Jacob Waites
I design, prototype, and build brands and interactions full of expressive type, fun motion, bold colors, and minimal line-work. Sometimes I write and speak about design. My craft is the way I speak to the world, I work to help others find their voice and make them successful.
Connection
A brand campaign for America's fight against loneliness, to find social connection
I created art direction and web designs for the U.S. Office of the Surgeon General's landmark release of a new advisory highlighting the epidemic of loneliness in America, including the final cover design for the Advisory. You can see the site here, and download the document here.
The Launch Video
A launch video was released to press to get the word out about the new advisory. I created MOGRT templates in After Effects for running new releases of advisories for the Office, these new animations allow room for custom animation like the ones I timed in the video below. This approach allows for other people on the team to reuse the work and update it without need a high level of craft specialty in AE.
Advisory Cover
We went through many iterations of the cover design, settling on a metaphor for loneliness that highlighted lonely humans among a crowd of people.
Below are some unused concepts, all cover designs were modeled and assembled in the web 3D tool Spline, with 2D exports being brought into Adobe Illustrator for final tweaks and stylization.
Art direction and Interaction Design for the Website
For the website's art direction, we chose to create metaphors for you social connection health as being a garden, something that needs constant and habitual tending to get the most diversity and value from. I created art direction and worked with another interaction designer on the team to execute designs for the work. The original sketches included web 3D scenes that would create magic moments while exploring the site, however, they proved a little too large to meet accessibility standards, and were swapped for static visuals instead.
The floral scenes are animated but appear static on the site, below are some captures of them in motion.
CeCe, your guide to social Connection and Community
I developed a visual library for one of the office's first mascots, CeCe, an asterisk with covered in fur. CeCe is fully animated and articulated in web 3D and has a composable library of animations and emotions on key press.
CeCe has many cameos on the site and more to come. Below are some shots of their emotes and a recording of using the interactive scene to animate them triggered by key presses.