Brooke C. Benson, Graphic Design Student
And this is (more-or-less) actually my final project for GDSN 224. It was a lot of fun! But very involved. We were responsible for the content, design, and production of an entire “zine,” that’s at least 16 pages long. For mine, I traveled around the Gallatin Valley and treasure hunted through thrift stores to find things that I thought might still be worth something. When I had found several items, I tried to find each item again, identically, on eBay. I had heard about people rebuying and reselling old unwanted items for profit using thrift stores and eBay, and my research proved that (at least locally) this is possible to do! Most often it was cheaper to buy items at a local thrift store than it was to buy them off the internet via eBay. Anyways, it was a lot of fun, and I think my layout solutions aren’t too terrible (ha!).
April Greiman helped to pioneer a new way of design and changed the way artists and designers use computers forever. For a GDSN project called “Graphic Design Influencers,” I chose to try and come up with a design and product that was inspired by her. I decided to design a “laptop skin” since both printed artwork and technology are important parts of what made Greiman a design titan. In terms of my own design, there’s some similarity to my book cover but the style and the use of wires and circuits suits, I think.
My latest finished assignment for GDSN 224! I really enjoyed doing this one. We picked out pop icons and then chose two objects associated with them and their myths; then rendered them as simple-but-beautiful vector illustrations. I understand that the two objects I’ve chosen might not make much sense considering the pop icon I chose hasn’t exactly been working lately. But hopefully something is being communicated, and maybe it will make you curious enough to Google Charlie Chaplin and learn a thing or two! Holding back this project was mostly the scale of my objects. When placed next to Charlie Chaplin, they were much too “loud” and crowded their spaces. But I am very proud of the Charlie illustration in particular.
Finished the first new GDSN project of the semester! Had some obvious craft problems, but I received multiple compliments on the illustration and word associations. Everything had to be stenciled by hand with freezer paper and then ironed onto the shirt. I used a fabric paint that was messy and hard to work with. When I do it again, I think I’ll have to find a different paint! Overall, pretty happy with the design/concept.
Finished my final for GDSN 223! It was bittersweet, but I know next semester will come all too soon. For this design, I started out with the concept that the author would tap phone lines and could manipulate technology to do a lot of different things; I communicated this by illustrating two phones connected by one line with an ear in the middle. Eventually that idea evolved into this, which is basically the same idea but with a motherboard instead of telephones. Pretty happy with it! We didn’t get a lot of time to work on this, and had to finish under pressure. I wish I had tried a few different color solutions.
Finished the back side to my movie poster! It’s been officially turned in for credit, I believe, but I might make some changes to it before portfolio review. It’s a typographic poster, to be sure, and it was required to have the movie’s title, important cast/crew, a quote from the movie, and a synopsis. It was a lot of text to wrestle with and I’m still not sure this layout is the best solution. I carried over elements from the front of the poster, most noticeable in the effects and angles used for the characters’ quotes.
Here’s something resembling a logo that I did just for fun/to practice. It was intended for a local, underground fire-spinning group made up of a few friends ( Fire in the Attic youtube vids here ). I’ve never really done anything like it before. I’m not sure how happy I am with the A in FITA, but the type for those four characters were penned from scratch in Illustrator and I’m halfway content with it. I would be more than happy for suggestions or critiques on this piece in particular!
A recreation of The Silence of the Lambs poster, using vector graphics and typography. This was about my 4th or 5th assignment for graphic design (sophomore level). Silence is one of my favorite movies, so I was super excited to do this project. The back side of the poster is currently in progress!
Side note: I’m currently reading Ghost in the Wires for my next assignment and it’s amazinnngggg!
This was my first time manipulating typography, and it was a lot of fun. :) The tool of the trade was Adobe’s illustrator, and hopefully what I was trying to accomplish is pretty self explanatory.
This project was also for class. The assignment was to redesign and recreate an album cover of our choice. I picked up the self-entitled album, The Clash, and redesigned it using only pattern and typography (as per the instructions). It went through many variations, and resulted in something sort of dada-inspired for that vintage punk feel. I’m not sure it was perfectly successful.
