About Jonathan Hardie

5:15pm Monday 5th November 2007

My name is Jonathan Hardie, and I’m a web and interactive media designer. I am currently freelancing, primarily as a Flash/ActionScript specialist, as well as working on design for a web 2.0 startup venture called GameSwap — among other personal *secret* projects. Most recently I've been contracting at Shift doing advanced flash development in ActionScript 3 for various projects.
Prior to that I worked on developing flash-based touch screen applications, creating a general purpose flash-based kiosk framework to facilitate rapid builds of touch-screen kiosks by flash designers with little or no ActionScript skills.
In the last year I've also contracted doing HTML/CSS templating work for Ogilvy Interactive and Terabyte Interactive & APN online, in addition to a couple of other advanced ActionScript 3 projects in Flash.

While I trained as a designer at the Wanganui School of Design, the last couple of years have found me working in environments with other designers who have little or no technical skills — and as a result I've often been relegated to a more technical role. I don't mind this too much; I've come to enjoy the creative process in coding as much as graphic design, but as a result my visual portfolio has suffered somewhat.

I care about doing things right, about industry best practices, creating standards compliant code and well-structured content. I thrive on the need to seek fresh challenges and learn new things constantly.

I’m most interested in user interface design; I believe the questions often left un-asked in commercial web-design today go something like:

"Why does that button need to be there? Is there a way we can simplify and streamline our design so that it's no longer required?"

"Does this website really warrant the use of breadcrumb navigation — or are you the designer just sticking it in because you don't have to worry about implementation, and just wanted to use up that white space?"

"Do we really need three duplicate sets of navigation?"

I'm here to ask those questions!

My favourite question to myself however, is "How can I automate this boring task so that nobody ever has to do it again?"

I've divided my example work into several categories, and provided a few links for each

Flash/ActionScript Applications/Games

Westfield 'What's What' summer fashion site.
While contracting at Shift I developed the Virtual Dressing Room component of the site, which pulls products from a database via XML and displays them in a novel way.

Exposure.org
Exposure had a static timeline-based flash website with a design they liked, but which was almost impossible to update.

I recreated the site in ActionScript 3, and made everything dynamically generated from an XML feed that reflects the live file-system. Now updating the content on their site is a simple matter of uploading images and video files via ftp. Content is also replicated as HTML so that the site has some search-engine accessible content.

Tourism NZ Kiwi Walks campaign slideshow
While contracting at Shift I worked on the developed this XML driven fullscreen slideshow application localised for the Japanese market. (it requires asian character sets installed to display correctly). It show-cases short walks around new zealand, and also reads in XML-SOAP data about current travel deals available and displays those on top of the images.

IPFX
IPFX is a project I've almost finished, for which I've created a game-like engine in AS3 which facilitates loading of graphic assets and animations created by another designer, creation of maps from XML data, and an events timeline for character objects, also XML based. It features real-time path-finding based on the A* algorithm, and depth and occlusion checking for objects in the simulation. It's one of the more complex pieces I've created in Flash.

Jigsaw Puzzle
An (unfinished) game which was my first foray into AS3. Externally loaded images are used to create randomly generated jigsaw puzzles of varying difficulty.

HTML/CSS/JavaScript

Property Finda
While at APN online I worked primarily on html/CSS templating for the rebrand of Property Finda for the aussie market.

NZ Herald Jobs
While at APN online I also worked on html/css integration of existing functionality from finda's search4jobs.co.nz into the NZHerald site.

Sanitarium HTML/CSS/JavaScript
Some things broken - whoever was responsible for implementing my templates obviously doesn't test for Safari...

Maggi HTML/CSS
More templates...

Laparoscopy Auckland HTML/CSS/JavaScript/PHP

Twining Valley Nurseries
HTML/CSS/PHP

Illustration (my secret love)

Older Illustration work
Links to my old portfolio and some of the illustration I've done at various times in the past.

