grögraphics.com - Christopher Robbins: work

OUR WEB SITES have ranged from broadband multimedia for Swiss Banks, to a streamlined online recruitment site, to an educational site used in many design curricula. Here is a smattering that shows the variety of approaches and clients we’ve worked with.

Design History in a Box took first place in the SXSW 2001 Web Awards, and has become part of the curriculum for quite a few University Design programs.

The Icon Icon project is another education web site, analysing the icon from four historical perspectives: as abstraction, as type, as context and as art.

This Iterative Art piece, created using Macromedia Director, follows a machine’s attempt to understand and create ‘art.’ It is part of a larger, experimental project housed at theysaysmall.com.

faxwerk, once a showcase of digital transfer art, has recently been taken over by the machines of theysaysmall, and has become the seed for the adventure now brewing over there.

Jasper Sculpture showcases the sculpture of my younger brother, Daniel Robbins. The background color changes depending on the time of day of the visit, sort of reflecting the sky’s own hue.

The Multex Investor Europe (MIE) site combined two major sites while maintaining their own brand identities. I served as Art Director on the MIE portion of this joint-venture with REUTERS, applying the REUTERS template to MIE content.

In 1998 I helped start the Union Bank of Switzerland’s first New Media Presentations team in New York. Using Flash, Director, Premiere and After Effects, we introduced Swiss Banks to the potential of New Media as a marketing tool.

Miller & Miller is an Executive Search firm on the West Coast of the United States. This clean and simple site brought this company’s recruitment process online for the first time.

OUR PRINT WORK includes logos, pamphlets and newsletters for such clients as the Museum For African Art in New York, The Children’'s Discovery Centre in London, and a joint venture with REUTERS.

Die-cut Christmas Card for Multex Investor Europe, a joint venture with REUTERS in the UK.

Pamphlet for an exhibition of Ethiopian Art at The Museum for African Art, New York.

Logo and application to collateral for the Palm Beach Pipe and Cigar Company.

Banner design for the Museum for African Art, New York.

Thank you card for the launch-party of the Multex Investor Europe web site. I also created a 15 foot animation of the company mascot projected on the walls of the party.

The root of common things is a picture book that looks at where all that stuff we take for granted each day comes from. In this chapter, we see where the city-folk get their corn and chicken.

Logo design for GAIA, an educational company specialising in African culture.

Pamphlet for an outreach program run by the Children’s Discovery Centre in London.

WRITTEN PROJECTS range from inspirational manifestos to more rote tutorials. I am also involved in several research projects focusing on making web technology more accessible to a broader population.

Director 8.5 Studio: In addition to forming the outline and author guidelines for the book as a whole, I wrote chapters on Object Oriented Programming and Planning and Process.

Written by leading designers such as Darrel Plant, Christopher Robbins, and Tomato’s Joel Baumann, this book covers advanced topics such as the upgrade’s new 3D capabilities and multi-user environments.

I was Interviewed at NetDiver on a wide variety of web-oriented topics, ranging from online-branding to activism.

Interface as Activism is an article written for FlashMagazine that examines how the depth of designer’s approach to the Interface affects a web site’s potential.

WebActivism, my first article for FlashMagazine, explores the role of web-builders in activism on the web.

Love, Anarchictects and the Future of the Independent Web was written as an inspirational piece looking at the history and future of the independent web for the inauguration of IndependentsDay. This was later translated into french for publication on Praktica.net as L’Amour, les Anarchitectes et le Futur du Web Indépendant.

The Lights Going Out, and other proper nouns throws some loopy Internet futurisms into a scattered, light-hearted, and sometimes even insightful story.

I am currently running two research projects at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. In-Situ Training Program: a South Pacific Case Study looks at methods for integrating the training of web technologies into the work project itself. Accessibility and Usability of Interactive Media for Education in the South Pacific examines factors influencing the practical application of web-technology for teaching in the South Pacific. I will link to these projects once they are published.

I presented at the ED-Media conference in Hawaii in June, 2003.

I was a speaker at the first New Media Underground Festival, in London late November 2000.

At BD4D in November 2001, I gave a brief talk on an experimental web project that creates an Information Ecosystem with Macromedia Director and Google.

At the Online Flash Film Festival, which took place in Barcelona in May 2001, I helped Derek Michael organize the discussion component of the festival.