B.S. of Visual Communication Design
Portfolio
Hi, my name is Alex Merenkov. I’m a UI/UX designer, web and infographic designer, and marketer from San Francisco State University. I’m also a graduate of the MMART program at Peralta Colleges’s Berkeley City College(Infographics, web design, printmaking). I’m based in Berkeley California and I’m originally from Central Contra Costa County(Walnut Creek). I often find myself lamenting about obvious problems in my designed world and yearning for solutions. I like problem-solving design, for example, fixing painful user problems and long-standing usability issues with designed websites, apps, and objects. I see marketing and designed user-centered design solutions as key for creating value in people’s lives and something that I can uniquely do given my background, unique qualities, and upbringing. In my spare time, I like taking care of my house plants(Spider plants, aloe, jade, basil, and ivy), working out, and cycling around the East Bay. If I get time I enjoy watching TV and playing video games on Steam and otherwise listening to as much music as possible. You can see my professional experiences on LinkedIn. I’m happy to connect with other professionals. Please feel free to reach out.
Cheese Hunt 2D Unity Game
A basic 2D game created in DES427 with Zoe. Animated noodle dodges away from little chain chomp Trump monsters to collect cheese sauce and reach the end of the cabinet
Blender Aloe and Cacti
Working with textures and 3D models in Blender. Created a terrain and a 3D object that resembles an aloe. Took photos of actual aloe to generate a texture via an external site to overlay texture upon the objects. Used a skybox to give the illusion of the object floating in an apartment.
2003XP
My capstone is nowhere near complete. This project recently being finalized as project 2 in DES527 deals with a mismatch of perception and expectation in VR space using Oculus Quest 1/2. With Unity as the construction tool, the user is placed in a room. Upon entering a trigger region nearest the monitor an array of pixels or boxes expands and the room shrinks to reveal the user is actually in the iconic default Windows XP wallpaper from the early 2000s which is really a photo of a hill in Sonoma county. This piece attempts to repurpose the old, obsolete, and familiar to draw courage from a simpler time to expand our horizon from past inspiration.
Capstone Advisor: Josh McVeigh-Schultz