The challenge for this project was to create a design that could be both blown up to an 11x17 poster, as well as shrunk down to a 0.98x1. 255 postal stamp. The design had to be detailed enough to not be boring in the poster size, and simple enough to not lose the content of the design as a small stamp. I went with these simplified, circular fruits with a textured background, inspired by cartoons that have the same approach. The texture also helps the poster sizes have more visual interest. I played with the color, and had fun with changing the hues around for some more visual interest.
This magazine spread was inspired by the works of Steven Heller. The title design was inspired by a book cover by him, while the colors were taken from another cover.
Given a project to design notebooks that Target could sell targeting teenage girls, I chose to go with makeup and create a more geometric pattern. Above is the pattern swatch. The second notebook design is inspired by a vanity mirror. The artwork was created in illustrator with physical makeup items laid out in front of me.
Tasked with redesigning an album cover, I went searching through my spotify playlists. I found this song Alien by Nico & Chelsea Collins, and got to work on my own take for the song. The song talks about how the person doesn’t care to fit in, how they have no friends, how they are an alien: distant from the people around them. I wanted to take that literally like the original album art did, but I wanted to change it with the person looking in the mirror and seeing a literal alien staring back at them. With an added twist of having the alien in the mirror not reflecting the same pose back at the person.
I was given the task of designing a make believe coffee shop of my choice. I decided that my coffee shop would be one where you didn’t necessarily pay for the food, you paid for the experience. My coffee shop would be a little nook that appealed to kids. One where a parent or trusted grownup could hang out with their child, and the child would feel special. A kid’s coffee would be a hot chocolate, and an iced kid’s coffee would be a kind of flavored water. Something to make the child feel just like their grownup. Of course they would have normal and specialty hot and iced coffee too, but those would be the grownup kind. I wanted the design to reflect that. Even though I pivoted from my first sketches, I love the way this turned out, with the friendly, playful nature, and the little arts and crafts creatures even turning to mischief on the tote bag.
Birthday gift cards! Inspired by the birthday and animal theme, these gift cards were surprisingly difficult to make cute. There is a fine line between cute and creepy anthropomorphic animals, and it took some practice to get on the right side of it. Though these animals aren’t cutesy or chibi like, I think they are quite likeable. The birthday theme was an enjoyable theme on top of the animals, giving them birthday hats, cake, balloons, and banners. For the color pallette, I went with more pastel colors with the inspiration of Target in the back of my mind.
This project was to redesign an existing book as a graphic novel. With some thinking, I decided on this scene from my favorite book series, Throne of Glass. The author does a great job depicting how long the character’s journey is from the outskirts of town to the castle. The author hones in on how the character is feeling, how laborious her breaths are, the burn of her legs from running, and how her mind is racing in concern for her friend. As a result, the reader is rushing to read those pages, subconsciously mimicking the hurried pace of the character. There is only so much you can depict from that in picture form, but I gave it my best shot and I am happy with how it turned out.
The goal of this project was to use short motion graphics to express the meaning of the word. Like how the word beat is beating in a heart, stretch is getting stretched, and dance is dancing. Get Inspired is more abstract, but I think the silliness and creativity shows through. With the colors, I tried to pinpoint which ones would fit best with each word. The colors for dance make me think of a festive party. The red hues for beat go with love and Valentine’s Day and the beating heart that is in our chests.
This project was centered around camera motion. Instead of moving horizontally across a scene, I thought it would be interesting to move down. And what scene could be more fun than Alice falling down the tunnel? I wanted to add other fun characters and aspects from later in the story as well. After drawing and colorizing all the parts, it was time for the fun part: animating!
TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. This organization on campus wasn’t well known and was trying to gain more traction, so this was the project I chose to work on. I decided to go in a more illustrative direction, learning towards making characters while implying different backgrounds, but all of them coming together to learn English.
I was inspired when making friendship bracelets with friends before a concert. The colors, shapes, and patterns of the beads being held together with the string was sparking a design in my mind, and a motion graphics pursuit was born! I wanted the letter beads to roll in gradually, and have the viewer wonder what words were being made, and then have the string abruptly wind back and the beads go flying.
