This is my first project for Motion Graphics, a 15 second bumper advertising myself. We could only use a 2D space as well as very few effects; so it presented some unique challenges. I really liked my Lime logo from DPU, so I refitted it to be a logo for my brand. It’s also a throwback to my Chicago Magazine style, which I promised I’d one day incorporate into another work.
Made with After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Acid Pro.
Arr! This be my Digital Publishing final. We had to choose a social issue to design a magazine and magazine spread around. So yes, I did design Lime Magazine, mine having no affiliation with the actual, Asian-oriented Lime Magazine. I am particularly happy with the nameplate, though, I think it would stand out in a magazine rack. For the spread, I went with so-called ’slacktivism’ (wearing meaningless ribbons and lapel pins that don’t make a lick of difference.) There was no actual article written about it, so I had to splice together a few blog posts. I went sort of abstract with the cover, but I think it turned out well.
I then tried to incorporate the illustration through out the article to tie it all together. You’ll also notice the bottom banners as well as page number markers added as if they were the magazine’s proprietary assets.
FYI, those gray borders are only there as a matte for the WordPress post so that you can tell where the images end.
Clearly, this isn’t my best work, but I’ve certainly done worse
I am, however, a bit disappointed that I didn’t get to use my original table of contents design:
I love how the picture came out -made from scratch, I might add- but it had absolutely no business being next to the other images. In the end, it got cut for the sake of cohesion.
Made with (in no particular order) Maya 2008, Photoshop, Illustrator, and (for the first time ever) InDesign CS3.
This post has been a long time coming, but I definitely think that it’s paid off. For a group project, we were tasked with rebranding a product and we chose Wacom’s budget Bamboo tablet line. Firstly, we didn’t very much care for Wacom’s current logo. This reworking was made by the lovely Ashley Nieves. We then thought that we could add life to the product by making a colored line of the Bamboos, hence the “Hue”. The Bamboo logo was made by the equally lovely Kristian Zabala, whereas I made the Hue logo.
My thought with this was that the swatches on the leg of the ‘H’ would rotate so that the current tablet’s color would emanate from the middle swatch.
For our advertisement, I wanted to be very literal in the execution -but not so much that it wouldn’t fit with the other parts. Since our tag line is “color the world”, we literally colored the world. I wanted to play around with transparency, taking inspiration from transparent film, and came away with a very watercolored look. This is further enhanced by the pastel color choices, whose variety and contrast balance out their relative lightness. Taking into account the Gutenberg diagram, a line is formed to lead viewer, starting from the illustration, going into the pen, tablet, the bamboo logo, and moving down the drip toward the tagline and Wacom logo.
Based on the response we received from our first advertisement, I decided to do another illustration, this time for the banner. I continued with the water colored look, only on a much grander scale. I went with a taller format for this piece to play with verticality. This theme is also incorporated by the subject matter: New York City. I used a cooler, but no less vibrant, color scheme in order to differentiate it from the other ads and to contrast more with the tablet and text.
The concept behind this banner is to break up the illustration into three layers and put them onto separate panes of glass.
The panes would be hung spaced out from the ceiling of the building showcasing, thus, playing up the transparency of the piece, as well as perspective. As soon as a customer would walk into the store, they would be immediately drawn to the colors and grandeur of the banner.
I also made this video real quick like of the boxes. I can’t really take credit for the actual boxes -other than for input and direction- as they were made by Kris and Ashley. They took an almost exorbitant amount of time to finish, but they were well worth the wait. The video is completely seamless and loopable.
This commercial wasn’t a requirement but we thought it would put us that much over the edge…I’m proud to say that it did.
To be fair, it was Kris’ idea to animate the color of the tablets. Though in all likelihood, I would have eventually thought of it myself.
As always, made with CS3; and as sometimes, Maya and Final Cut.
For Critique Structures, I chose to redo Albertsons brand Olive Oil. I found it on one of the bottommost shelves, thus proving that it’s generic, and it’s badly overdue for a facelift. The original is quite bland. It has very boring typefaces on the front label and a poor illustration of a nature scene, which they use for all of their products. Also, the actual bottle is boring and unappealing. It’s made of cheap clear plastic in a rectangular shape with ridges on the sides –which, while practical, aren’t very pleasing to the eye. Thinking about it, the poor design might be intentional since consumers usually think that poor packaging equals lower price.
