Preview

Recently completed projects and experiments.

Head, heart, hand: 40 years of industrial design at the Université de Montréal

I recently completed the visual identity for the Head, heart, hand: 40 years of industrial design at the Université de Montréal exhibition (held at the Montréal Science Center) and a 136 page book about the history of the School of Industrial Design of the Université de Montréal.

I had many tasks to accomplish for this project: from conceptualizing the visual signature of the event, designing signage, invitation cards, trophies to designing a book.

Since I am actually living and studying in Sweden, I did the majority of the work remotely (I had started working on the project in early August while I was in Montréal for the summer). The pictures below are borrowed from various sources (including RAÉDIUM).

In French.

Process: creating abstract shapes of the three words (head, heart, and hand) by folding paper.

Trophies.

Entrance wall.

Book in hand (which I yet have to see!).

It was a true honor for me to be the graphic designer for the School at which I studied industrial design for four years. As well as being lots of work and a unique learning experience, it was lots of fun!

IxD Fall Summit 2009 poster

I recently designed the poster for the interaction design Fall Summit 2009 that was held at Umeå Institute of Design. It uses monochrome (Pantone® 536 U) offset printing on thick colored stock, as well as the great Tungsten font by Hoefler & Frere-Jones. 200 copies were printed.

Through numerous email discussions, the poster was done in close collaboration with Matt Cottam, which basically acted as a co art-director. Matt also has a great collection of photos up on his flickr page.

A proper photoshoot of the A2-sized poster will be done shortly. Six out of seven videos are online on UID’s Vimeo page.

Slap-On Dilpouch

This one-week project, realized with my friend and colleague Sisirnath Sangidreddy during the infamous Experience prototyping course at UID, was about hacking iPhones and iPod Touches (basically treating them as mere small computers with a lots of gadgets in them, which they are) using the NADAmobile software developed by Tellart. (Sadly, the video showing the working prototype is stuck in a NTSC cassette and I won’t be able to capture before Christmas time.)

The idea of the workshop was to create a weird creature whilst using specific parts of the iPhone (such as the accelerometer in our case). Our was a future exercise belt that was always annoyed, only the annoyance degree varying from tolerable to unbearable (moaning, vibrating annoying creature it was at that!). It was meant to be worn as a tourist pouch, around one’s waist on the belly. The programming was done mainly in javascript, with a hint of CSS 3.

Huge thanks to Brian Hinch and Matt Cottam of Tellart for their help and support.


				
				//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

				//SLAP-ON code

				//by Pierre-Alexandre Poirier & Sisirnath Sangidreddy

				//Tellart NADA Mobile workshop, interaction design MA 2nd year, Umeå Institute of Design, 23/10/2009.

				//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



				//global variables

				var timer = 0;

				var timerTwo = 0;

				var screamer = 9; //value to reset time for moanTwo()

				var slapper = 32; //value to reset time for moanOne()


				var pwmIsOn = false; //for arduino

				var toggleStuff = false; //for toggling line & point



				var iAmFaceUp = false; //detecting the orientation of the iPhone



				//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



				function load() {

					   dashcode.setupParts();

					   setInterval(runsEverySecond, 1000); 

				}



				function sketchSetup() {

					   sketchSetSensorTone(false);

				}



				//orientation----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



				function sketchOnOrientation(orientation) {

					//checking if the phone’s face is up. If so, it triggers the moanOne function, if not, moanTwo

					if (orientation == "faceUp") {

					   if (iAmFaceUp == false) moanOne();

					   iAmFaceUp = true;        

					   textChecker.innerHTML = iAmFaceUp;

					   timer = 0;

					} 

					else {
					   	iAmFaceUp = false;

					   	textChecker.innerHTML = iAmFaceUp;

					}

				}



				//functions------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



				//function that activates the timer

				function runsEverySecond() { 

				   //timerTwo

				   timerTwo++;

				   helperTextTwo.innerHTML = timerTwo;

				   //timer

				   timer++;

				   helperText.innerHTML = timer;

				   //resets the timer (and the slapMe sound loop) when the phone is lying flat

			   if((iAmFaceUp == true) && (timer > slapper)) {

			      	timer = 0;

			      	moanOne();

			   }

			   //resets the timerTwo (and the scram sound loop) when the phone is NOT lying flat

			   if((iAmFaceUp == false) && (timerTwo > screamer)) {

			      	moanTwo();

			   }


				}



				//touching the screen function

				function screenTouched(event) {

				   event.preventDefault(); //prevents the screen from being dragged/moved

				   lineScan(); //switches between displaying the line or point on the screen

				}



				//sub functions---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



				//Arduino code



				//belt vibrates

				function toggleArduinoOn() {

				   sketchSetIOPack("remote", 255, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0);

				   pwmIsOn = true;

				}

				//belt doesn’t vibrate

				function toggleArduinoOff(event) {

				   sketchSetIOPack("remote", 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0);

				   pwmIsOn = false;

				   timerTwo = 0;

				}



				//point and lines-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

				//the point and line’s movement are entirely done by CSS 3 animations. See the animation.css file



				//moving line

				function lineScan() {



					//when the screen is touched, the point turns into a line

				   	if(toggleStuff == false){

				      	movingLine.style.visibility = "hidden";

				      	movingPoint.style.visibility = "visible";

				      	toggleStuff = true;

				   } else {

				      	movingLine.style.visibility = "visible";

				      	movingPoint.style.visibility = "hidden";

				      	toggleStuff = false;

				   }

				}



				//moan functions--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



				//moanOne function

				function moanOne() {

				   sketchSoundPlay("soundsOfTheFuture/slapMe.wav");

				   toggleArduinoOff(); //shutting off arduino vibrating function

				}



				//moanTwo function

				function moanTwo() {

				   sketchSoundPlay("soundsOfTheFuture/scream.m4a");

				   toggleArduinoOn(); //calling the arduino vibrating function

				}

You can see the javascript code that Sisir and I wrote by clicking here.

Christine Tassan et Les Imposteures

Along with Marianne-Coquelicot Mercier, we designed the artwork of Montréal-based manouche jazz band Christine Tassan et Les Imposteures’s sophomore album.

For this project, we art-directed, designed, photographed—in a word, we did it all!—all the content that went into the album’s artwork. More photos coming soon. (And no, we didn’t design their website.)

Front cover.

Back cover.

All artwork.

Maxi Paintshop

I recently redesigned Maxi Paintshop’s website. The first version of it, released in 2007, was actually the first website I had ever built. I didn’t even know HTML templates existed back then! This second version uses the Smarty template engine and the 960gs CSS framework.