About | ckdesigns

Hi there! I'm Charles Amadeus KETE -

a Creative Director, Software Engineer, UI/UX Designer, and currently the Head of Design at RIBBON.

Prior to taking on my role at Ribbon in March 2022, I was the Head of Design for REX Homes, another tech real estate company based out of Los Angeles. Prior to that, I worked at Apple as a Software Engineer and UI/UX Designer. Scroll on to see my work with many other amazing companies, artists, and brands I’m sure you’ve heard of, such Marvel Studios, Martin Watier, Tomasz Stolz, Bambo Nature, Speaktoit, etc.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clarke

So let's work magic together.

Director of Design & Engineering

ABENA USA
2015 - 2019

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:

Heading the Design & Engineering Department in all creative tasks, including but not limited to:

Manage Product Design Team
Manage Engineering Team
Rapid Prototyping
Graphic Design
Packaging Design
Product Development
Full-stack Web Development
Motion Graphics
3D Animations
Social Media Advertising
Systems Automation
Print Media Design
System Architecture

TESTIMONIALS:

Tom Royster - Vice-President of Sales

"Not only is Charles one of the most creative minds I’ve ever worked with, he’s a joy to collaborate with, and his designs are always the most innovative and effective I’ve ever seen within my professional career”."

Melissa Mogensen - Sr Graphic Designer

"Charles is one of the most outgoing and creatively brilliant people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working for. He taught us how to think beyond the expectations of our distributors and customers, which led to obtaining numerous contracts and conversions through unique marketing campaigns and packaging design. He is a true leader."

Work History

a new kind of challenge

Designing the ABENA USA adult incontinence website from scratch required quite a bit of UI/IX ingenuity. It required the creation a fresh new user-interface that is both user-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing...two things seldom ever seen in the not-so-glamorous world of adult incontinence. Well, I begged to differ.

In the end, we created what is unequivocally the most technologically advanced, intuitive, as well as the most elegant website ever seen in the adult incontinence industry. Thus proving that with enough creativity, anything is possible.

past work history

2010 - 2012

APPLE

Software Engineer

Apps & Frameworks

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:

Maps 3D Physics Engine Development .

UI/UX Design .

Rapid Prototyping with Stimulated Annealing .

API Design .

Framework Development .

Performance Engineering .

Application Protocols .

2013 - 2015

ROSS & BARUZZINI

Lead Systems Designer

Advanced Engineering Systems

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:

Aerospace Systems Engineering
ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) Design
EASE 4.0 Acoustical Systems
AutoCAD Design
Revit MEP Design
Develop and/or review of technical specifications, reports, whitepapers

2008 - 2010

IBM

UI/UX Designer

(University Internship)

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:

User Interface Design
User Experience Research & Development
Iterative Designs for A/B testing
Usability testing
Competitive research
Wireframe mockups development
Ideation Presentation Design
Rapid Prototyping with Stimulated Anealing
Wizard of OZ Prototyping

DESIGN ACUMEN

software & programing skills

ILLUSTRATOR

PHOTOSHOP

IN DESIGN

AFTER EFFECTS

HTML

CSS

JAVASCRIPT

OBJECTIVE C

PHP

95%

90%

80%

85%

95%

85%

95%

75%

Companies

I've worked with along the way

I was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to work with, and learn from some truly amazing companies. These partnerships have helped me tremendously in honing and developing my technical and design skills over the past 10+ years.

MY

Portfolio

BRANDING

packaging design, print media, graphic design & brand asset development

Leading the ABENA Design & Engineering department for the past 5 years has awarded me the invaluable and rare opportunity to re-brand a company from the ground up. From building a website from scratch, creating brand new packaging and new product ranges, I have had to be involved with everything that has to do with turning a small up and coming brand into a multi-million dollar company.

Skills

Portfolio

wireframes, rapid prototypes & development

UI - UX Design

Over 10 years of experience in developing dynamic, and engaging User Interfaces that are elegant, clean, intuitive, and minimalistic. I've always believed that the best designs are self-effacing. Therefore, most of my job is in fact getting design OUT of the way.

1. Concept sketches

2. Wireframe Mockups

3. Development

ANIMATIONS

CSS animations, conceptualization, presentation, digital 3D prototyping

In this ever-evolving & hyper visual world of smartphones & virtual reality, engaging and captivating visuals have not only become the norm, but they're starting to become the expectation. Multimedia animations are among some of the most powerful mediums through which to achieve this by adding an element of seamlessness. When used properly, on something as simple as a mere button for instance, an animation should become nearly invisible to the user, because they should be thinking... "well of course that's what happens when you press this button...it just makes sense."