There are 11 posts filed in Sophomore Portfolio (this is page 1 of 2).
The direction of the mark that I decided to pursue for the moon towers draws inspiration from the Art Nouveau era during the 1890s-1910s. I wanted my mark to emulate the classic 1800s typographical flourish and slab serif. I created many iterations and decided to go for the one in gold. The design plays on the towers’ tall, narrow structure to underscore its shape and stature. The work mark is flourished with thin lines that reflect the towers’ geometry without being too obstructive and busy.
For this project, I wanted to take things up a notch and feature a 3D rendering of Earth. A lot of what we were doing in class leading up to this project felt too flat. Using what I knew in After Effects and a few tutorials, I rendered the Earth from available satellite images. Since this weather report was supposed to be something from the future, I drew inspiration from films based in the distant future that featured UI they thought would be used in the future. I think the typeface I chose works well because of its geometric shape.
The research aspect of the locations allowed us to take time to become familiar with our place. There was a need to both physically and mentally discover the space for ourselves. Photographing the moon towers was a great way of studying the towers itself, other than researching information online. I think that it really helped me understand the shape and structure which would later influence the reasonings behind my design for the mark.
The portfolio app interface was something I felt that came easy to me. I wanted my interface to be sleek and modern. I presented my work as a feed, which I felt was the simplest and most direct way of showing it. With social media, everyone understands feeds and reads content in that way all the time. With the interface being simple, I focused a little more on the transitions and movement. I wanted the transition to be as smooth as possible and wanted to give a sense of “material” to it as the work screen slides into view. The typeface I chose gives a more technological feel without being distracting.
This project is dedicated to the female pop artists that I listen to. The assignment required us to create a set of rules that would in turn create a unique design. The rule I came up with was to plot the initials of my favorite female pop artists and blend them together. I drew each letter individually using the pen tool and then blended using the blend tool. To plot these designs, I decided to use pink paper and red ink to assert the femininity of pop and these artists. I found that by blending each letter together, it created an interesting 3D-like form that I liked.
For the zine project, I focused on creating a truism about music. It’s something that I’m into and it’s always around. The colors of the design plays on the fact that I mainly listen to pop music. The pink and gold stands and pops out. While the project had us making chromatic type, I didn’t want to make mine seem too much of a standard chromatic wood type because the type style tends to turn into a vintage and almost western feel. The sans-serif font helped prevent that. The backgrounds provide a texture that helps visualize how there are various textures in music.
PDF: atruongnzine
For this project, I created a hybrid of symbols that would arbitrarily fit together. I focused on independent film and tried to take an iconic item from each one. In drawing the individual symbols, I tried to keep each item as bare and simple as possible to make it easy on the eyes. For the final hybrids, the movies I ended up using were Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Spectacular Now, Whiplash, Nightcrawler, and Ex Machina. Despite being arbitrarily placed together, the hybridized films have things in common.
The two styles that were replicated and hybridized were Beatnik and prep. Both of them are contrasting styles in which the Beatniks strayed from what was the norm and the preppy kids tried to fit in with an elite sense. The hybrids combined very different looks into something interesting and quite stylish.
Movie props are essential pieces in telling a story of symbolizing a greater meaning. By creating a matchbox inspired by Spike Jonze’s film ‘Her,’ there was a need to fully understand the world that the movie takes place in so that the box would seamlessly fit into the movie itself and its visual style. Red is a significant color in the film and so I thought that would work well with the matchbox.
This spread was designed for an article about the marketing for “The Hunger Games.” I imagined this article for a high-end magazine. I wanted to keep the text clean and minimal as possible. The layout is very straightforward, and I placed the images where I thought they would be the least obtrusive. The cover page of the article was largely inspired by vintage layouts influenced by Swiss Style. I wanted to give a sense of a sleek and sophisticated magazine print.
