Spark Spark

View Features

Web Design

HTML5, CSS3, JS, PHP

Graphics

Logos, BCs, the works

Illustration

Realistic to Abstract

3D

Advanced 3D Modeling

The Little Engine That Can

Welcome to the Portfolio Site for Chris Parrish Design. I’m a freelance graphic designer in Portland, Oregon with over 20 years professional experience and many happy clients. I offer a broad skill set, comprehensive knowledge of Visual Design, Web Design and SEO best practices, and 100% reliability at an affordable price. I can offer original ideas when you want them and make recommendations if needed, but the bottom line for me is: your project is about what you want. That’s why, as you compare the pieces in my Portfolio, you may see a fairly large variety of styles and techniques. It’s not me struggling to find my own style, it’s about adapting to what each individual client truly wants and needs.

Little Graphics Engine is a concept designed to represent what I do and how I do it. Hopefully, the word association brings something positive to mind for you, as it does for me. As a one man company, I am determined to be “the little engine that can”. And, I hope that just as you think of a search engine as a means of finding what you need, you will think of this site and Chris Parrish Design as your primary resource for Graphics, Art and Design.

All Aboard the Digital Art Express!

Looking for some eye candy? Check out the Gallery section of my Portfolio below.

About

This website showcases several design features you may find intriguing. Take a look at the Website tab below to learn more. The About Me tab is a CV of sorts and if you’re curious about how I do some of this stuff then be sure to browse the Tools tab.

    • Performance

      Engineered for speed. Techniques like CSS-sprites, asynchronous load and DOM events are intelligently used to improve page-load time and responsiveness.

    • One Page Design

      As you may have noticed, menu buttons link to a section of the same page rather than a new page (so no waiting for a new page to load). JQuery makes the scrolling animate smoothly. Best for small sites like this, One Page design can make clicking around a bit more fun.

    • Responsive Layout

      This 960 grid layout fully adapts to the size of your browser, be it computer, tablet portrait, tablet landscape, or mobile. So you always get a view that is easy to navigate and read without zooming or horizontal scrolling. Re-size the width of your browser to see how this works!

    • Bookmarkable URLs

      Typically with a One Page site you can’t bookmark a specific section (like the Portfolio for instance), but with this one you can. Browser History works too, so you get that cool scrolling effect if you hit the back or forward buttons. Give it a try.

    • Sortable Gallery

      The Portfolio section utilizes intelligent filtering that hides, shows and re-orders items in a cool animated way. The animation engine takes advantage of CSS transitions, transforms and GPU acceleration when available then falls back to JavaScript for older browsers.

    • Lightbox Image View

      Click on any thumbnail in the Portfolio to bring up a larger view inside a lightbox. Using the lightbox controls, you can cycle through the set or even play a slideshow. To close the lightbox at any time, just click the close icon or click anywhere outside the lightbox.

    • WordPress CMS

      Last but not least, this site is build on the WordPress Content Management System. As the makers of WordPress like to say “it is both free and priceless at the same time”. This server-side software is an amazing tool for both seasoned web designers and novice bloggers alike.

  • SOFTWARE

    • Graphic Design, Page Layout – Adobe Photoshop CS4, Adobe Illustrator CS4, Microsoft Office
    • 3D Sculpting, Texturing, Rigging – Cinema 4D, Silo, Poser Pro, Daz Studio, Vue Complete, Carrara Pro
    • Web Design – Dreamweaver, EditPad, Flash, Fireworks

    SPECIALTIES

    • Highly creative photo-realistic illustrator and graphic designer
    • Web Designer : HTML, CSS, Flash, Actionscript, jQuery, PHP – Valid markup, and SEO
    • Experienced 3d Illustrator/Modeler/Animator for Print, Multimedia & Web
    • Expert Screenprint Separator for Spot Color and High Density
    • Excelent communication and diplomacy skills with co-workers and clients
    • Software and Hardware Troubleshooter: Mac and PC

    EXPERIENCE

    • Freelance – 7/04 – Present, Illustration, Graphic Design, Web Design

      • Clients: ASCEOR(Oregon Civil Engineers), Toklat Riding Apparel, Specialty Heating & Cooling, Northwest Digital Image, Fast Bikes Inc., Sketchbook Inc.(Nike Pre-vis), DAZ3D.com(broker), Calspan-UB Research Center(DC), Brad’s Cottage Grove Chevy (StarOne Finance), New Heights Physical Therapy, Pacific Painting and Renovation, Oregon PTA, MyProcess, Emerald City Comics, . . .

    • Pacific Print Works – 11/99 – 6/04, Graphic Designer, Asst. Art Director, Art Director

      • Clients: Nike, K-Swiss, Chaps Ralph Lauren, Nautica, Tommy Helfiger, Karl Kani, Avirex, Periscope, AOL, Microsoft, Champion, Brooks, Starbucks, Total Impact(PBR), . . .

    EDUCATION

    • University of Oregon, Eugene

      • Visual Design Major – Graphic Design, Drawing, Painting, Programming(Pascal), 3D Rendering and Animation

    • Clackamas Community College, Oregon City

      • Art Major – Graphic Design, Art History, Still Life, Life Drawing, Painting

  • Here are some links to the tools I use for Web Design, Graphic Design and 3D.

    Web Design

    • Envato Theme Forest – Enavato is a great online shop for PSD, HTML and WordPress Templates and other web resources. The Worpdress theme I’ve developed for this website (though heavily modified) is based on the high quality responsive HTML template “Spark” by JoNa.
    • Isotope – The jQuery plugin used to create the cool animated sorting in my Portfolio.
    • EditPadPro – I still prefer a text editor for a lot of the web design coding I do. This is a great one!

    Graphic Design and Page Layout

    • Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator – Industry Standard Applications for Artists for good reason. Corel, Xara and some others make some great similar tools but these two are my favorites.
    • Corel Painter –

    3D

    • Nevercenter Silo – 3D Sculpting – Silo is by far my favorite tool for creating 3D models and figures from scratch.
    • Cinema 4D – Maxon

Portfolio

Contact

Talk to Me

If you would like to know more about Little Graphics Engine (a.k.a. Chris Parrish Design) and my services, I would love to hear from you. Please use the Contact Form below.

Little Graphics Engine

A.K.A. Chris Parrish Design

Offices in Portland, OR and The North Pole.