typography, layout, and texture keep you interested.
This balance between surface and substance is a bit like Tarantino's films themselves. In my opinion, it's the perfect way to honor their legacy.
Kitsune was inspired by a visit to Fushimi Inari-taisha in Kyoto, Japan.
For generations, pilgrims have made the journey to this sacred place on the Inari Mountain asking for blessings from Inari Okami, the patron spirit of industry, merchants, and craftsmen. Thousands of bright vermilion torii gates, and statues of Kitsune (Japanese for fox) line the paths to the summit.
Spending a few hours at Fushimi Inari-taisha, it's easy to slip away into the past. In fact it's almost jarring to see that this quiet refuge of spirituality boasts the best view of the modern Kyoto skyline when you get close to the top of the mountain.
Kitsune is all about exploring this contrast between old and new. The product, a traditional tenugui honors Kyoto's history of textile manufacturing, while the color palette is refreshing and modern.
This project was a re-imagining of the website for the Smithsonian Freer & Sackler Galleries with a special emphasis on usability to highlight their wonderful collection of Asian art and antiquities.
My primary goal was to bring the thrill of exploration and discovery one gets while walking through the museum directly to the user. Whether they are at the museum looking at art in person or browsing through the collection at home, my objective was to bring the art to the forefront of the design in order to create a more memorable and informative experience.
I created a flexible design (inspired in part by Japanese woodblock printing) that would be simple to use as well as look good on multiple devices and screen sizes.
Photography credits and images sourced: Smithsonian Freer & Sackler Galleries. Raquel Zaldivar /NPR.
What is propaganda? Two images that reflect arguments for and against government surveillance reveal how propaganda can use imagery to dramatically influence opinion.
This Hallowzine print is a two plate lithograph inspired by the D.I.Y. movement and the D.C. hardcore punk scene. Given the theme, it was important to me for this project to be as handcrafted as possible. Each of the mummy’s bandages were created by cutting up and reassembling xeroxed D.C. area punk flyers from the 80’s and 90’s. The type was either hand drawn, or cut and reassembled from existing sources. The image was then digitized and developed into lithograph plates for the final press.
I find I am able to come up with my most creative solutions when faced with limitations. It sounds odd to say, but the worst possible thing to hear from a client is to design whatever I want.
This book cover series one of my favorite portfolio highlights and serves as a reminder that constraints can lead to even more creative solutions. This project started as an advanced typography and design exercise in which strict parameters for type hierarchy, image, and font are enforced for three thematically different novels. The challenge is come up with three successful and legible covers that work together as a series yet also stand successfully on their own.
The key is to look at limitations as starting points instead of dead ends. Instead of focusing on what I could not change, I decided to look at what I could. Things like color, abstraction, and organization of image and type were all creative ways to convey meaning while working within limits.
The end result are three covers that I am extremely proud but also three covers that profoundly changed my process for the better.
Many people don’t know that residents of the District of Columbia do not have full voting rights in Congress. Not Your District PAC aims to change that by supporting candidates that support the citizens of the district.
This book design takes inspiration from the title cards of reknown designer Saul Bass to breath exciting modern life into the adventures of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous detective. Silhoutte and line work are meant to evoke both mystery and motion in order to catch any reader’s curious eye.
A four plate lithography project to honor some of my favorite D.C. cultural luminaries: Duke Ellington, Anna J. Cooper, Ian MacKaye, and Frederick Douglass. The holographic shimmer effect on the numbers was achieved by printing a layer of transparent base and then manually adding pigment as it dries.
Iconography is all about distilling sometimes complex information into simple visual narratives. This small vector icon series highlights the essential equipment of the world's most popular game from the perspective of player, fan, and referee.
