Una Kravets
Una Kravets is a Senior Developer Relations Engineer at Google Chrome from New York. Her role is to work on improving the extensibility and styling on different web platforms to help UI developers and design systems engineers. Kravets completed a degree in Design and Applied Arts at the Studio Arts College International, followed by a bachelors in Graphic Design and Computer Science.
Before working at Google Chrome, Kravets worked in a wide range of companies, taking on numerous roles including internships, developer at IBM, senior UI developer engineer at Digital Ocean and a director of product design at the company Bustle. Her work has resulted in her winning numerous awards including the Young Designer of the Year Shortlist and within Google, the Google Developer Expert in Web Technologies.
Kravets is based in Brooklyn and says her that she is a developer whose aim is to make the web more style-able. On top of her design work, she also co hosts two web development podcasts; Toolsday and the CSS Podcast. Also, Kravets features in the web video series Designing in the Browser. As a way to help others learn what she loves, Kravets creates technical illustrations which she calls Dev Doodles and posts on social media, which describe, mostly web, developer terms and concepts in mnemonics. She also enjoys to do some calligraphy and brush lettering.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/una-kravets-a3582730
Sara Souedian
Sara Souedian is an independent web user interface and design systems engineer, author, speaker and trainer based in Lebanon. Before she became well known within the design industry, Souedian completed a bachelor’s degree in Computer Sciences, followed by beginning a freelance career in 2013. Similar to a lot of designers in this industry, Souedian uses her speciality to help others, for example she wrote the Codrops CSS Reference and co-authored a book which covers time-saving tricks for building fast and maintainable websites. On top of this, she has also led workshops for mainstream companies like Netflix, Telus and the Royal Schipol Group at Amsterdam Airport.
Souedian has worked with companies all over the worlds, where she builds user interfaces, design systems and digital products. Her focus is to create a responsive design with accessibility, good performance and cutting-edge tech. Some of these companies include SuperFriendly, Herman Miller, Khan Academy and Bosch. This work had seen her win awards such as the 2015 Developer of the Year in the net awards and an O’Reilly Web Platform Award for “exceptional leadership, creativity and collaboration”. Her work has also been recognised by several large organisations including Google, Apple, Microsoft and Adobe.
Due to the high-end corporations and organisations she has worked with, a lot of Souedian’s work is covered by NDAs, so she can’t discuss them. Her work for the Khan Academy, where Souedian created an award-winning micro-site for the non-profit organisation whose provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Souedian was part of a team called SuperFriends, which was assembled solely for the project. This is a common occurrence in her line of work, where teams would be created or joined for a specific project. This leads to working without the same people on different projects. It was this that lead Souedian to take on the Khan Academy project as it involved people she had worked previously with on a project for Smashing Magazine. She was trusted to code the new, fresh and modern website which would be the foundation for their 10th anniversary redesign.
Vic Bell
Vic Bell is an illustrator, brand designer and iconographer, from Durham, who can work in a wide range of digital skills, from editorial style illustrations to three dimensional worlds built for 4D cinemas. Bell completed her design education at Newcastle College with a degree in Illustration and Design. Currently, she is a senior illustrator at Gitlab Inc, but has taken on numerous roles before this including as an iconographer and badge designer, illustrator, both freelance and senior. As well as her professional work, Bell has a passion project called Bear, where she designed and runs an app which allows users to create markdown notes on iOS devices.
Looking at some of her work…
Scratch: this is an app which helps users manage and control loan payments. Bell was given the opportunity to create and work on the entire brand illustration style, iconography and marketing material. However, keeping to her speciality, Bell decided to focus on mainly the illustration style, colour palette and visual direction. The process of creating the designs was to begin with a hand drawn style which was created by using an iPad connected to a computer so Bell could create natural, flowing lines.
Uber: in 2017, Bell was asked to create an entire icon system for the popular transport service which relies heavily on technology. The icons had to be able to scale between both the mobile app and online. This project required over 300 icons which covered some complex subjects, like the map icon which Bell considered to be the most complex so this is the one she started with. Bell explored the largest design first and then reduced the detail enough to keep the icon consistent and the message obvious to the user.
Burberry: Bell was approached by Burberry to join a much smaller project compared to the Uber one. She was asked to create a small, very stylised icon set to match Burberry’s recent website redesign. As the icons were going to be used in multiple places, they were needed in numerous sizes. Bell also created a specific set of guidelines for any future iconography, to keep the overall look of the company’s digital image consistent. To Bell in this project aesthetic was key due to the fact that Burberry was such a well known and established brand, she wanted to keep the classic Burberry aesthetic in the new set of modern icons. Her main inspiration was the vintage delivery van and famous Regent Street storefront.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vicbell?originalSubdomain=uk