Jaku Creative

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Welcome to my humble slice of the internet. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Applied Psychology from Kwantlen Polytechnic University and am a self-taught, freelance product and image designer that has been working in the field since 2005. I continually devote the vast chunk of my free time to my trade and am a big proponent of continued development and study.

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I have been interlaced in some from of art since childhood, from drawing comics during recess and after school to sculpting and photography in high school to theming the likes of KDE and GNOME on Linux while in university to web design, iOS app and icon design after graduation. I have found tremendous value in every medium which has in-turn strengthened every facet of my artistic abilities.

My ardor lies in intricate creations, principally driven by my commitment and attention to detail (which I hope my website wholly conveys). Incidentally one of the qualities I admire most about Apple and why I've decided to work almost exclusively in their ecosystem.

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I am a vehement problem solver (this trait led me to pursue a minor in philosophy), tech nerd, and generally love to study and understand complexity in all its forms.

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I specialize in the following standards or tools: Adobe Photoshop, Pixelmator Pro, Sketch, Invision, HTML and CSS (and many more at various capacities). My nature is to constantly improve on everything I come in contact with, through either more thoughtful design to more efficiency.

Product Design

Twitch

A passion project not affiliated with Twitch.

An intrepid re-designed of the Twitch client for mobile.

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A softer, gentler veneer paves the way for a more inclusive feel on Apple devices.

Charming iconography inspired by decades of rich gaming culture and some of the most influential and memorable titles spanning back decades.

Vibrant, clean, modern design, with a dab of skeuomorphism lest we forget the decades of distinguished gaming culture.

What excitement stripping the polyvinyl chloride wrapping off a new game as a young child. The smell of benzene, the feel of the glossy cardboard box under one's fingertips—emblazoned with lush, colorful art. The cartridge nestled snuggly inside with its respective instruction booklet.

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Both the process and physical object carried with it a sense of ownership—tangible weight—a visceral treat for the senses above and beyond what the game itself would ultimately deliver.

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Preserving this experience, digitally, through the use of skeumorophism is a critical component of this re-design.

Translucency and gaussian blurs envelopes rich media to punctuate content and showcase the stunning game art found throughout this genre.

New pop-overs drive engagement, communicate more robust details and ultimtalely provide new avenues for partnerships and monetization.

Scalable and consistent, the new UI adapts to the myriad of screen sizes seamlessly thanks to its modular structure.

Weather Up

A commercial project for Contrast.

Weather Up offers up map-centric weather forecasts, providing a contextual areal view for clamorous events such as floods, hurricanes, fires or blizzards.

Built on a highly customizable experience, allows users to choose between a myriad of robust App Icons and Weather Themes, styled across archetypes like minimalism, modernism, skeuomorphism and even 8-bit/16-bit pixel art inspired by vintage gaming.

A modular, card-like navigation system provides the infrastructure to pull up rich weather data on any chosen location.

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Locations can be saved for later use and even renamed for more robust list creations.

The cutting room floor and beyond. The following designs showcase either concepts that did not wind up in the final product; some due to financial and time constraints, others because the design failed to land in its present state. Yet each I feature with pride.

Exploration of an in-app widget interface (left).

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Stylized widgets to span iOS, iPadOS and watchOS (right).

Zerenity

A quaint passion project.

With a simple, intelligible feature-set, Zerenity was designed around my own experiences with meditation, stress reduction, and overall mental health.

Admix sounds and tones or choose from a handful of soothing, animated visual landscapes to drift into. Zerenity's aim is to allay our often lacerated mental state that is constantly being inundated with stimulus.

OpenEmu

A passion project.

Gaming has skyrocketed in popularity since the first generation consoles like Atari, Commodore, Nintendo Entertainment System and SEGA Master System, and so has the production value. The transition to the use of skeuomporhpic cover art and case design pays direct homage to the myriad of artists and game developers that have paved the way to today's titles.

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Here's to the crazy ones that had 16-bits (or less) to work with, but forged some of the most iconic characters in the industry and beyond. The misfits that produced dazzling musical scores with nothing but simple tone generation or frequency modulation synthesis. The rebels that built engaging platformers or fighting games which have matured into dynasties.

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At its core, OpenEmu is about culture and heritage. Remembering the beginnings of a vibrant, vivacious industry that has given gamers untold entertainment (and perhaps equal parts frustration).

Featuring some of the most prolific PlayStation 2 titles and showcasing the new, simplified user interface with re-designed console glyphs and skeuomporhic cover art.

A quaint passion project.

A clean, modern Reddit client that was almost exclusively designed using Apple's SF Symbols as a proving ground for impactful and striking design without the need for expensive, custom glyph-work.

Principal challenge throughout the design process was to balance the density of interface elements with the primary content, careful to avoid suffocating the latter with the former.

Image Design

App Iconography

Web Design

Apassion project, lovingly dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs.

In a parallel universe, Apple fell with Sculley in the '90s, while NeXT skyrocketed to dominance. In 2019, they would release their long awaited pro-consumer model.

Vintage Design

Jaku

Born from my love of intricacy and precision, this icon set is brimming with detail and dripping with nostalgia. Originally released in 2010 and at final count the set contained over 300 unique, hand crafted icons along with a throng of iOS UI elements.

Jaku was published exclusively for the iPhone, taking the device's then revolutionary Retina display to the moon and beyond.

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As Apple updated its iPad product line with equally stunning displays, work began on an iPad version. To create a product worthy of both Apple's magical new device and Jaku's commitment to perfection, every icon was re-drawn for the larger canvass, packing even more detail, and and in most cases, entirely new elements.

The result was an expansion truly worthy to bear the name, Jaku.