For the redesign, I was thinking class, and targeted it for connoisseurs. I wanted some way to make the Albertsons brand stand out among its competitors (the olive oil market is pretty cutthroat.) I chose to go pretty simple. When researching the product, I found that much of the time, a simple design can be just, if not more so, effective in connoting refinement. A good example of this would be Godiva chocolates.
The font I chose has slanted baselines, which makes me think of Greek and in general the Mediterranean region. As for the other elements, I went with a simple illustration of an olive branch. I completely redesigned the container as well. I chose to mimic wine labeling, since only classy people drink wine. Ha. Joking aside, I put the product in an actual wine bottle. So as not to confuse the consumer into thinking that it is spirits, I chose an olive colored ink for the print. Also, I went without a label; choosing instead to print directly onto the bottle.
Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the end result and I think it could stand on its own if it were a real product.
I also made a little video showcasing the product. Keep in mind that I’ve had very little actual training in 3D.
Made with Photoshop & Illustrator CS3, Maya 2008, and Final Cut Pro.
What we have here is a cover redesign of Jeffrey Eugenedis’ “the Virgin Suicides”. I borrowed heavily from the previous covers -there are a lot. I immediately knew I wanted an extreme close-up of a girl’s face with her mouth cryptically open. My friend Margie Haag obliged to be the model. I also knew I wanted the eyes covered up somehow. At first I thought of covering them up with a photo or illustration of a fishfly -a prominent theme in the book- but that would’ve looked too much like Silence of the Lambs. I decided to make it look as if the photo of Margie was ripped along the lenght of the book. Underneath I put lined paper and used a very swirly font to connote female adolescence. I used blue and red in the text and illustrations to make it look as if they were doodled onto notebook paper with pen. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with how this came out. However, knowing me, I’ll probably come back to it and change it drastically. Thanks to Ashley Nieves for the photography.
Made in Photoshop and Illustrator CS3
This is a continuation of my previous Chemical Brothers cover. It’s only one part of whole mock campaign, but it’s the one I’m most pleased with, as well as spent most time on. So much time, in fact, that I had to tell myself to stop otherwise I’d get no other work done. Hopefully, I won’t be coming back to this.
Made in Illustrator and Photoshop CS3.
Here I have what amounts to the better part of a Saturday night/Sunday morning. This is for my Typography class, despite the deficiency of text -or as we in the industry call: copy. The illustration portion came to me, quite fittingly, in a dream during a trip to Chicago, as I was reading Volume 3 in the Absolute Sandman collection. The painting isn’t as strong as I’d hoped, but better than I expected. It has sort of a Picasso feel; but fans of the series know that he’s been known to inspire artisits, so maybe Picasso’s style was inspired by him.
Made in Photoshop & Illustrator CS3
In Typography, we were commissioned to make a piece of art entirely out of text. I initially made a map of Chicagoland out of names (streets, towns, etc.) but it turned out a bit convoluted and busy. I did however, really like what I did for the label. For this, I wrote out ‘Chicago’ in Goudy Old Style with a really thin stroke to use as a guide. I then wrote out the alphabet in the same font and dragged, dropped, and manipulated the letters around the guide until the negative space itself looked like the word. Since this design was no longer part of the map, I tried to think of a product/publication that uses ‘Chicago’ and thought of Chicago Magazine. I’ll incorporate this into an cover mock-up as well as a table of contents. I can’t really see the actual publication using a logo this complex, but perhaps they could use it for a special, art-oriented issue. More to come next week.
Here is the aforementioned alternate design. This was my initial idea for the project before I started focusing on my Mars poster. Once that was done, I went back to work on this. The article is about the “terrorist” organization, FARC in Columbia. I wasn’t very satisfied with it during production but it really came together towards the end. I was trying to make it work as a pure photo manipulation with a plain Trajan typeface a la Newsweek or some other news rag; but I think it’s better as an illustration. I ended up mimicking the early & mid 19th century propaganda style (a common trend for my class) with a South American flair. I’m unusually happy about this.
Made in Photoshop and Illustrator CS3.
This is the culmination of my Advanced Computer Graphics class. It’s a faux cover for a real magazine article about the NASA’s Mars Phoenix project. I was going for a very ethereal and otherworldly (pun very much intended) slant with this piece. I might shop it around to some cheesy sci-fi publisher. It’s a mixture of digital painting and photo manipulation, mostly the latter. All assets, save for the Martian texture, are hand-made. I have some other designs that I worked on for other articles, but this will probably end up being the one that’s graded.
Made in Photoshop CS3.