Web Design (old stuff)

Sunsail.com.au
Designed and templated whilst working for a small Christchurch web design firm where I was the sole designer.

InsightFleetPro
Designed and created inhouse while at iVistra Technology

iVistra
Redesign/rebuild of an existing table-based layout.

CanCast
Design and templating, as well as Flash logo animation

Personal Statement

I am creative, efficient and highly analytical - a problem solver always striving to find better ways of doing things. I perform well in environments where I can work as part of a team towards a common goal, but have also found during my time as a freelancer that I have the independence and judgement to go solo on occasion.

Recent Employment

Contracting in 2008 - Ogilvy Interactive, Terabyte Interactive, APN online, Shift

During 2007 I worked with Alex Balanoff at Ardent Interactive Ltd, a joint venture we started together. We parted ways due to wanting different things out of the business.

At iVistra Technology during 2006 I created Flash prototypes around ‘people tracking’ technologies and GPS fleet management technologies for the freight and logistics industries. I also developed application frameworks to allow more rapid development and prototyping by the design team I was a part of. In addition to this I designed and maintained a few company inhouse websites, as well as carrying out some print-based marketing tasks.

Previously, at The University of Auckland my responsibilities included creating a full range of graphic assets, from icons, diagrams, printable forms, 2D and 3D illustrations, to interactive data-driven Flash clips, web layout designs and working code. In that role I was part of a department called the Centre for Flexible and Distance Learning, whose purpose is to provide services to the university academic faculties for creating online course ware and e- learning resources, as well as TV & multimedia creation. Relevant projects I completed during my time at Auckland University included a dynamically generated Flash time-line for a European History course, deriving its data from an external XML file and able to be re purposed with relative ease, and a ‘matching game’, also in Flash, for an anthropology course. I’ve also worked on numerous website designs and templates, and many illustrations and diagrams. Sometimes my role was to act as a consultant to one of our learning designers, who need to know what is possible.

My Background

I’ve lived and worked in Auckland for three years, in a variety of web-related roles; Prior to moving up I worked as a graphic/web designer/developer at IBDG in Christchurch. A major highlight while there was a complete website redesign of a company called Sunsail. (www.sunsail.com.au) The brief (as it evolved) required me to do everything from initial concept mock-up artwork to production HTML/CSS templates for both the public front-end and the back-end CMS.

I worked closely with the main developer on the project to work out how user interactions should behave on the content management system created in tandem with the Sunsail project. I did all kinds of Flash and ActionScript work to create interactive sailing maps, smart image loading page headers and image galleries.

Education History

While my education will never actually end - I love learning about the latest and greatest developments in this field, and try to stay on top of things reading industry blogs, in the distant past (speaking in terms of internet years!) I did once have a formal education.

I graduated from a Bachelor in Computer Graphic Design from the Wanganui School of Design/Waikato University in 2004, during which I specialised in web & Flash/interactive media design and scripting. I had a major focus on building dynamically-generated database-driven websites, as well as standalone applications designed and built using Flash, also with with a focus on dynamic content. During my tertiary study period I worked on a number of freelance and pro-bono projects.

For example, early in 2004 I was responsible for collectively branding three large youth camps run nationwide over Easter weekend and attended by around six thousand teenagers. This branding encompassed designing logos, fliers, registration forms, screen-prints for clothing and CDs, CD jacket artwork, and a website built in Flash that featured online registration for the camps with payment made by secure (real-time) credit card or direct credit.

My personal goal was to refine usability of the website registration and payment process, as this had the potential to save a significant amount of data entry and administration by office staff. As a result of my design’s visual appeal and greater ease of use, the number of people completing online registration instead of mailing in a paper form was up from 5% the previous year to 35%, resulting in a significant increase in efficiency. Also (and somewhat surprisingly!) the system has stood the test of time and is still in use on an annual basis.

I'll leave you there, thank you for reading this far!

Kind regards,
Jonathan