Thanks for visiting my portfolio.

My name’s Ram Kanda and I’m the Senior Interface Designer at Funzio, Inc. – a leading social gaming company in San Francisco, California. I helped create Crime City and Modern War; two of the highest grossing games on Facebook, Apple's iOS, and Google's Android platforms.

My previous position as the Senior Art Director was at one of North America’s leading online advertising agencies, Fuel Industries, Inc. where I helped win over twelve awards, including three FITC awards, a Billboard MMX award, an FWA Site of the Day, two Webby Awards, and two features in Applied Arts Magazine. More importantly, I helped get practical results for my clients with record breaking engagement times and return visits.

In my spare time I consult for a digital agency in Canada called Sector81 and serve as a freelance Creative Director, absorbing every business and marketing book, blog, and lecture to help companies from McDonald’s to Microsoft transform how they think and how their customers feel.

For more of my art direction work please visit www.fuelindustries.com.

NEVER-RELEASED PROJECT | Slot Machine Icons

I really like these vector slot machine icons I made. They were for a casino project that was never released. I was tiring of some of the shiny button style out on the web, but instead of going in the opposite direction, I turned it up. Icons so saturated and dripping with sugar you can taste it.

McDonald's Europe™ | Fairies & Dragons

 

In 2008 I designed and helped illustrate McDonald's Europe's very first "Digital Happy Meal" – a mixture of online games and activities along with additional digital content given on CDs in the Happy Meal with the physical toy. In thirty six languages across forty one European McDonald's markets children made Fairies & Dragons a success and lead to several more Happy Meal websites including promotions for Shrek, Megamind, and Endangered Animals. I illustrated all the icons completely in vector format using Adobe Illustrator and designed classical fairytale filigree UI.

Feedingo Logo

 

My friend, Aaron Pepper, created a website RSS reader and asked me to make a logo for Feedingo. We felt as though the site needed a mascot/icon that could work with and without the word mark. I still wanted to link the two together so I used the idea of the RSS icon as a piece of meat. I like the idea of web 2.0 style designs but feel they often lack a personality and lose refinement in their word marks. For this reason, I chose to stay away from Swiss typography and opt instead for a newer feeling script. The "F" is custom designed as I didn't like the original.

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Microsoft™ | CertQuiz Icons

 To help developers learn Silverlight in an online quiz, I created these icons for CertQuiz. Certquiz is an online gameshow where you can test your knowledge against Clippy the paperclip and the MS Wizard.

Microsoft™ | Windows 7 Touch Pack Icon

 

Users with touch screen Windows 7 computers are able to download the Win 7 Touch Pack including the games Microsoft Rebound, Microsoft Surface Lagoon, and Microsoft Blackboard. This was a fun set of icons to do.

Microsoft™ | Server Quest

I designed and found out I was pretty good at pixel art for Microsoft's Server Quest parts one and two. ServerQuest is Microsoft's love-letter to the adventure games of the late 80s and early 90s. To add authenticity, I used the colour palette from the original 8-bit Nintendo and our our server guy helped us out with the cheese-ball geeky script.

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Post™ | Flintstone's Pebbles Play

 

Who doesn't love Flintstone's Pebbles? I was the Art Director and helped illustrate the FWA Award winning PebblesPlay.com. Play all the games and activities or explore the map and see nostalgic references to Mrs. Slaghoople, The Gruesomes, The Great Gazoo, and many others.

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Wrigley's™ | Hubba Bubba Bubble Racer

I designed and illustrated the UI and icons for Wrigley's Hubba Bubble Bubble Racer game. Gum was a really nice design element to work with and I made the icons in my favourite bright and clear style for easy understanding.

PLAY GAME (old site is now gone)

LifeSavers™ | Mini-Putt

I acted as Art Director, Designer, and lead Texture Artist for the Virtools online game, Lifesavers Mini-Putt. Great game play, performant 3D, and a solid sound track made this one of my favourites to this day. It also won us Best Game and helped with Best Canadian Studio at the FITC (Flash In The Can) Awards in Toronto.

Microsoft™ | Toolbox

Microsoft Toolbox is a website meant to help Silverlight Developers through lessons and example files using avatars you can design and level up. It was up to me to design these avatars that were customizable, but still own-able. Inspiration for the Microsoft Toolbox avatars hit at an asian mall when I saw cute Anime "Chibi" characters everywhere. They are able to be "designed" and polished, while remaining relatable and charming.

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Logos

My favourite design elements to work on are logos and icons. Here I've take inspiration from Asian food packaging, old Warner Brothers cartoons, and pop idol word marks.

FOX Entertainment™ | American Dad vs. Family Guy Kung-Fu

This winner of Billboard's MMX Award allowed us to pit FOX Entertainment's families up against each other, and then – with Capcom's blessing – we set them against Street Fighter's Ryu! I designed the UI and built the Flash animations.

Teletoon® | B's Stunt Tracks

I designed, co-illustrated, and Flash animated B's Stunt Tracks for Teletoon. You could race existing tracks set in the brand's construction zone or build your own track from scratch.

CapriSun | Disrespectoids

For our third instalment of the incredibly popular Disrespectoids games for Capri Sun, we went with a more subdued, "expensive" look that made the most of our richly rendered 3D characters. 

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Screenlife® | sceneIt?

Players of the popular ScreenLife SceneIt? board games can now get their fix on Facebook! Design your actor, screenwriting, director, or producer and make your way up Hollywood's social ladder. Improve your avatar, your dwelling, and your car until you get the fame you deserve.

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Intel Corporation™ | Inteliquiz

Years before the iPad, Intel created a handheld device and we were charged with helping create the included games. In Inteliquiz, you can answer questions against teams of people. I did all the design and illustration myself in a cool-retro-futuristic style, to be easily understandable, and made for touch input.

General Mills™ | Half-a-Million-Ville

Half-a-million is a big number for a cash card giveaway, but you don't really understand how big until you come to Half-a-Million-Ville and use half-a-million blocks to create a building. This site was so successful that we had to make several dozen "alternate online universes" to house all the blocks.

VISIT SITE

Wrigley's™ | Candystand Tournaments

This is an early comp I created for Wrigley's Candystand Tournaments. You could pick a league, play a game, and see how you rank against your friends and foes. We decided it would be best to eventually design it in the existing Candystand style to include it as more of a staple feature of the site instead of its own microsite but I still enjoy this retro, boxing poster inspired version.

Tropicana | Chuck The Monkey, Coming Soon Page

You could use the shaken Tropicana Twister to shoot this monkey in the teeth while you waited for "You Chuck The Monkey" to launch.