Ed Rempfer has been in the creative industry since 2003 and loves every aspect of it. Currently, he is a multimedia content developer at SofterWare, Inc., a company that develops software for nonprofits, childcare, camps, schools, and payment processing clients. According to Ed, “The best thing about my job is that I get to work on a variety of projects, from animations to websites to graphic design. They are always encouraging me to try new approaches and messaging creatively, so designing a cover illustration presented an exciting challenge for me.” The president and co-founder of SofterWare, Dr. Nathan Relles, brought the opportunity of designing the cover of Technical Communication to Ed’s attention and mentored him throughout the creative process.
As Ed explains:
My design aesthetic tends to be very clean and simple. So for the August issue I didn’t start with a specific concept in mind, but I knew I wanted to use icons that represented communication from all different periods of time. I started designing in Adobe Illustrator, playing around with the layout, and quickly realized blocking them out in rows and columns was best. In my designs I always think of how I want my audience's eye to move around the piece. My goal was to have the reader’s eye start in the middle of the cover and work their way out. I did that with blurring and coloring in Adobe Photoshop. Here I was able to create more interest by adding some ‘depth of field’ to the piece. I wanted to have it appear as though the reader was looking down on a pyramid of blocks. So I used several filters and played with the saturation of each layer to come up with the final piece.
As a bonus, Nathan suggested I animate the piece in Adobe After Effects to make it come alive, and to offer a novel and fitting dimension for the cover of a publication concerned with communication and technology. The whole process took me about a week to complete. Please see https://youtu.be/ugytCVNXbFs.
Outside of work, Ed likes to indulge in other creative hobbies like singing, playing the piano, and playing videos games, as well as spending quiet evenings at home with his husband.