Joannie Wu

Packaging & Promotion, 2008
A branding, packaging, and marketing concept of sexual paraphernalia that revolves around the experience of objects of sexual pleasure and to have the packaging and point-of-purchase be as pleasurable as the artifact itself.

The basis of the concept operates under the belief that people are currently often adverse to sex toys because of its unappealing, trashy, and/or emotionally detached packaging.

For my redesign, I played with the common privacy statement "we ship discreetly in brown paper packaging" and historical sex toy trivia as foundation elements.

Visit the Narcissus Website!

Game Illustration & Design, 2008
Fireflies is a 3d anaglyph game that embraces the nostalgia of frolicking outdoors at night catching fireflies. Created for Kokoromi's Gamma 3D exhibition at the 2008 Montreal International Game Summit, we were challenged to create a game in under two months that used anaglyph stereoscopy in a way that is integral to gameplay.

Red/Cyan 3d glasses are required for optimal viewing pleasure. You can find them for free here.

Collaborated with Lee Byron

Watch Trailer on Vimeo
Download and Play for MacOSX
View the game's packaging design

Interactive Instillation Concept, 2008
The Beast-A-Matic is a split-path opportunity to help children process the information they have learned while going through the Pittsburgh Zoo in an engaging and memorable way with a game.

The overall concept of the Beast-A-Matic is to create an animal unlike any other that exist in reality, and there are two ways in which the creation of an animal can happen.The Frankenanimal game is aimed at young children and allows them to take attributes of their favorite animals and fuse them together to create a unique creature, whereas the Adaptation Challenge is the sophisticated counterpart for olden children. It is designed to teach how external conditions often force animals to adapt in sometimes bizarre ways.

After creating an animal, it "lives" in the biome background and becomes a growing instillation of animals who interact with each other.

Visual Design, 2008-2009
As a visual designer at MAYA, I worked in interdisciplinary teams alongside interaction designers and software engineers on projects for predominately Fortune 500 ranked clientele. Clients included are electronic product manufacturers, defense industry contractors, communication and network specialists, providers of science and technology products, as well as leaders in healthcare technology.

My personal responsibilities within the team ranged from running simple usability analyses, to creating visual interfaces, developing storyboards and scenarios, designing diagrams and conceptual models, all the way to acting as the content and design beacon for the teams' project documentation deliverables.

If you would like to learn more about my work for MAYA, please feel free to contact me.

Interface Concept, 2008
Decidewith.us is an online application that allows groups of people to formulate arguments and make decisions about topics posed by the community. The challenge we were presented with was to create an interface for users to interact with complex behind-the-scenes decision logic. We created the interfaces with two distinct audiences in mind, one for a law firm, the other focused on a Web 2.0 aesthetic.

Collaborated with Justin Rheinfrank
View Wizard of Oz Prototype

Promotional Campaign, 2006
Confronted with a prompt about social responsibility, I created an advertising series of three pieces about a topic I feel passionate about: overworking.

I attempted to presented a visual style of organized chaos. The viewer would have to experience immense agitation to arrive at one tiny fleeting message similar to an overworked person, whose extent of stress is never fully justified by the goal at hand.

Watch the Motion Graphic Component

Information Clarity, 2007
Navigating a completely new city is daunting, particularly as a student who is reliant on public transportation.

With this in mind, I was asked to create a diagram focusing on the origins and destination of a journey, combining 16 different bus routes that are most frequently utilized by students in the Pittsburgh area.

Wordmark, 2007
Contemporary. Artist in Residence. Community center. Urban. African American. All of these describe aspects that make up the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Using research about the museum, we were challenged with developing a graphic wordmark that embodies the essence of SMH, and is versatile enough to be branded on all of the collateral the museum releases.

My concept drew upon looking at the motion of a city's pathways from a plan view, the in-progress attitude of the museum, and a bold and unusual color to highlight the uniqueness of this museum.

View Motion Graphic Identity

Typography Study, 2006
A challenge with the idea of expressing oneself through typography with the phrase:

"I used to ______, but now I don't."

I chose to express myself through the duality of my life's experience: the whimsical experiences that internally define who I am today, and the antagonistic external experiences that also shapes my current character

Print Posters, 2008
A series of posters composed under very short notice to announce Jakob Trollback's lecture on the Carnegie Mellon Campus. The thematic inspiration of the posters drew from the musicial influences of Trollback that led him into design.

Documentary Photography, 2008
An ongoing personal exercise to visually define Goth as a subculture and part of my own identity, as well as the precarious balance between the people who identify with it and mainstream culture.

My two role models are Edna Mode and Pris.

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I was...
a Jersey-born mallrat.
I am...
a visual interaction design in Austin, TX.
I like...
the future.
I want...
to be happy.
to never compromise myself.
I would like to share...
my del.icio.us
my last.fm

Visit my buddies...
Lee Byron
Michal Janicki
Michael Levy
Stephen Lim
Adam Miller
Eamae Mirkin
Jimi Okelana
Justin Rheinfrank
Kooho Shin
Reina Takahashi
J.T. Trollman

Eero Wyler Rheinveson-Wu

Drop Me A Line
joannie@isticus.net