Editorial Design - Project 1

After a long wait, here is the first layout I created for my magazine.
This article had to be made using only typographic elements, and basic shapes. You weren't allowed to do any illustrations, use photos, etc.

The magazine is called VENTURE, and as an excuse to finally get to use all my photos from Japan I made it a travel magazine. But a travel magazine with a focus on the spiritual destinations of the world, rather than the top ten hotels or beaches.

The article is about a zen garden in Kyoto Japan called Ryoanji. Google some pictures of this place. It's worth a look. But it's better in person (hahahah!)

No I didn't write the article. I wish I had had the time, because I have lots of memories of how gorgeous Ryoanji was, but there's only so much you can do when you have two weeks to make 3 pages look good together!

Thank You

Little thank you card I made for the professor my group interviewed for a project.
He saved our butts by answering so fast.

Bevan and Lauren

For my wonderful cousin, Bevan, who asked his girlfriend Lauren to marry him and got a resounding yes.
Congrats, you two!

It's 3 x 9 inches

Belated Hearts and Kisses

I planned to do a little something for Valentine's day this year.
For once my impromptu project got off the ground and was drawn a week before, but I wasn't anywhere near a scanner to actually finish it until well after Valentine's day had passed me by. A minor setback seeing as though the time was spent on the couch watching Mythbusters with my mom!

Here. Have some late Valentine's letters.
H(appy) V(alentine's)!

Package Design - Project 1

Here's the first completed project of the new year!
Package Design is going to be fantastic. I can tell already.

This was our first project; the object was to create a package (either a new one, or a revisited one) entirely out of paper, without using any glue to hold it together. You know, it sounded like it would be a cakewalk but I was wrong!

Trying to figure out sturdy ways to keep a container together without glue takes a lot of trial and error! This little baby had several types of "locks" (where I made cuts in the paper and inserted tabs) before I finally settled on a design that worked.

Also a great surprise: these weren't designed to fit together...!
It was a surprise bonus. My professor suggested to make multiples so there could be a set, and while I was making them I noticed that five of them fit together perfectly. Hence the setup. The blue band is another piece of paper with locks to hold it.

They're roughly 3x3x3 inches.
They also fold up flat and can be stacked together (as long as you have an elastic band!)

Brunswick Street Christmas Poster

Thank you thank you thank you to Leah for inspiring me to actually try different drawing styles, because do they ever WORK! I've tended to use a lot of photographs or very technical things on posters for class, but this one... this one just needed to be so much friendlier.
Brunswick Street Baptist Church, the lovely church my mother attends, has two beautiful special services every year at Christmastime. A candlelight service, where Christmas carols and performances are the order of the day, and two Christmas Eve services.

This year they wanted to try and reach out to a "non-church" audience, so I drew this for them.
It's funny. I had a taste of HUGE posters this year, so it was really hard to think about where to put all this information onto an 11x17 and have it be readable by all ages.
All I knew when I started was that I wanted that star and the verse to be by themselves.

I've learned something from it, though. I have to start thinking like my professors, because they always seem to have much better answers than I do for most design problems (obviously! They're the ones that have been in the field for years)
I'll get there.
I just need more practice.

P.S. Curly hand drawn script (that took forever to make workable, I might add) beats pre-made script fonts any day. I can only take so much of seeing Edwardian Script curlicues everywhere.

Information Design 2 - Term Project

It's been a long time coming. Months, really.
Information Design 2 was all about design for advocacy. At the beginning of the year we picked a topic to fight for, or against, and researched until our eyes bled to make fold-out poster brochures.

Mine is on seed banks, and how they can protect food security and crop diversity.
It was satisfying to work with so much green. It's relaxing. Although the main green was the cause of a couple late-night mint cravings.
I'll be quite content never to look at a potato again for as long as I live, and heaven forbid you mention wheat in my presence.

The brochure, when folded up, is 7 x 9 inches. Unfold it, and flip it over, and you get the poster which is 28 x 18 inches.

It's so satisfying to see it done, printed, and sitting here!
I even got to test out a professional printer for this one. I was getting sick of having to use Kinkos print centres. There's very little you can do properly at a Kinkos for something this big.
God love them, they even managed to get the double siding ALMOST perfect.
So close I really had to look for it, which is a refreshing change.

When I picked it up it had new printout smell, which, for those of you who don't know, is kind of like new car smell. Only better.