Prior to enrolling in Humber’s Graphic Design for Print and Web program I earned my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography from Ryerson University and worked for a small company for five years as their in-house graphic designer and web designer.
My four years at Ryerson taught me so much about myself, my passions, my photography, and about fine art, philosophy and literature. In my final year it became clear to me that photography is only one way of communicating my point-of-view. Through courses that explored digital tools in photography, multimedia, and visual representation, I developed a keen interest in graphic design. As a result, when I noticed the company I had been working for part-time was in need of someone to dedicate full-time hours to graphics, I pitched myself as a candidate. What I lacked in experience, I made up for with initiative, intuition, and a willingness to learn on the job.
After working at Revelle Home Fashions for just over five years, migraines required me to resign so that I could focus on getting better. Once my health improved, I knew I wanted to pursue graphic design and returning to school was the logical next step for me.
When it comes to design, I love working with bold colours and patterns, playful typefaces, and finding innovative, eco-friendly ways to print my work.
The goal of this campaign is to raise awareness about dependence on technology (cell phones specifically) and the negative effects they can have on relationships. The "client" for this assignment is the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). CAMH is Canada’s largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital, as well as a world-leading research centre.
The style and tagline of "I phone therefore I am" is inspired by the modern art piece Untitled (I shop therefore I am) by Barbara Kruger. Her piece criticized consumer culture as it relates to self-identity. I borrowed her use of selective colour, black and white photographs, Futura, and a coloured border.
Each ad focuses on a different instance of social disconnect, by showing the negative influence of technology on two or more people. I kept the purple frame, tagline, call to action and logo placement consistent in the campaign. I varied the position and background shape of the tagline, as well as the statistics based on the image content. I made all the phones purple to draw the viewer’s eye immediately to them and positioned the tagline in such a way that it disrupts the photograph.
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Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a 1967 album by The Beatles. It is one of the best-selling albums of all time, so re-imagining it for the fiftieth anniversary was lots of fun.
I decided to alternate pictorial elements and words, since it’s a re-release of a well-known album, the pictorial representation is sufficient to convey the title. The original album art was a collage filled with cardboard cutouts of famous figures, wax figurines of the band from their Beatlemania days, contrasted with the Beatles in fluorescent-coloured military uniforms. I drew inspiration from their uniforms for the colour scheme, and the pop art design lead to using a halftone-like background on the back of the album jacket.
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For this assignment the objective was to design a logo and accompanying stationery for a fictional company. In my case, I chose Lush Cosmetics, using Estee Lauder demographics as a starting off point. I also analyzed three competitors in the beauty market: Elizabeth Arden, Jane Iredale and Revlon. I looked at their logos as well as the styling of their packaging and websites.
When it was time to start designing, the name Lush conjured images of greenery, so my design centred around creating an aesthetic for an organic cosmetics brand targeted towards women age 20-35. The key message is Lush Cosmetics will bring out your natural beauty.
My sketches included lots of leaves and flower motifs; loose, feminine script fonts; with colour schemes inspired by flowers, fruits, and vegetables.
The final logo and stationery are colourful, playful and whimsical.
Close ProjectThe goal of this project was to show technical proficiency—and of course creativity—in creating an image with depth and dimensionality using Adobe Illustrator. With my love of nature it seemed only natural to look at trees and flowers. I settled on the dahlia because of the complexity of its petals and colours—and because who doesn’t love a challenge?! It proved to be more of a challenge than I first envisioned, however. I stopped and started this assignment several times, even starting on a different flower, but ultimately went back to the original dahlia. Using primarily the blend tool, with some gradient mesh and gradients, this project was an exercise in perseverance. That makes me all the more proud of the outcome.
Close ProjectWith the introduction of an organic collection of bedding, I was given my first opportunity to create packaging from start to finish. The fabric came from an Italian design firm, Gabel, who also manufacture and sell their own bedding in Italy. Taking the colour scheme of grey and white from their beautiful packaging, and the logo they crafted I forged ahead with my take on the project.
At first we tried using pre-made boxes and attaching our own packaging elements to it; but the boxes were not made to be opened and handled as customers often do, wanting to feel the fabric and see the pattern. So after about 6 months of using the boxes, I went back to the drawing board.
