Circa Design
Where the forces of Nashville, Kzoo, Greenville, and NYC combine to create impactful, larger than life design.
Ever since I was in college, I wanted to work for a design studio or agency. The thought of working with other talented designers to help come up with creative solutions for multiple clients was always a dream of mine. I had met some of the Circa team in the past during a portfolio review, and knew right away that this was a company I wanted to work for if the opportunity presented itself.
Thankfully the timing eventually worked out and I was given a wonderful opportunity to work as a Digital Designer within the company. This role was a great opportunity for me to understand the wide range of services a creative studio can provide for its clients, and help improve my skills with web design and development. It was also my first chance of getting to work with a larger team of designers and developers, so I had the ability to learn and problem solve from multiple people on my own team.
I think the most fun thing about working for a design studio is that you get the opportunity to try new things and really push yourself creatively with so many different clients. If there's one thing I can say, you will rarely encounter the same kind of client or design challenge twice in a studio enviroment.
These Are Just Some of The Clients I Had the Pleasure of Working With
Circa's Core Values
1. Intentional Design
Everything Circa does, there's a reason and a strategic vision behind it. Even the tiniest pixels serve an important purpose. As a Digital Designer, it was important to make sure all design decisions made sense and served a purpose, and every inch of the design had to be reviewed and considered for best practices.
2. Creative Curiosity
The best ideas come from exploration and trying to learn new skills. Circa was a big fan of pushing us outside our comfort zones for the sake of learning more effective solutions. When presented with a new opportunity, my role required me to be curious, resourceful, and constantly looking for creative ways to solve our design problems.
3. Collaborative Process
No one person is responsible for a project's success. It take's a whole team and at Circa, collaboration amongst team members is KEY! Wether I was working with a designer, developer, director or project manager, it was imperative I worked together and built off my other team members wisdom and expertise.
4. Effective Flexibility
Sometimes projects don't go exactly as planned and client goals can drastically shift overnight. At Circa, it was imperative that our team members (myself included) could not only listen to our clients needs but also remain open minded and work with them if the project's direction needed to shift to better suit our client's needs.
Design Projects
Circa had many clients who often needed a variety digital solutions created for them. Digital design projects tend to range from website projects to animations, as well as designing social media graphics . As I started to settle into my role, I found that UI / high fidelity mockups were not only what I enjoyed, but where I seemed to excel. This lead to the opportunity to get to work on many different website projects crafting fun experiences for future users.
The majority of my work primarily took place in either Sketch or Figma, but I often used many of the Adobe Products, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Some of my favorite projects came from being involved in the design process, and I think having the development experience from previous positions really helped me to deliver thoughtful solutions that wouldn't cause the dev team too much of a headache.
A fun and interactive age gate designed in Sketch and built with a plugin meant for age verification of new visitors for Bell's Brewery, who recently worked with Circa to launch a brand new company website.
A set of icons illustrated and animated by me to explain the naming process for The Pelora Group, who recently rebranded and launched a new internal website.
A high fidelity mockup created for Bell's Brewery's "Tour Our Breweries" Page.
A high fidelity mockup created for a beer category page for Bell's Brewery. Users are able to find similar beers based on the category of beer they click on.
A high fidelity mockup for a blog/resources page for our client, Golden Section Technologies (design and development done by me).
A high fidelity mockup created for Beacon Specialized Living's internal website to highlight their newly branded LEAP Program, which helps current employees advance their career faster.
(Design and development done by me).
A high fidelity mockup created for Bell's Brewery's "Host a Private Event" Page.
An interaction mockup created in Figma to show a dropdown hover interaction on the main navigation for our client, Sugarees Bakery.
Development Projects
As a member of the Digital Team, one of your roles is to help out with the assistance of any website edits or development work that may come your way. While different members of the team may specialize in different skillsets, everyone on the Digital Team has the ability to hop onto any site and help custom code or build a solution through WordPress.
I primarily code with HTML, CSS, and jQuery when the occasion calls for it. I even got my first experience editing Shopify sites and coding in Liquid while at Circa, which was definitely an interesting experience to say the least. I haven't had the chance to code as much as I would like in my last couple of roles, so it was nice to be able to get back into it. My time at Circa has helped me sharpen my dev skills even further and allowed me the chance to build some really awesome sections on our websites.
A blog category page built for Beacon Specialized Living that contains posts categorized in "Understanding Our Compassionate Care Services".
This blog had three separate categories and blog posts were filtered based on category assigned. Built with WordPress and WPBakery.
Webpage created to explain how Refined Technologies prioritizes being environmentally friendly and reduces their carbon footprint.
Made with WordPress and Divi.
A recruitment form created within a popup developed for the homepage of Beacon Specialized Living's client-facing site.
After 4-5 seconds, the popup appears and uses conditional logic to get applicants in touch with their state's recruiter. The goal of this popup form was to increase overall number of applicants applying to Beacon.
Created with WordPress and WPBakery.
Marquee scrolling banner effect created for Bell's Brewery and their "Our Beer" page. The banner stops when hovered on a category and then takes the user to a jump link section on the page below to research beers in selected category.
Created with WordPress and Divi.
A page dedicated to company updates, as well as past and future awards obtained by Mountain Shore Properties, a real estate development company who has developed hotels, single- and multi-tenant office buildings, industrial buildings, mixed-use apartment/retail builds, and single-family homes across 25+ cities in 9 different states.
Built with WordPress and Divi.
A tab feature that displays an accordion box for both the Eccentric Cafe menu, tap list, and live tap cam for Bell's Brewery. This menu was also made in mind so Bell's employees could easily edit menu changes themselves in the future.
Made with WordPress & Divi.
The "Careers" page for Refined Technologies new website. Fun fact, this was the very first project I got involved in while at Circa.
Made with WordPress and Divi.
Animation Projects
When I think of all the possible types of projects out there, animation is definitely my favorite. There's just something about it that is so captivating and engaging compared to other forms of media out there. While my design and development work did keep me quite busy, I did get the opportunity to animate a few small projects for both Circa and some of Circa's clients.
All of these projects were originally composed in either After Effects or Illustrator before animating. I even got the chance to learn about Lottie integrations, which was used for the Pelora Group animations, and now I don't think I could ever go back. No matter what path my career takes me on and what kind of designer I end up becoming, I have a pretty good feeling animation projects will never be too far away from me.
An animation for the vertical logo variation of The Pelora Group.
A tutorial video I helped edit and animate that goes over 3 different ways to save out graphics. This video was part of Circa's Content Challenge back in December 2021.
A fun sizzle reel type video created for our friends over at Friends of Warner Parks. This video was part of Circa's Motion Graphic Challenge.
Overall, I have really enjoyed my time working for Circa. I learned so many useful skills, got to work on some amazing projects, and made some incredible friends along the way. What more could a guy possibly ask for?
ryansartori.us
[email protected] | (734) 780 - 4795 | Kalamazoo, MI
Design by Ryan Sartorius, circa 2022. All rights reserved.