Chris Monaccio

Steve Celestin (Digital Art Director, BBDO) came to me with an excellent design revision to his portfolio. After trying to modify a public WordPress theme on his own, I offered to develop the site from the ground up. I completed the prototype over lunch and it took only two weeks to implement his final design as a custom theme. The jQuery Tools component library was used for the scrollable content and tooltips. All content is managed through WordPress, letting Steve forget about the code and add new projects and images lickity split.

Nerdnauts is a nerd culture blog dedicated to producing longer-format, well-edited content. After successfully relaunching his portfolio, Steve asked for my assistance again with this side project. I took the design and transformed it into a custom WordPress theme. This was especially fun to develop, allowing me to play with some CSS3 features like rounded-corners and box shadows since legacy browser support wasn’t required. Content is managed by several users with varying levels of authority.

We were hired by Knapheide to create a configurator for their Sortimo containers that needed to launch with the redesign of their website. The goal was an easy to use configurator that would allow customers to select a truck body and fill it with Sortimo containers that suit their needs. My role was primarily planning and management. I worked very closely with the client, our Art Director, and our Flash developers to identify the architectural and functional requirements. I completed a series of wireframes and initial concepts to guide our team during the design and development phases. I spent the remainder of the project managing client requests, coordinating our designer and developers, and keeping everyone on task and on budget.

I rekindled an interest in skepticism, scientific inquiry, and space exploration in 2008, bringing me to Sagan’s famous Cosmos series. Sagan’s ability to invoke a sense of wonder, while staying firmly within the realm of reality is an exceptional talent. Starting in 2009, Sagan’s life is celebrated by his friends, fans, and colleagues in the first week of November. Inspired by his life and work, I’ve created this poster in honor of Carl Sagan Day 2010. The rocket launching contains the Voyager spacecraft and the image of Jupiter in the exhaust plume is one of the first taken as Voyager flew by.

After we launched Trex.com, we were asked to add a Support Chat feature so customers could have questions answered in real-time. They would input their customer ID or create a login to send information to Trex. I designed a pop-in interface for the chat feature that is accessed via a small bug placed on pages where users needed the most guidance. Unfortunately, my first choice for the model, Lil’ Jon, didn’t quite match the image Trex was after.

This year, Media Box Studios celebrated it’s 5th year in business. This was a significant achievement for a company that built itself from a few employees broken off from a government contractor into a full-service agency with two offices. Every year we design a new shirt and this year we were able to have some fun.

Christine ran a “Girl Power” program for young girls and wanted an emblem that could be used on shirts, posters, or flyers. The emblem would embody the purpose of the program, to empower young girls to be self-confident and follow their dreams.

Avoiding stereotypes of what young girls find interesting was a challenge. No makeup or dollies please! It took a few revisions to find a happy medium between what excites young girls but demonstrates their potential without being superficial. Concentric hearts with some unicorn flare, topped with a beautiful tiara, cradle inner passions and potential.

Nick had an idea for a weekly program featuring local music talent and needed an emblem to represent it. It had to be snappy, easily recognizable and reflect the content of the show. After some sketching, I finished a draft pencil drawing, scanned it into Illustrator, and got to work! Nick was very pleased and I believe the show is ongoing.