This poster was made to encourage people visit a place by capturing the essence of that location. Red Bud Isle is a little island and dog park in West Austin.

This program was created for the Fulbright Conference in Washington D.C.

This book was created to highlight the flora I collected from around the East Cesar Chavez neighborhood.

Expert Hours: 2800 hrs

Expert Experiences: UX/UI Talk, Austin Chamber of Commerce Internship, branding for Tap the Hilltop, Branding and design for Climbing Club & Team

Social/emotional development, use of feedback, and contribution to climate are all consistent with the mid semester review.

Sophistication of your work

I thought I was a medium-high, but I’m a medium. There’s so much more to learn. I still have 7k hours to practice, so that’s okay. There’s plenty of time to improve, and the skills I have now are a very solid foundation.

For the longest time– actually, until just now, I thought this class was about learning how to manipulate type (and only type) on the most basic (yet complex) level. Well, it was actually about using type in bigger, advanced concepts. We’re not just setting posters here anymore. We’re setting complex videos and programs that take months to make. We’re designing type for those purposes. That’s what’s advanced about it.

The planning was something I’ve never done so in depth for a design project. Usually my process involves experimenting with the piece very spontaneously to see what looks best, but I had to go past that with the booklet. I experimented on a smaller scale then made a plan on what fonts will be used well. Character Styles helped me stick with that plan and stay consistent throughout.

level of challenge to yourself

Let’s bump this up to a medium. I was pretty determined to have an awesome book, and I worked for it. Many many crits and printer jams later, I have this beautiful thing I’m very proud of.

use of practice time

Almost consistent. I genuinely wanted to make the book perfect, so I put the time into it. Also, InDesign is easier to work with off my laptop, so I had that opportunity.

I think I deserve an A for this semester.

I’m pretty happy with how it ended up turning out. I feel that the last structure isn’t as nice as it could be because I had the least amount of time to play with it. I had trouble with the movement, but worked really hard to get it up to par. I think that the movement is pretty solid for the level of skill I have in After Effects.

The typeface I used was Aller. I wanted a readable typeface with a few weights I could play around with. I had used this one before and I really liked it, so I decided to use it in this video too.

I enjoy bright color, so I brought this into the video. I think I see my style starting to develop as illustrative and colorful.

Keeping with the fun and bright style, I introduced the data in bubbles. From there, they were categorized into location. The location structure was composed of a map with boxes to hold the data. Next, I had to get the data spread out, which was a challenge. The data went into a line and then was pushed up into its proper hierarchal position by the moving gradient bars. The data was again categorized by thicker bars moving into place for weather.

For this assignment, we were told to go to two locations and design an experience for each. We wrote a short paragraph to guide a person’s experience. From there, the assignment was to design an artifact for the location. We had the option of making either a button or a patch.

I chose to go to East Austin Succulents and Eastside Yoga because succulents and yoga are some of my favorite things. When I experienced the yoga, I decided I wanted the experience to be about solitude. My visit to East austin Succulents made it obvious that the experience was going to be about wonder.

When I was making the yoga artifact, I focused on the image of enlightenment and the inner glow I felt during shavasana. I chose a radial design as a representation the inner glow amongst a gray background for contrast.

While making the succulent artifact, I was trying to imitate vintage botanical illustrations. I thought this would have been a nice pair with the plants. At the very front entrance of East Austin Succulents, there was a gorgeous terrarium with a crystal in the middle. It stood out so much that I decided to make it the patch.

I included a digital file of the Eastside Yoga artifacts because Jimmy still has my copies.

This assignment was the biggest so far. We were instructed to create a one-take music video of Taylor Swift’s song, Shake It Off. Both sections of Image Methodology collaborated to make this happen. Each one of us came up with a conceit and created a frame by frame outline. From there, we narrowed it down to a few ideas and developed them further. Finally, we all settled on the themes of Party Rejects and Stress Shakeoff, which a good part happened to be from my first iteration. We settled out the details and assigned production roles. I functioned as the director and part of the cast.

Shooting was difficult because of logistical reasons. We couldn’t cut the video, but we had to get from the Fine Arts building to Trustee Hall while still rolling. This was eventually solved by handing the camera off into a car while I followed in a bike, lip-synching the whole way. A few more challenges arose such as filling in the time and having people in the right positions. The former was remedied by planning more gags. The latter was solved by very detailed instructions and queues from the directors. Whenever there was no feasible solution, we just had to let go of an idea and compromise with each other.

The idea of this project was to find the cosmos in a grain of sand. We were to scan various things in the highest, closest resolution. Next, we recorded found sound. We each picked a constellation and started working on our videos in After Affects. The micrscopic images served as backgrounds for our video as an illustration came on screen. The illustration was then supposed to morph into the constellation.

I picked Corona Borealis because I felt I could be creative with the idea of a crown. We scanned many things, but I ended up using glitter and a crystal as my backgrounds. he glitter has a golden sparkle, a perfect complement to my crown illustration. The crystal was another precious-looking thing that fit into the idea of a crown while being visually similar to the cosmos.

The assignment was to create a cognitive map. Personally, I have trouble focusing at home and even at school sometimes. I decided to use this assignment as a way to organize all the coffee shops I have visited so far.

This project took a good amount of planning. I had to map out how each of these shops were different from the other, then create a set of questions that would lead a person to the correct shop depending on their preferences. Next I had to figure out how to present the language. I chose to use symbols as the main language so the reader could make quick distinctions, but had the option of body copy if her prefered to read. I used large slashes between each symbol to eliminate putting “or” on each choice. I thought it would neaten up the composition. Keeping with the clean simplicity of the symbols, I chose a simple scheme of black, white, and gold. I originally wanted to use brown as an accent to match coffee, but the contrast was too low. Gold was the next natural choice, as it is very close to light brown.

This was the second map in the series. This spread was centered around information. I chose to analyze the climbing at Red Rock Canyon in Nevada, as I was heading there at the time over a break. Climbing is near and dear to my heart, so I added a few details that many climbers would appreciate.

The color scheme I chose was a maroon, a kind of red. This was the natural choice because of the name of the park. I chose as slab serif as a pun. Slab is a type of climbing. Stylistically, I wanted clean lines, so the charts have a strong outline with a very opaque fill. I originally added illustrations to the top right graph as keys, but ended up adding body copy for non-climbers to understand what the graph said. Originally, the spread had a lot less copy. I was designing for a climber audience. I was given feedback about expanding my audience, and had to add explanation as a result.