Through the Eyes of True Love

SELECTED GRAPHIC DESIGN WORKS

PROJECT I: Branding, Print, Event, App, Packaging

This is How

  • Course: Visual Thinking

    Instructor: Sandra Isla

    Project: This is How

    Semester: Fall 2021

    Categories: Branding, Packaging, Print, Event, App

    Keywords: Accessible, practical, trustworthy

  • The objective of this project was to create a human-centered brand and visual system that would be applied across three related deliverables.

  • This Is How is a brand dedicated to making home repair skills and tools available to ordinary homeowners. The objective is to increase access to the skills and tools needed to complete basic home maintenance and respond to small household emergencies. The goal of the brand is to help homeowners learn how to perform common maintenance and repair tasks.

    The brand and visual system has been applied across three deliverables that focus on increasing homeowners access to skills and tools. The free skills workshop encourages people to drop in and learn how to make basic repairs and handle minor home emergencies. The app makes a range of DIY knowledge available to anyone. Each skills video is accompanied by a visual and textual explanation. The vending machines free people from home improvement shopping during business hours and allow them to purchase the tools they need at any time.

PROJECT II: Print

“Beware the Jabberwock”

  • Course: Type Systems

    Instructor: Hunter Wimmer

    Project: “Beware the Jabberwock”

    Semester: Spring 2021

    Categories: Print

    Keywords: Viral, programmed

  • The objective of this project was to design a chapbook using the transcript of a podcast.

  • “Beware the Jabberwock” is an episode of the This American Life podcast. Throughout the episode, Ira Glass relays the story of how a conspiracy theory affects real lives, followed by the origin story of the loudest conspiracy theorist of our time: Alex Jones.

    The visual system was inspired by computer programming language, using HTML tags to identify the speaker throughout the podcast transcript. The images were styled to appear as monochrome in a deep maroon color.

PROJECT III: Print

Insectarium

  • Course: Type Composition

    Instructor: Lian Ng

    Project: Insectarium

    Semester: Fall 2020

    Categories: Print

    Keywords: Playful, structured

  • The objective of this project was to format a coffee table-style photography book with accompanying text.

  • Insectarium uses the text from An Elementary Study of Insects by Leonard Haseman. The dense academic text was transformed by being paired with striking insect photographs. The images of the insects are extreme close-ups, making them appear larger than life. The vibrant color palette was derived from the insect imagery and used to visually differentiate each section of the book.

PROJECT IV: Series, Motion Graphics

To the Bone

  • Course: Type Experiments

    Instructor: David Hake

    Project: To the Bone

    Semester: Spring 2022

    Categories: Series, Motion Graphics

    Keywords: Solemn, fading

  • The objective of this project was to use experimental type through personal explorations to reimagine the posters and trailer of an existing movie.

  • During my personal explorations, I was drawn to the effect of pulling color from permanent markers by running alcohol through the letters. Using this lens, I chose to reimagine the movie To the Bone. The movie follows a young adult, Ellen, as she struggles to find recovery in a group home for people with eating disorders. Throughout the movie, there is a sense of Ellen's persona slowly fading away.

    The final type for the movie title embraced the fading away of Ellen and the fading letters of my explorations, resulting in a title that gradually thinned in stroke weight. The imagery created a clear, solemn focal point with a single subject on a black background. The objects included a strong and slightly intimidating fork, a dying flower reaching for the sunlight, and a young lady’s back with a sharp, protruding spine. The movie trailer applied the same experimental type style to selected phrases from the movie and paired them with similarly solemn images until the transformative ending. The music chosen for the trailer is slow but lends the slightest sense of hope.

PROJECT V: Event, Print, App

Revitalize the Mural District

  • Course: Type Systems

    Instructor: Hunter Wimmer

    Project: Revitalize the Mural District

    Semester: Spring 2021

    Categories: Print, Event, App

    Keywords: Urban, larger-than-life

  • The objective of this project was to transform a local art gallery by creating new environmental designs, as well as a gallery guide and app.

  • Fresno, CA is home to a lively arts district that is adorned with large murals on nearly every building. Despite the prominence and popularity of these murals in the city (with one mural often appearing in advertisements for the city), there has never been any formal print or digital collection of the various murals, their artists, and their locations.

    Revitalize the Mural District was envisioned as a nonprofit that worked to bring life to the district. An oversized booklet directed patrons around the area and provided information about each piece. Due to the substantial number of murals available, a specific artist was chosen to be featured at the event. The environmental designs were also intended to be oversized, with hanging banners that spanned the streets and directed people to even some of the most hidden murals. The app supplied much of the same information as the gallery guide, but also featured Augmented Reality capabilities that allowed patrons to take photographs of themselves enveloped within the artwork.

PROJECT VI: Packaging, Print

Caution: Madness Within

  • Course: Type Experiments

    Instructor: David Hake

    Project: Caution: Madness Within

    Semester: Spring 2022

    Categories: Packaging, Print

    Keywords: Spicy, colorful, madness

  • The objective of this project was to find a poem in a foreign language and then use the glyphs and characters from that poem to create new words, designs, and patterns.

  • The poem chosen for this project, “Granny,” by Koyamparambath Satchidanandan is written in Malayalam, one of the many languages spoken in India. The poem reads:

    My granny was insane.
    As her madness ripened into death,
    my uncle, a miser,
    kept her in our storeroom
    wrapped in straw.
    My granny dried up, burst;
    her seeds flew out of the window.
    The sun came, and the rain;
    one seedling grew up into a tree,
    whose lusts bore me.
    Can I help writing poems
    about monkeys with teeth of gold?

    Upon first glance, the letterforms of the Malayalam language conjured images of fluid lines and intricate swirling patterns. There was a sense of doodling in a notebook and daydreaming. It is a beautiful written language system. After reading the English translation of the poem and discovering its dark, morbid nature, I thought there was such an interesting juxtaposition of form and content: the beautiful, delicate letterforms conveying the dark, twisted meaning. Immediately, I thought of irreverent adult coloring books that display cuss words in elegant scripts. The Malayalam characters were broken down into the shapes and pieces that form the glyphs. Those pieces were then used to construct a series of six mandalas. Next, the mandalas were paired with single line drawings to create coloring book pages. Finally, the book was expanded into a full art box including colored pencils, paints, and souvenir pins. The word “Madness” in the art box title was also created using Malayalam characters.

PROJECT VII: Print

Portfolio

  • Course: Portfolio

    Instructor: Mary Scott

    Project: Caution: Madness Within

    Semester: Fall 2022

    Categories: Print

    Keywords: Personal, warm