Edith Valle's Creative Portfolio

Material Processbook

Out of all the projects I have done, the Material Studies project is the one I have felt the most connection with. The assignment was to create a word that correlated to a material of your choice. We then had to photograph the word in a setting that would bring both the material and the word together into a holistic piece. I saw this project as a chance to bring out more culture in my design, particularly my culture. The material I used was Pan Dulce or Mexican sweet bread. I was inspired by this material because Dia de Los Muertos was coming up and that is a very important holiday for me. The Virgin Mary is a prominent figure during the day of the dead and often her figure is put in front of many alters. Pan dulce is also a common food that is used as an offering to the dead. I ended up creating the word “Dulce Maria” or “Sweet Mary.”

BRAINSTORMING: For my concept I wanted to make symbols for my sister’s academy that she recently opened. The name of the academy is Express Yourself English Academy. Her mission is too teach children by letting them learn as they do things that they enjoy such as playing, singing, drawing, acting. I began to brainstorm by freewriting. That way I could get all my ideas down on paper so I would not have to worry about forgetting them. I then proceeded to making a web that expanded on those ideas and then narrowed them down.

Here is a continuation of my brainstorming. I narrowed down my concepts into 3 categories: Children, Expression, and Learning. For “Children,” I further broke it down into these subcategories: toys, active, play. For “Expression,” I chose: music, sing, and paint. Finally, for Learning I chose: books, writing, and reading. From there I created 3 hybrids for each of my categories.

From there I began to make iterations of each of my hybrids. Although there is about 10 on each page, I did about 30 iterations of each one

I then chose my top 3 hybrids for each category. After that, the class voted on their favorite ones. The iterations the class chose actually ended up being my favorite ones as well so I stuck to perfecting those.

With the help of my peers and Tuan, they helped me find the kinks in my symbols. They also gave me suggestions as to how I can further develop them.

I benefitted from their feedback and ended up producing these final pieces. My favorite one is the symbol for expression. I like how the music symbol merges into the mouth giving it the look of a music note as well as the hangyball in the back of one’s mouth. That was also the most difficult one to edit because it was challenging to keep the teeth organized. Overall I happy with how they all turned out.

The objective of this project was to find the different elements of design in everyday life. I felt like the process of taking pictures that were not on campus was the most difficult part. I aimed to take my photographs in as many places as I could find. Despite this, most of the ones I was most intrigued by were taken in nature. I chose these particular pictures because they had a similar color pallet of yellow, purple and gray as well as similar depth. The only one that I noticed stood out a little was the second photograph because it has a broader depth than the rest. I felt like this hurt my sequence a bit because that picture brought it a little bit out of context. Despite that I really liked my combination of the colors.

This duck exercise was very helpful in learning how to use the pen tool. By doing this exercise I became more prepared for the symbol project. Not only that, but I realized that the pen tool is an essential skill to have when working in Illustrator because it allows you to create objects that are more unique to yourself.

This project was particularly interesting because it really helped open my eyes to all the different places you can get typographical inspiration from. The process was not too difficult and I am content with the outcome. I was a little disappointed with some of the pictures I took because I did not pay attention to the importance of color contrast between some of my objects and the background. This can be seen in my first letter “P.” After that, I was more aware of avoiding from it happening again.

Specimen book

The Type Specimen Book was a project I really enjoyed. I had never made a book before so I learned that you really have to take the time to organize your content in a way that makes sense to you, but more importantly the reader. In the process of making this book I learned about the ways a typeface works in regards to the function of the different categories under each typeface. I used the slab serif typeface Bodoni std for my book and it was a particularly delicate typeface to work with because I realized it could not be scaled down too much because it would lose its defining slabs. It is also a very distinct typeface because it is used in many fashion magazines as well as in fireman logos. Trying to make it so my book did not look like either of those was a bit challenging. With trial and error I figured out where  to use the different categories such as “bold, book, and italic,” as well as many more categories that really helped me incorporate them in certain situations. I used “book” for the parts of my book that had more text which required more reading. It made my book a lot easier on the eyes as well as easier to read.

Design Culture NOW

For this project, everyone was required to research trending design techniques as well as aesthetic appearance that are influencing designers today. Then, we had to create a poster that embodied those trending factors. I found out that the use of geometric shapes as well as the mixing of typefaces was very prominent in much of the contemporary design. I chose to incorporate those in my poster. It was my first time really experimenting with fonts so if I could do it again I probably would not use the same ones. Despite that, I am content with my first attempt. As for the the geometric shapes, I really liked my use of color. I feel like the different shades and tones of green create a good amount of depth that compliment the shapes.

The objective of this exercise was to create our own typeface using a 9×9 grid. It was an intro to designing a typeface. The process was hard to get started with at first but once I got going I was able to make several iterations of each letter. It was also challenging to get each letter to look similar to the style I wanted to create each font. I paid a lot of attention to how much I was able to deconstruct a letter with it still keeping its legibility.