James Bull - Media Dude » Design

Finally Got My Foot In The Door…

James — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:15:15 +0000

I’ve got some great news people, I have officially started my new job at WAX Partnership, here in Calgary, AB. WAX is an amazing award-winning design agency that is looking to expand into the digital realm and have hired me as their first digital developer.

I’m incredibly lucky to be able to work with this amazingly talented group of people, and I can’t wait to work on some amazing projects. Thanks to everyone for helping me get here, the teachers at SAIT, everybody at Snowboarder Magazine, and finally all my friends and family. You can read a great article about WAX in an back-dated issue of Applied Arts.

Click to visit WAX's website

Return to Thunderdome

James — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 22:21:26 +0000

With all the kids starting back at school, the summer has finally come to a close. If it weren’t for the numerous snowboard video premieres coming in the next few weeks, I’d probably be bummed. But I’m not. Soon the sky’s will turn grey and the clouds will unleash that beautiful white fluffy powder, and snowboard season will be here.

I’m really looking forward to a good winter. Having completed my internship with Snowboarder Magazine, I am back from California. It was an incredible opportunity to redesign and rebuild Snowboarder’s website from scratch. I learnt an incredible amount in the 8 weeks of design and development, and am looking forward to continuing development on their site! The guys at the mag are a great group of people, and so HUGE shoutouts to everybody back there in Cali!

Since being back for almost 3 weeks, I’ve only spent 2 nights in my own bed. For some reason, I’ve decided to travel throughout the interior of British Columbia and elsewhere. I kind of feel like Mad Max, hence the post title. I’ve also been spending some time in Vancouver and have really taken to this city. I’m going to do my best to actually move out here and spend at least a year on the coast. The fact that the ocean and the mountains are so close is incredible, and I don’t want to miss the opportunity to experience the city. And speaking of ocean’s I leave you with a pic of me learning to Wake-Surf. It’s not really an ocean, its just Shuswap Lake, but enjoy nonetheless.

3rd Day Wakesurfing

Snowboarder Magazine Website

James — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:34:50 +0000

Well after almost 8 weeks, I finally finished what I came to California to do. I rebuilt Snowboarder Magazine’s website using Wordpress from the ground up.

New SnowboarderMag.com!

It was a daunting task, to say the least, because the magazine has an incredibly large archive of features, photos, and videos dating back quite a few years. Luckily I had the help of a few other interns to backdate posts and media, which worked out great.

The largest complaint about the old site, was its user interface. Most people found it extremely hard to navigate, and they just couldn’t find what they were looking for. So I cleaned up the front page, added tabs for quick access to top stories, and greatly improved the commenting system.

Here is an example of the FEATURES landing page on the OLD site:

Ugh.

Few problems here! Whats the deal with the blank space under the ad on the left? The articles that are features are tucked away on the side! Instead of being showcased like they should! Also not much care was given to ad placement, sometimes they would fall right into the middle of a article or paragraph or sometimes cutting off someones comment!

This was all taken into account for the redesign, and I hope you enjoy it. So take a peek and let me know what you think!

Snowboarder Magazine

Under The Banner Of Heaven

James — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:30:37 +0000

Yesturday I had to complete an assignment for class that involved me creating a book cover. I recently read an interesting book entitled Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. It was a great read, so I decided to do a typographical rendition of its cover.

Click to view full-size!

The 99 Percent – A Behance Conference

James — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:05:04 +0000

Well in exactly 4 weeks, Graeme Duckett and myself will be flying to New York City to attend The 99 Percent Conference, put on by the lovely people at Behance.

This looks to be a radical 2-day conference, take a look at who’s speaking:

Michael Bierut – Partner, Pentagram
Cheryl Dorsey – President, Echoing Green
Seth Godin – Author & Blogger
Jill Greenberg – Photographer
Robert Hammond – Co-Founder & President, Friends of the High Line
Jeffrey Kalmikoff – CEO, Threadless
Jake Nickell – CSO, Threadless
Ji Lee – Creative Director, Google Creative Labs
Jason Randal – Theorist on Developing Expertise
Scott Thomas – Design Director of New Media, Obama for America

We’re pretty pumped on the opportunity and are looking forward to meet these people and hear what they have to say. If your going to be there, let us know! And we’ll hang out, maybe drink some beers? Who knows, might even grease a dancefloor or two! Heck ya!

The Beat Goes On Logo

James — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:03:15 +0000

I’ve been working recently with another graphic/web designer, Mike Seehagel. Both Mike and myself are “branding” a snowboard film for a production company based in the province of British Columbia, Canada. The film is titled “The Beat Goes On” and the head of the production company was looking for an organic woodsy feel.

I have no After Effects experience and got Mike to animate the logo, that I designed. He did a wonderful job and the client is extremely happy. I’ll be posting a link to the video’s website once its completed but in the meantime, here’s a screen and a link to a compressed rendering of the animation! Enjoy!