Mike Kivikoski - Interactive Designer Front-End Developer

Mike Kivikoski

  1. 1. Information

    Hi I'm a traditionally trained Interactive Designer & Front-End Developer who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Endicott College located in beautiful oceanside Beverly MA. I have experience adhering and absorbing companies strict branding style guides before construction of their projects. Several of my projects are applications that work seamlessly with multiple (65+) languages.

    I pride myself on always expanding my knowledge and commiting to today’s development languages and web standards. Markup is written semantically and I keep structure, presentation, and behavior separated (like every good web person should). I am very experienced with XHTML & CSS and know Javascript (manipulating the DOM), ActionScript 2, XML, and PHP and have some basic experience with MySQL. I work in an Agile development process using the Scrum method and keep my files under control with Subversion.

    I am currently residing in Somerville, MA (which is located just north of Boston). When I'm not working on projects, I enjoy watching DVDs (genres include: action, comedy, horror, the occasional drama, and shitty nineties action flicks, eating/cooking/trying all kinds of food, drinking award winning beer, sucking at video games and camping in my home state of New Hampshire and also beautiful Maine.

    I began working with Mike about a year ago. Since then I've enlisted his help on numerous projects including development and coding of several large, complex websites. In every project large and small Mike has shown himself to be a true professional. He is masterful in coding — projects arrive on time, on budget and working perfectly. Mike is flexible and accommodating and takes the time to understand what we need, offering suggestions and options to give us the very best result. He is extremely talented, a pleasure to work with and his deliverables are nothing short of fantastic.” Jeffrey A. Shaw, Principal Envision Marketing & Design, Inc.

  2. 2. Samples

    1. Twitter Project

      Now I can't tell you what this is, because I haven't finished building it yet — but I do want to give you a sneak peak of what I've been working on. Want a hint: it involves Twitter and battles. Serious battles. The kinds that are in your worst nightmare. Well, Ok maybe not that bad, but it is going to be pretty sweet and stupid. It is also completely useless and meant as a (fun) experiment / reason for me to learn the twitter API. You're curious huh? Well, maybe if you contact me I might tell ya, but thats a pretty big maybe.

      My twitter project

    2. Vector T-Shirts

      Although the majority of my work is based in interactive design and development, occasionally I get to put my illustration skills to work.

      • Illustrator
      • Photoshop

      I was approached by the Pelham Parks & Recreation Deptarment to create series of shirts for multiple youth sports activities throughout the years. These shirts are a sample of the best ones created over a four year span and were all done pro bono to give back to my hometown community.

    3. American Express Wishlist Walkthrough

      American Express Wishlist 2007 Walkthrough

      My role in this project consisted of working with the Creative Director and Client Manager to create the storyboards for the three-minute tutorial flash video. After the storyboards were finalized, I was responsible for preparing all of the assests the Flash developer would need. This included taking all of the pixel-based images and recreating them in Illustrator, creating assets from scratch in Illustrator and Flash, and preparing any miscellaneous assets that were needed.

      • Photoshop
      • Illustrator
      • Flash

      The purpose of this video was to show users how to use My Wishlist. The video had to be fairly short, engaging, easy to follow, and have the ability to allow the user to skip around for specific content. It also displayed the rules of My Wishlist along with the benefits of using the site.

    4. Statistics for HOW Magazine

      Using information design as the basis for this project, I created multiple vector illustrations that displayed various information about the page diversification and other facts in the March ‘06 issue of HOW magazine. I gathered, sorted, and displayed data that dealt with the layout of the magazine, gender in advertising, and sections of content.

      • Photoshop
      • Illustrator

      The goal of this piece was to allow the viewer to visually make connections & conclusions about the layout and demographic of the magazine with ease. This was accomplished by using color, scale, and movement.

      Statistics for HOW Magazine
    5. Quest Seminars - Home screenshot

      Quest Seminars

      Quest Seminars is a company based out of Burlington, MA that holds seminars annually throughout the country. Quest has been providing seminars for Physical therapists for over 24 years. Before working with QUEST, the site lacked a design direction and the layout was full of tables and meaningless javascript. By working closely with the owner, Trudy Goldstein, we determined the goal of the site and requirements for the functionality of the site. Our research also gave us a defined demographic which consisted of users 30 to 50 years old who were not ‘internet savy’.

      Quest Seminars - Courses screenshot

      Wireframes were first created followed by successful design mockups. The new design is professional and thoughtful. It gives the site an established feel with easy to use navigation and a simple architecture. The site is built with XHTML, CSS, and PHP. Trudy says she has received numerous positive comments concerning the rebuild of the QUEST site.

      • Photoshop
      • XHTML
      • CSS
      • PHP

    6. Data Foyer

      Data Foyer - thumbnail

      This application was designed for the Data Operations team at my current employer, Integrity Interactive. The purpose of this application was to give DataOps an easy to use interface that allows for sorting data and information from multiple databases. With this application they can easily sort users, new activations, deactivations, and parse other information from a MySQL database. I was responsible for the UI Design and the front-end development, which consisted of XHTML & CSS.

      Data Foyer - zoom
      • Photoshop
      • XHTML
      • CSS
    7. Pratico's Landscaping

      Pratico's Landscaping

      This site was a redesign for one of Vermont’s premier landscaping companies. Their previous site lacked design direction and had minimal examples of their work. I worked with them to create a friendly site that gave their clients easy access to their contact information and services. This site was also launched at the same time they relocated their main building and gave their business a much needed facelift.

      • Photoshop
      • XHTML
      • CSS
    8. Volkswagen Rock God

      VW Rock God Boston Registration

      This landing page was created for the Volkswagen Rock God Guitar Contest that was held in Boston in late 2006. Working with the VW branding guidelines and specific imagery I created a design solution that worked within the tight budget. I designed the entire interface before handing the mockup over to the development team while I was an intern at the Boston Phoenix.

      • Photoshop

    9. And there is more!

      I've got more work in my portfolio but due to some of the projects being either company internal or client sensitive I can't put them here on the World Wide Web. These projects include UI Design and Development examples. I can share certain ones through email and others only in person. Contact me if you'd like to see some of them.

      And there is more - code example

  3. 3. Contact

    Say Hello!

    Follow Mike on twitter: @kivodesigns

  4. Y. Why

    Why I choose to build a one page site

    I wanted a site where I could have a brief bio, show select samples of my best work and be easy to get in touch with. All of this information had to be made easily obtainable for the users.

    The solution was to put all the information on one page. This allows the user to reach all of my objectives without a single click (if the user chooses). Additionally, I wanted a place where I could share my thoughts and knowledge — this is what the Articles section will become in the next round.

  5. Z. How

    The voodoo used to build this thingy

    This site was built with some ink, a few dozen pages of a blackbook, a mac, a personal Ubuntu development server, Photoshop, XHTML & CSS, PHP, in Dreamweaver and Coda, with hosting provided by the great people of eleven2 and a couple tall cans of PBR.

    Font Faces:

    Images done by Justus, Headers full of Lucida Sans, Paragraphs built by Georgia and & sexified by Baskerville italic.

    I no longer test my personal sites with IE6.