The idea of using recycled paper boxes and paper for printed material was excellent in theory, but not in practice. So I created a hybrid, using their existing plastic zippered bags, but continuing with the soft white recycled paper stock for the inserts. While not ideal to place an organic product in plastic, the budget of the project did not allow for custom-printed boxes (as Gabel used) or fabric drawstring bags (as many of their competitors use). In the end, my employers and their customers were happy, which is always the ultimate goal. I also learned the importance of research and working within a client's budget.
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I created this piece as a housewarming gift for my good friend Lauren. At the time we were both living in rentals and lamenting our inability to paint, let alone wallpaper our homes. That conversation sparked an idea for this gift; using her favourite colour as the trim and some of the wallpapers she loved tiled in various sizes. With this framed piece she has a little wallpaper wherever she lives.
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I began with the ads I created for CAMH and worked backwards. A trip to the library allowed me to explore which magazines print ads similar to my campaign; I considered Toronto Life, Châtelaine, Vanity Fair, Scientific American, Psychology Today, and of course The New Yorker. Discovering we could use filler text took the pressure off finding free material or writing the articles, but I still wanted to use some real content, which brought me to Sherlock Holmes and helped me decide on The New Yorker (since they publish short fiction in every issue). The Holmes short stories were published serially in The Strand magazine with illustrations, which seemed perfect. It involved another trip to the library, this time the Toronto Reference Library, to photograph the Sidney Paget illustrations. When I was shown to a special collections room with an entire corner dedicated to Sherlock Holmes and saw that they had original copies of The Strand, I was beyond excited. I chose The Adventure of the Copper Beeches (1892) because it’s one of my favourites—it’s just such a bizarre one! With the articles I used real titles, authors, and the first sentence or paragraph of each article, along with two different tech-inspired Ipsums (Startup Ipsum and Bullshit Ipsum). I even chose the real date of their annual Tech Issue, since they included a publication schedule in their media kit.
Formatting the magazine was simple in a way, since I chose a real publication. I did still have to measure the type sizes, the leading, and research the typefaces typically used in the magazine. Finding and creating the imagery was lots of fun, although I would have preferred greater uniformity in style, but accepted that it would be impossible with free images.
This whole project gave me an appreciation for how much work goes into creating even a mini magazine, especially given that The New Yorker comes out weekly.
Click here to view entire magazine layout.
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When the company’s offices relocated and it came time to have such things as business cards reprinted, I pitched a revitalization of the branding, with a more sophisticated colour palette, and an elegant wallpaper design on the backs of business cards (and packaging elements such as the washing instructions card included with every product). The use of grey with turquoise accents proved a popular choice amongst my employers and coworkers; it was viewed as a tranquil combination, ideal for a manufacturer of luxury bed linens. The use of a grey wallpaper with a swirling design on the reverse of the cards adds a touch of timeless elegance.
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For this die-cut brochure assignment I decided to create a brochure for a company I’m planning to start in the near future, called Highgate Naturals. This assignment gave me the nudge I needed to draft a logo for the company now, rather than later, since getting feedback from my peers and teachers will be helpful. I’ve always enjoyed writing, but it was surprisingly easy to write the company bio and ingredient profiles. I guess it’s true that when you’re passionate about something, it’s easy to talk about it—or write about it. It also helped that I’d recently watched a TED Talk given by Simon Sinek titled “How great leaders inspire action (start with why)”. It sounds a little intimidating, but the gist of it is starting with why you’re passionate about what you’re creating/selling/advertising, not the how or the what. Once I kept that in mind the words just flowed. It took the pressure off the notion that by talking about the company I wanted to create I had to make it sound all corporate and sales-y, which definitely isn’t me, nor is it a good indication of why I wanted to start Highgate Naturals.
When it came to designing the brochure I started with the die cut. I knew I wanted it to relate to the content, but not be so complex that it’s difficult to cut out successfully in the mockup (and would thus be very expensive if I decided to have them professionally printed). Since one of my key ingredients is honey, a honeycomb pattern seemed like a perfect candidate. Since I wanted the individual panels to be primarily text, since I don’t have products photos yet, I decided the die would give the reader a glimpse of photos of the key ingredients I’d be describing within, and of course the logo.
When it came to the digital brochure, I wanted it to be more than just a re-arrangement of the print version. My idea centred around using the honeycomb hexes in the interactivity, much like they provide visual interplay in the brochure. Clicking on each honeycomb takes the reader to the corresponding page, and then they can choose to navigate forward or backward one page, or return to the first page (or home) much like a mini website or app. So that each page didn’t seem boring, being only text-based, I opted to include vector representations of each ingredient and bold colour borders.
Click here to view interactive pdf.
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