Ross Higgins
I am an Interactive Designer, Front-end and Back-end Developer working with some of the top agencies in Los Angeles and Orange County. I have been working lately with the likes of CIE Studios, Segue Creative, Magnetic Creative and Zambezi-LA.
I also teach at The Art Institute of California - Orange County in the Web Design and Interactive Media Department.
A hybrid web
designer and developer
I previously worked as a Senior Front-end Web Developer at FOX Broadcasting, I built and maintained FOX.com and the tv show websites such as 24, HOUSE, GLEE and The Simpsons.
Before that, I was a Senior Web Designer and the Web Team Lead at Esri. I led a team of skilled designers and frontend developers as part of an in-house graphics department that consisted of 35 web, print, publication and large-format designers.
working in the Arts
& Entertainment
If you are excited and passionate about your next web project, I would love to chat with you about how I can help you make it a great success. Please send me an e-mail to get in touch with me.
I've done work for:
- Claremont McKenna College
- The Thirst Project
- CIE Studios
- Segue Creative
- Magnetic Creative
- Zambezi
- CBS Interactive
- FUEL TV
- FOX Broadcasting
- Film Independent
- Fox Sports
- Fedex
- The Smithsonian Institute
- Jane Goodall Foundation
- Nike
- ESRI
- Rand McNally
- Meguiars Car Care Products
- FDS Manufacturing Co.
- Los Angeles Police Department
- Riverside County Sheriff's Dept.
- GT Bicycles
- Roxy
- Donovan McNabb
- Ahman Green
- Jamal Anderson
- Jarvis Green
- James Worthy
- Howard Hewett
- Ted Washington
- The Kellen Winslow Foundation
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Claremont McKenna College
Claremont McKenna College (CMC) is just down the road from where I grew up, in Claremont California. This year it ranked #9 for Liberal Arts colleges in US News and World Report's 2012 edition of Best Colleges. I was very fortunate to have been brought in at the beginning of the college's efforts to completely re-design and re-engineer the website.
I was able to contribute to the site's Information Architecture, the User Experience design, as well as design and front-end development. This 9 month process began with wireframes and pages of hand-drawn sketches. They gave me the time to work the process of deisgn. Like a sailboat crossing the ocean, there were lots of course corrections, but the vision was strong and we kept the course.
I am very proud of my contributions to the project and I found the whole experience of working for an organization whose main focus isn't making making money or shareholders happy very rewarding.
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Meguiars - Car Care Products
For Meguiars.com I was brought in as a hired gun. The website had been designed, the backend was furiously being finished and the frontend development was underway. The lanch date was set to coincide with the opening day of The SEMA Show, the premier automotive specialty products trade event in the world... in just under 3 weeks. However, the one and only frontend developer was about to get married... in China... and be out of the country for 5 weeks!
After just over a week, I had become the lead frontend developer
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Glee - FOX Broadcasting Company
This website, for the brand new FOX television show Glee, is folllowing a trend I see growing very rapidly these days. The entire site is just one page. Using JavaScript libraries, additional information is concealed using several lightboxes, and carousels to organize information and only reveals the additional content when the user requests it.
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The Daily Habit - Fuel TV
I was given a lot of creative freedom to design the new fall relaunch of Fuel TV's daily television show The Daily Habit. I wanted to play with some pseudo 3D elements. Using just HTML & CSS, I designed the "This Week" module so that hovering over each day's show title would reveal an image and summary.
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The Thirst Project
Launched on World Water Day, March 22nd 2010, this redesigned website for The Thirst Project, is now powered by a Wordpress backend CMS. The large carousel introduces the story of The Thirst Project and how their humble beginnings have brought clean drinkable water to some of the world's communities most in need. Please visit and learn how you can help!
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The Simpsons - 20 Years Celebration Flash Intro
2010 marks 20 years The Simpsons, have been on the air. To celebrate this amazing accomplishment, FOX decided to indroduce an animated Flash intro to the header of The Simpsons' website.
I built the animation using flash video, ActionScript 3.0 and a few static images. I programmed the randomized distribution and falling of the confetti that includes gravity and a slight drift to make it seem more realistic.
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Website for the independent film Tiny Little Lies
I was approached to create a website for the independent film Tiny Little Lies to round out their existing web presence that includes Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.
This website is driven by an easy to use CMS that allows the content to be easily updated by the client.
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Film Independent's Spirit Awards Website
As the first event to honor independent film exclusively, Film Independent's Spirit Awards has made a name for itself as the premier awards event for the independent film community. It's a celebration of the spirited pioneers who bring a unique vision to filmmaking.
Each new year brings a new theme and a new look to the Spirit Awards. This year also brought a entirely new site from the ground up. Branding for this site was very important to Film Independent. So, working with their marketing department, I designed this site to complement their "independent" look and feel.
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my.888poker.com - 888 Poker
888 Poker has just launched a new community website based upon the ONEsite community and social networking software and I was tasked with designing the overall look and feel and front-end development.
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MetaCritic iPad App GUI Design - CBS Interactive
Based upon the website metacritic.com, I designed this spec iPad app to be functional and customizable. I carefully curated the elements from the website to strip away all but the most essential information. The biggest challenge was reducing the depth of information to fit the user's expectations of an iPad app. On websites clicking links to open a new page that reveals more details is what people expect. iPad apps should have information heirarchies that are more flat while not overlaoding the user with too much information.
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iPhone Mapping Application
Showcasing the latest technologies in web-based mapping from ESRI, I worked with the Core Development Team to build a mapping application for use on Apple's iPhone. This project included Information Architecture, Interface Design, Icon Design and Frontend Development efforts.
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GPS Software Interface Design
Designing the interface for this GPS software required a number of departures from the conventions of web application design. These included designing for touchscreen interaction. Making nice looking, large buttons that don't look too hokey is no easy feat. Also the application is built using C#, a programming environment whose limitations I had to learn. Lastly, this application was created to be run on a number of devices, including laptops, desktops, PDAs, Smart Phones and Mobile Phones, and standalone, dedicated GPS units.
