Just launched: thesmokinggun.com, freshly redesigned and 1000 times more awesome than it already was (and it was pretty awesome already)!

For FG, I riffed on Liv Crayola’s look & feel to design this website, and architected the unique Design Tool feature.

The The Smithsonian Institution / NMNH: The Ocean Portal has been nominated for The 14th Annual Webby Awards in the Cultural Institutions category. I worked on this project a great deal in the final design phases.

I was asked to be the Creative Director for a new humor magazine, Whim Quarterly. The first issue came out in December 2009, and issue #2 is underway.

» Check out a rave review!

Whim was founded in late 2009 by Brock Mahan (of TruTV), Paul Underwood (of urbandaddy.com) and Rick Pecoraro. As they describe it:

Whim Quarterly is a magazine printed on actual, flammable paper. Its contributors are mainly underemployed writers, though some have chiseled their way into positions at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and other humor institutions. Taken as a single entity, Whim contributors would have 36 eyes, three Emmy Awards and a soul-crushing amount of personal debt.

In 2009 I was hired by The Cooper Union to lead the development of a new website for the institution. The previous site had been created in the 1990s and was very dated, both technologically and visually. I hired a small team to help with the technology end of the project. I developed the information architecture and visual design of the site, based around the school’s new 150th Anniversary logo.

» View the Live Site

» Read the Press Release

» Download the PDF of my article “Thea Kluge Rossi on Cooper Union’s New Web Site” in At Cooper (full text after the jump)

This fall, several months after revealing a new 150th anniversary logo, The Cooper Union launched the first phase of a long-awaited new website. As a Cooper alum, I was honored when the college approached me to lead the redesign. To support this endeavor, I brought on two talented partners, the first specializing in systems architecture and programming and the second in page template builds.

Originally built in the late ’90s, the existing Cooper Union web site had not evolved dramatically. Updates and news posting required manual page builds and labor-intensive coding. Unavoidably, the site took on an outdated look and inevitable inconsistencies. As an art director and information architect, I was excited to help reduce administrative workload and, more importantly, facilitate the timely posting of news, events and other important information.

Even in our first phase, the new site allows multiple users from within the institution to submit and edit content simultaneously, with varying publishing privileges. These college-wide contributions will ultimately help the web site reach its full potential later next year, when we roll out phase two and include redesigned sections for the four academic divisions: art, architecture, engineering and humanities. For phase one, these sections of the site will remain as-is within the new site’s redesigned framework.

I have worked professionally with The Cooper Union in the past, but this new web site is by far my largest project with the college. It has been fantastic to work with the administration and the Center for Design and Typography. My design team and I enthusiastically await the next stage in the project and the subsequent feedback!

Us Weekly approached Funny Garbage to re-architect and redesign their online presence. The new usmagazine.com launched in Fall 2009.

» View the Live Site

» Read the Case Study on Funny Garbage’s website

Our team faced the challenge of combining the editorial department’s goals for the site with advertising requirements. Photos and news are vital to Us’ identity, but the previous site struggled to display them in a logical manner. We developed four content verticals and a tagging system to dynamically surface related content and appeal to individual users’ interests. On the front end, we gave the magazine a fresh look while allowing editors to easily post entertainment news as soon as it breaks.

I designed this site for Shari Maurer, young adult author and Gerber daisy aficionado! With a WordPress CMS, Shari can keep a blog, add pages and update her site easily.

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I designed and coded this simple little site for our Coney Island–themed wedding.

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Since 2005 I have designed most of Manhattan Edit Workshop’s promotional materials. In 2008, founder Josh Apter asked me to lead a redesign and rebuild of MEW’s website. The old site was built entirely in Flash and had no content management system, making it impossible for Josh and his team to make updates without hiring Flash developers. I developed a new site content plan and sitemap, and hired a developer to build a CMS so MEW can update the site whenever they want.

» View the Live Site

I art directed and architected this website for Landmarks, a new public art program at UT Austin. In March 2009, the Interactive Media Awards (IMA) announced Landmarks as winner of the 2009 “Best in Class” award for arts and culture. The website received high praise for its exceptional website design and development.

» View the Live Site