Industrial Waste
Industrial Waste is an independently owned alternative record label who prides themselves on providing the underground music community with opportunities to promote, record, and support bands that don’t fit the mainstream mold. These projects see me as the main designer, having creative freedom to develop promotional material that highlights Industrial Waste’s unique essence and business mission. Initial concepts for the first project involved reimagining a previously created logo, with this rendition aiming to capture a bit of mid century poise and flair, and juxtapose it with the underground attitude of punk, grunge, and alternative electronic music.
The second project takes some cues from styling seen in alternative music scenes from the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, paying homage to influential bands and graphic designers who helped pave the way for Industrial Waste’s existence. Both projects incorporate compositional principles, such as placing elements in thirds of the composition, along with contrast and texture, which provide an engaging viewing experience, drawing the viewer in on some of the uniqueness that Industrial Waste is known for.
TOWN
TOWN is an upscale restaurant on a mission to bring quality, style, and good fortune through authentic Chinese cuisine and cultural events. My role as a graphic designer was to address the needs of TOWN by developing a branding suite that captured TOWN’s essence, mission, and vision, while also effectively resonating with their high-end, luxury focused audience. To emphasize TOWN’s quality, style, and good fortune, careful consideration was taken of how to incorporate the color palette and imagery, where good fortune can be found with red and images of dragons, and quality and style being found with the monochrome like background and high contrasting typography and supporting elements.
Square Pulse
Square Pulse is a personal project aimed to challenge myself as a designer and express creativity through continuous learning of media creation tools. As the main designer I have found this project both challenging and fun, where new techniques, technology, and tools can have a steep learning curve, but in the end put a big smile on the face. Square Pulse is a video game concept based on several themes, much to which bring to mind boldness, contrast, and digitization, inspiring me to confine the design to a limited color palette and the use of simple shapes and lines. The bold contrast with the limited color palette, along with rigid lines and shapes, help emphasize Square Pulse’s characteristics rooted in themes of dystopia, underground music, and Cyber Technology.
Amethyst Bay Resort & Spa
Amethyst Bay Resort & Spa is located in the U.S. Virgin Islands and aims to provide a fun and relaxing experience in tropical paradise. Along with adhering to brand guidelines, it was important as the main designer to develop a magazine ad that was attractive to their desired audience of younger Gen-x and Millennials. With those generational demographics in mind, initial development started with potential images that meet both the product of Amethyst Bay Resort & Spa and desired audience, which led to the selection of fitting Creative Commons and stock images. With imagery in hand, it was time to come up with copywriting solutions, where the idea of “brunch on the beach” came to mind, appealing to the desired audience demographic and providing a unique experience that could put Amethyst Bay Resort & Spa above local competition. To stay in line with brand color palette, typography, and copywriting, smooth lines, transparency, and contrast provide a viewing experience that is dreamy, but real.
Lil’ Guppies Scuba School
The Lil’ Guppies Scuba School is a new school bringing a fun, safe, and adventurous environment for kids to learn how to swim and scuba dive. Lil’ Guppies Scuba School was looking for a stationery set that encompasses their commitment to safety, fun, and adventure, using me as the sole designer of the project. With an intended audience consisting of children and their guardians, ensuring brand identity that appealed to both was crucial, where both children and guardians need to feel they’re investing into a trustworthy, legitimate organization. Initial design concepts started with logo thumbnail sketches, which led to further development of the diving helmet logo, a fun and friendly way to pay homage to scuba diving’s rich history. With the logo’s roundness providing a sense of community and trust, the chosen typography provides fun, while the bold triadic color palette provides a sense of safety and adventure.
Galactic Fanatic
Galactic Fanatic is a fan-based magazine inspired by the motion picture franchise Star Wars. This project saw me as the principal graphic designer and challenged me to develop a magazine cover that conveyed strong feelings through imagery and typography. Galactic Fanatic was looking for an engaging cover for their upcoming holiday edition to grab the attention of fellow and potential Star Wars fans. With an image being the base of the design, it was important to source an image that was high quality, relevant, and legal. After browsing through Creative Commons, it was obvious that this cover image was the choice, sparking ideas about copy and composition. To ensure viewer engagement, the rule of thirds and contrast provide hierarchy, emphasis, and reading gravity to help guide the viewer from top to bottom.
Typographic Portrait
The Chris Cornell typographic portrait is a university course project that aims to convey feeling and emotion through typography. As the sole designer, this project challenged me to step out of my comfort zone and develop a compelling portrait through techniques that were new to me at the time. One requirement of the project was to use only a single typeface, which needed to fit with the personality of the chosen subject. Eurostile fit this bill, as it resonates with Cornell’s serious, yet playful attitude, innovative and calculated sense of creativity, along with happening to be the base typeface for Soundgarden’s Bad Motorfinger.
Japan Pavilion
The Japan Pavilion souvenir poster is a project that came to mind after a day of shooting photos at Walt Disney World: EPCOT. This project saw me as photographer and designer, using all original images to develop a collage turned souvenir poster. To capture some of the high intensity, but simultaneous calm experienced at the Japan Pavilion in the EPCOT World Showcase, color palette and lines were forefront in concept development of this poster. The bold blue, pink, and orange provide both energetic and calm feelings through contrast and meaning, with these colors giving meaning in coolness, youth, and happiness.
Wood-Block Printing
Wood-Block Printing by the Japanese Method is a magazine spread developed for Linked by Ink Magazine, a magazine showcasing multi-cultural and historic art processes. With the magazine’s nature being educational and historic, and with an intended audience being one that is interested and most likely knowledgeable about the subject, it was important to keep in mind overall page layout and typography. For this project readability and a pleasant experience were on the forefront in early development, which led to the use of classic typography choices, such as Bodoni for body text, relevant imagery, and drop cap usage to start the article off.
Coffin Collective
Coffin Collective is a darkwave/industrial band currently signed to Industrial Waste. This passion project developing an album cover, sleeve, mockup, and concert venue poster allowed me as principal designer to have complete artistic freedom throughout the whole design process, from photography to illustrations. The concert poster originally started as an Art Nouveau inspired digital illustration, which has evolved into a functioning graphic design piece. The album cover started out as a small photoshop project, but quickly blossomed into a full vinyl package design, featuring center label and inner sleeve. After refinement and further development of these pieces, lines, color, contrast, and shapes can be seen as leading design elements that help create an aesthetically pleasing and highly engaging viewing experience.