Graphic Design

Clarity of Design; Flair When Permissible

My philosophy for graphic design is to fulfill the request of the client and make the text, images, and information fit and flow together as smoothly as possible, while also breaking into more complex and creative designs when it makes sense.

While most of the designs here are created through the tools within the Adobe programs, I have also used a Wacom Bamboo Tablet to create drawings directly within the computer for a few of the pieces, including the map presented here on the right.

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A "best of" collection of my work from my time as an intern for N2 Publishing

Pediatric Dentistry of PIttsburgh

For this one, the goal I had was to use the empty space within the giant "P." None of the images were provided by the client, so I used a creative commons to find images of children smiling to fill the space and make dentistry feel more safe and fun.

The Storck Team

This one was a particularly difficult challenge. Not only did the client provide a large amount of text, they wanted it all to be placed upon a busy image with constraints on how much of the ad space I could use. The challenge, then, was to make the text readable, while still utilizing the image to its full potential. To do that, I bounced the text back and forward and used slight transparency filters on the image to tone it down, but balanced the text bars to show the graduation caps and faces of the students.

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Remax

This was another example of a text-heavy ad with specific design requests--in this case, that the skyline of the neighborhood be at the bottom of the ad. The image provided didn't have even nearly enough skyline, but I used an image extending feature in Photoshop to nearly quadruple the size of the sky to fulfill the request.

VidaDance

While the amount of text was much less than some of the other ads I worked on, the request of how to lay it out was a unique challenge in negative space versus positive space. Even though the image itself is busy with the number of people, it's the type of busy that feels static--there's so much positive space that it becomes a negative space. As its laid out now, it creates a cool narrative from top to bottom: characters point to you, call you out verbally, and then tell you where to go.

Tender Care Lawn Service

This was another challenge, but in a different way; in this case, the client showed a specific ad from another district and said, "I want this." So I had to completely build the ad from scratch, creative everything from the leaves to the shape in the center to make it all match. It's not often that a client provides such a specific model to follow, but it's an interesting way to flex creative muscles when you have the "what it looks like," but not the "how to make it look like that."

Wine-Me

This was perhaps the most challenging ad I had to work with. The request was a huge amount of text, a third-of-the-ad-sized segment to stay as a permanent fixture for a mini-article, a wine-dryness scale, and an image with a mini-ad next to it. Every element here was practically created from scratch, from the wine-bottle article holder to the scale on the bottom.

...For UNCW

Work created during an Intermediate Graphic Design class at the University of North Carolina Wilmington

Creative Map of Wilmington

Adobe Photoshop with a Wacom Tablet

The project was to create a creative map of Wilmington, NC for the International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) to be used as promotional material for foreign students to entice them towards studying at UNCW. The brief called for something segmented with bright colors and some form of iconography, so I interpreted that as a map broken up by roads and then further segmented by lines that offered an idea of the feeling of each region--downtown is a grid from a central water fountain, the school is more orderly, the roads toward the beach are more empty and single-toned. Out of the 16 students in the class, my design was one of three chosen to be turned into a postcard and is now a piece of advertisement for ISSS.

Lumina Festival of the Arts: Opera Character

Adobe Illustrator

Our final project in the class was to help rebrand the Lumina Festival of the Arts, which is now entering its second year of existence. The project was open-ended as to what we could create--they needed just about anything we could offer--so I created a series of four cut-out characters that could be used for promotional material of any sort. I made the characters in black and white, as well as hidden within circles to match the circular logo.