Graphics and projects Jered worked on at PBS

PBS Kids

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Background

PBS Kids is the educational, non-commercial children’s programming division of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. A few years back (editors note: at this point quite a few years) I had the opportunity to intern there in Washington DC. The internship was one of the most outstanding experiences of my life. The environment was incredibly fun and collaborative, and I learned a great deal.

Responsibilities

My responsibilities included the design of game graphics, promotional graphics for kids programs, play testing games, and development of web pages. My largest project was developing a new ‘PBS Kids GO!’ games page. The current page was simply a big long list of games, and the team wanted to improve the experience for the kids. I researched popular game pages online, pitched my ideas for layout and functionality, and started developing after receiving a mockup that the lead designer created.

Edit: Since my time at PBS, they have gone through a redesign, making everything responsive and absorbing the PBS Kids GO! brand back into the PBS Kids brand. To view the current redesign, visit PBS Kids

Process

The PBS Kids department engrained in me a long lasting love of sketching out my ideas. Bigger paper meant bigger ideas, and I was often surrounded by wireframes and doodles. When I needed to create a web page, or design a graphic, I would start on paper, move to digital wireframes, then mockups, get approval/feedback from my supervisors, and then create the final product. For web development projects, I’d often discuss my desired approach with the other developers, get feedback and then manually upload, via FTP client, the finalized assets and webpages to the PBS file server.

Accomplishments