Assorted Illustrations

Yeti Fundraiser

While working at any job there are always certain moments that stick with you long after you quit as a testament to the place you worked and the people you worked with. One of these happened to me when I was working with Creative Arcade and was lucky enough to work with Nate Alvar.

Nate selflessly helps orchestrate a wonderful fundraiser that supports the March of Dimes who work to prevent premature birth, birth defects and infant mortality. Creative arcade has been helping out with their event promotion over the years and I was lucky enough to work on the recent round of promotional pieces. I wanted to do my own part and hopefully help the cause.

Geometric Futurescape

I’ve always been fascinated by the art deco movement and the works of people like Cassandre with their cubism influenced designs filled with overly exaggerated dimensions and bold geometry. I absolutely adore the architecture often seen in the art deco movement and wanted to meld some of this into a vintage textured look of an imaginary cityscape with the colors of a sunset. I used Adobe Illustrator to create the structural geometric lines of the city, then I took it over to photoshop for the finishing touches. It was a wonderful exercise in creativity and a fun expression session for my imagination to run wild with.

Reflection:True

This is one of the very first illustrations I made using Illustrator. I was still learning the program and seeing what I could do with it and experimenting and pushing my boundaries with it. At this time I was also finding my place in the world of design and how I fit into things. This self portrait was an introspective look at my connection with design. I tried to visualize my connection as if the circuitry was melding with my human body and I was becoming something new. I also really wanted this to have the tactile and visual effect I was looking for, so I had the work printed on brushed aluminum. This also creates the wonderful effect of being able to see an abstract reflection.

Expressive Typography

I’ve always been a fan of the Austrian duo Klangkarussell, I decided to take inspiration from their beautiful song Netzwerk (Falling Like Rain) and tried to capture their music with this illustration. The song’s smooth electronic beat and powerful vocals create an atmosphere that I tried to replicate through abstract imagery made purely out of the Futura typeface. The Left Panel is a representation of the main theme. I show the melody and main lyrics as the textured dark blue colors. The yellowish color represents the African chorus, and I use the sharp shape of the Futura “A” to create a mountain that reaches out to the sky. The bottom right panel represents the atmospheric qualities of the beat. I did not want this to be an exact replication of the beat but rather a completely abstract reference. I want the idea and visual of the beat rather than the physical manifestation. I used multiple A’s to form a mountain range with lightening wrapping around the mountains to represent the electronic vibes in the background. This is mixed with the African chorus which acts as the rhythm in the song to get the yellowish tones. For the top right panel I used the blues with a stormy feel created through overlaid layers and mixed in lyrics from the melody to create the feeling and atmosphere of the song.

Economist Illustration

This was a cover and spread illustration I designed for an Economist article. The article discussed how the stigma surrounding mental illness has slowly improved as it has become more openly accepted. Though more improvements to how mental illness is currently being addressed will take time. I wanted to capture the idea of this story through a surreal lens. I went through a slew of different cover illustration ideas, sketching till I found one that fit the narrative perfectly. I’ve talked with people inflicted with mental illness who suggested that it is similar to being trapped in their own head. I took this idea and ran with it. The girl can be seen locked in her head signifying that she is mentally ill and people are shown outside of their brains trying to help her escape this mental cage. Finally on the inside spread you see the hatch open signifying her escape. The style I used for this work was rather unique with a somewhat pop art look. This was accomplished by making the entire work out of gradient meshes in illustrator. I would rasterize these and use a halftone effect after they were changed to grayscale then I would image trace the portion and colorize the white and black with the colors I was working with to create the final effect.