Typography, color palettes, layout, icons/logos, layout, mood boarding, prototyping, print design
I had connected with the Village Community Resource Center through Catchafire. They were in need of some branding upgrades. This included new icons and color palette for their various services.
I spoke with them at length about what they needed and wanted as well as researched their website and organization. VCRC already had a logo and a few colors, so I expanded upon them, to color code each of the sectors that are involved in their organization.
I used their logo as the basis for the other iconography for their organization. They wanted happy and bold colors, so I expanded upon those with the use of a mood board (below) to garner more in-depth understanding of each of their sectors.
Each branch is color-coded and has its own icon, so they are distinct from the overarching organization.
I presented the branding guidelines to the stakeholders of the organization and they like what I had created for them. They took what I gave them, which were all the raw assets, and implemented them into their organization.
Social media management, design, branding, layout
For the last year, I have worked with the non-profit organization called Best Day of My Life So Far. Their mission is to connect people inter-generationally and give the elderly more access to social environments, which has been proven to increase quality of life and lengthen life.
I partnered with another graphic designer to set up and manage the social media calendar for Best Day. We post at least once weekly, discussing various topics and highlighting what the organization has to offer.
Recently, Best Day has been campaigning for their 15th anniversary celebration. I created the flyer and associated social media graphics.
Most of the graphics are created using Canva. It’s a convenient shortcut to create posts and other content without having to go too far to find images to use.
Logo design
I follow a professional rug cleaning service on social media called Rug Hubb. The owner put out a video looking to update his logo, which appeared to be a basic word mark using a regular typeface you can find anywhere.
As a fan, I wanted to offer my services to him for free. He agreed to let me come up with some concepts. I spent a few days sketching out ideas before choosing the ones I wanted to take to the next step.
I forced myself to iterate as many ideas as I could, even if they did not look good or would seem difficult to use in some circumstances.
One of my ideas was to incorporate the rug scrubbing machine into the logo, but it proved difficult to draw. I am not a brilliant and trained illustrator, so I abandoned that idea fairly early on.
Another of my ideas includes the door of the large centrifuge used to draw dirty water out of rugs. It also creates a nice circle around the text, encapsulating it with a serif typeface.
The other idea was to make the letters look like rolled up or folded rugs. It looks more noodle-y that hoped, but I still wanted to present the idea. The other few ideas were more abstract and played with the lettering.
Eventually, I settled on five of the sketches I thought would be appropriate.
I transferred the ideas to grid paper and then outlined them in dark pen.
I sent this to the guy to review and received radio silence. After a few days, followed up with him and he had decided to just stick with what he already had.
Typography, layout, infographics, print design
These spreads are an excerpt from the program I designed for the Committee, which celebrates 50 years of Nuclear Life Cycle standards and achievements. Many committees have annual gatherings and sometimes they have a special program created for the event.
Sometimes, obscure committees do not lend themselves to a wide selection of imagery. In this program, images were not requested or necessary, so it relies heavily on visual cues and negative space to keep it from becoming overwhelming.
The cover is a stock photo, which was difficult to come by and gain approval from the committee. They did not want to have an image of a nuclear plant with the iconic chimneys on the cover. Their committee has to do with the inner workings of a nuclear power plant, so I was lucky to find the image that appears.
I also used a watermark in the shape of a “nuclear” molecule to tie the interior spreads together. Along the bottom, I built in a timeline of all the committee board members through the years. I felt it would add some interest and provide a good visual representation of all the people who ran the board over the life of the committee. There were some points where no one sat in a particular position, so I left a gap. It took many hours to perfect the presentation of the timeline so that it was easy to read and made sense.
Typography, layout, infographics, print design
This brochure highlights a newer committee that was formed to standardize commercial spaceflight, which hardly exists yet.
The images in the brochure are from NASA’s publicly available image library. There were no images submitted by the committee so I did not have anything that specifically showed civilians riding in a spaceship that looked believable and serious.
There were many rounds of edits for this brochure and the content kept expanding, so it became challenging to keep everything wrangled and organized, while also honoring the layout and the negative space. The list of standards was the main pinch point, where it kept getting longer with every revision and I became concerned that I would have to rethink the entire layout to get it all to fit properly.
The pyramid graphic was also a challenge because there was a large amount of accompanying text that went with every tier of the pyramid. I had to stay within my established margins and also keep everything evenly distributed among the various levels on the chart. I think the end result turned out very clear and visually interesting.
Whenever I have a change to use large, sweeping images as a background, I try to do so. For the Industry Partnerships spread, I wanted to use a real photo of the horizon of Earth with the sun shining down. With some careful sizing of the image, I was able to honor my margins and underlying grid to get all of the information for to fit and keep everything readable.
Logo design
A connection I had worked with during one of my volunteer stints for something else contacted me about an opportunity to design a logo for a special event hosted by the ALS Foundation in New Jersey. I was promised payment for my work. Without a contract, I began to put together some ideas I thought would work based on the brief my client provided. She initially said she wanted something that is “sexy.”
I researched what it looked like for a woman to hold something between her teeth and drew up the idea in Adobe Illustrator. I found a strawberry and drew that as well. I put these elements together to create the logo as shown, with the chocolate coated strawberry and the text around it. When I get a lot of different ideas that only vary slightly, I still like to document them. The fonts were different for each of the ideas and I thought they all had some good qualities to bring all the elements together.
The feedback I received was that it was “too sexy” and scandalous. It was an adult event with boozy hot chocolate drinks, so I thought I was on the right track. Apparently not.
So I toned down the look and emphasized the text instead. I drew up a fondue set in Illustrator and created what I thought was a whimsical use of the “H” and “T” cross bars. I also took out visual elements and played with the font and colors.
Ultimately, the client did not like the new direction and decided they had a better idea of what it was supposed to look like. I learned that I shouldn’t do any work until I had a contract and at least some money up front. I spent about 24 hours on this project.
Layout, print design, digital design, social media, color palette
I created this flyer for the International Ballet Exchange, located in Philadelphia.
They provided some photos and I developed the flyer and matching social media posts for them to use to announce their Winter Showcase.
They wanted bright and vibrant colors, so I chose a neon pink and blue. I use blue tint overlay on the images to mask the lesser quality of the photos. They were taken with a mobile phone with low resolution and in sub-optimal lighting.
Inserting the table was a challenge because it didn’t appear it would fit properly, considering spacing and the grid I was using for the layout. With some finesse I was able to achieve the desired outcome and fulfill the requirements of this project.
Print design, banner/poster, layout
I volunteered my design skills to an organization called Con Mi Madre. They assist single mothers and their daughters in obtaining higher education, focusing on the Hispanic community.
I connected with them through Catchafire, where I received the brief from the client. They emailed a number of images to me and I came up with a couple of ideas for the two banners. The two shown are the final product. They were very happy with how they turned out and sent me a picture of them printed and ready to display.
Typography, color palettes, layout, icons/logos, layout, print design, web design
Another volunteer campaign involved a group called The AES Literacy Institute. Initially, I was helping them modernize and clean up their website. It was the first time I had worked with the Elementor plugin on WordPress (which I now also use!)
They had no official branding so I created somewhat of a branding guide for them. I chose the colors based on their logo and the fonts are based on what the were already using on their website.
Social media management, print design, digital design, layout, color palette, branding
These are a small sample of some of the work I did in the year and a half that I worked with Michele Lawrence.
Michele is a minister and motivational speaker who had a local Philadelphia radio show, where she had regular guest come and speak about specific topics.
I was responsible for creating the content for her social media sites, but I also created collateral materials for her seminars and event she held periodically.
