I had naively high hopes of blogging my spring semester of graphic design projects in a super responsible, timely fashion. But here I am finally blogging from a pizza joint near my house, shoving BBQ chicken pizza in my mouth and guzzling coffee on July 2nd. My car died this morning, I leave for St. Louis in 30 minutes and the work I should be getting done, well...isn't.

That, my friends, is life.

But I am super excited to share this project I did for my Applied Computer Graphics class earlier this semester. We were tasked with designing an iPhone app for one of two local Madison businesses. This project required us to design an app and corresponding app website landing page that aligned with the company's mission, vision and overall branding.

Since I love coffee far more than I love working out, I chose EVP and started sketching out a clean, modern app with a heavy focus on icons. This was my first foray into icon design, but I really love the way my coffee icons turned out (especially the French press). For the project, we designed three pages of the entire iPhone app. I tried my best to utilize the icons as much as possible throughout those pages while mirroring their softness + simplicity in other design elements.

I am happy with the way it turned out and look forward to refining it for my final portfolio. But that can wait until later...because it's 4th of July weekend!

See you soon St. Louie.

Remember how I posted about the work of Ed Ruscha oh so long ago?

Nearly three months later, I can finally reveal that Ruscha was my inspiration for a poster project in Typographic Design earlier this semester. The time-intensive project involved taking a quote or song lyrics and designing a type-driven, 22 x 35-inch poster. I chose one of author Jack Kerouac's passages from his book, On the Road, that I happen to love for its message and vivid imagery, "Burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."

Once I started sketching designs for the poster, I found these amazing microscopic pictures of cells. If you read the book, you'll know the novel centers heavily on two young men who travel across the U.S. in search of self-knowledge and real meaningful life experiences. I loved the explosive nature of the cell photographs and thought that, as the building blocks of the body ("the self"), they were the perfect symbolic representation of this personal quest for happiness.

Deep stuff, I know.

Using bright, analogous shades of orange, yellow + brown and a solid, sans serif font, OSP-DIN by OSP Foundry, the poster came together nearly exactly as I had imagined it from my initial sketches. And now, it's proudly hanging in my apartment in all its gigantic 22 x 35-inch glory.

class  Typographic Design
what  Song Lyric / Quote Poster

01  Choose one serif and one sans serif font to hand render with your lyric or quote of choice.
02  Analyze both fonts and choose which style works best for your poster design.
03  Use any Adobe Creative suite software you wish to design the poster.
04  Final file must be 22 x 35 inches and include a four page paper outlining design inspiration (Ed Ruscha + abstract expressionism), history of the fonts chosen, examples of design inspiration and final copy of poster.

Loved the project but did not love the new, recently released movie remake of "On the Road" with Kristen Stewart. It physically hurt to watch, it was so bad.