Tag Archives: Family

2019 Graduation Season

Much like last year, graduation season is a busy time! This year, two of my best friends walked with their diplomas in hand. Kelsea Arsenault, an amazing person who is basically my sister, finally graduated with her Bachelors in Film from UNLV. Jonathan Fabian, my roommate of five years and avid dog lover, graduated with his Bachelors in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University. With Kelsea graduating in May, Jon graduating in June, and my graduate thesis starting up, I had my work cut out for me this year. While balancing my full-time job along with my school work, I had to make my special graduates cheesy tee-shirts to commemorate their achievements.

Kelsea’s Graduation

Austin and I were thrilled to fly home again. We’d been away from Las Vegas for so long. We missed our families and the unforgettable taste of a Double Double from In-N-Out Burger. For months Austin would turn to me and say, “I can’t wait to fly home.” It was a much-needed vacation for us. I was in the middle of a crazy spring term in school, and Austin was working extra hours to save for our move this summer. We couldn’t wait to spend a week in the Vegas heat celebrating Kelsea’s graduation and her 23rd birthday.

UNLV’s Commencement was held at the Thomas & Mack Center. That morning I tied Austin’s tie and watched Kelsea go through several outfit changes before we all climbed into our rental car. She tried on three olive green shirts that looked nearly identical before she settled on the winning blouse…that she then covered entirely with her red regalia. We were all so excited for her; I’m sure none of us were thinking very straight.

Kelsea separated from us and her family to prepare for the ceremony with her graduating class. We waddled through the crowd following her parents until we reached the arena. Arriving an hour early, we were able to find the perfect seats. Kelsea’s nephew crawled onto my lap, and we sat waiting to see our graduate walk!

Once her class started walking, we were all trying to get the perfect photo of her. We took some of her sitting down, the moment she walked across the stage and shook the president’s hand…and then we lost her. She completely disappeared—she wasn’t in her seat anymore! Our phones buzzed, and Kelsea’s brother leaned in to whisper, “She already left!” The group ran outside to see Kelsea standing there smiling. She didn’t want to stay for the whole ceremony, it was too long anyway. We all laughed.

Since my graduation last year, our friends have decided to make ‘graduation shirts’ a tradition. All this means is that Theresa spends a few weeks designing tee-shirts for everyone as a way of celebrating in the cheesiest way possible. It’s a labor of love though! After my rushed design last year, I’ve taken careful effort to make these shirts fun and specific to the person wearing them.

Kelsea’s shirt was inspired by Panic! At The Disco’s first album A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. It was one of the first things we bonded over when we met in 6th grade, and she loves the album more today than she ever did in middle school. For a few days in April, we were batting around cringy sayings to go on the shirt. One night, Austin and I had come up with, “I Write Sins, Not Essays” after Panic! At The Disco’s 10th track, I Write Sins Not Tragedies. It was terrible and dorky and Kelsea immediately agreed.

Stylistically, there are a number of neat things going on within the album cover that I wanted to incorporate to the shirt design. I loved the vaudevillian aesthetic and it reminded me of the route I took for my undergraduate movie poster project. I used a half-tone effect on flower photos I’d taken in a flower shop while mixing legs in with the leaves. Kelsea felt legs were an iconic aspect in the album’s cover design. Personally, I thought it was cool they worked so well within the leaves. They didn’t stick out too much, but it was a cute nod to my inspiration. The shirt’s typography was directly influenced by the type from the album. I used an ornate typeface that resembled the type on the album cover and offset it with a lightweight sans-serif because I wanted to counteract its bold nature.

The shirt came out soft and lovely. Sure, it came in a few days late because the printer’s servers went down, but we still love the design all the same. It even worked out that the shirt was set in UNLV colors!

Jon’s Graduation

A few weeks after Kelsea walked with her diploma, it was Jon’s turn. It was so sweet: his parents and brother flew from California to support him. Austin and I were especially over the moon because we’d watched him perched at our dining room table for five years groaning at his computer as he pushed through lab write-ups and online quizzes.

The morning of his graduation, Austin and I picked up Dunkin Donuts. Jon was too excited to eat them. He wanted to make sure he had everything ready. I adjusted the hood on his regalia, and we left twenty minutes early to ease his nervous jitters. Much like at Kelsea’s graduation, Jon separated from us to join his graduating class and Austin and I found seats with Jon’s family.

Jon graduated in Drexel’s gym, as I did a year ago. Austin and I sat in the same exact spot my friends and family sat for my graduation. I thought it was poetic, but Austin insisted it was the best spot to get a photo of Jon. Either way, it was so cool to watch the ceremony as a guest, rather then a member of the graduating class. The graduation for The School of Biomedical Engineering was much shorter than my Westphal College of Media Arts & Design last year. After we listened to the guest speaker talk about the advances she’s made in her field for breast cancer screening, Jon stood to cross the stage. He was beaming, and we were all so proud. We took a thousand photos and it was over before we knew it. He did it!

Jon’s shirt was the second I’d designed for graduation season since he’d graduate nearly a full month after Kelsea. His shirt was inspired by his personality, as well as funny things I’ve observed from him as his roommate of five years.

If there’s one thing you need to know about Jon, he’s always wearing headphones. He’s been that way since we first met freshman year — it also explains why he only hears every other thing I say. I knew I had to incorporate that, but it wasn’t enough to build a design fully. I wanted it to have a cute quote like Kelsea’s shirt.

Austin, Jon, and I all settled on, “On a Roll,” as his quote. It was a clever nod to his unique habit of rolling every paper that comes in contact with his hands, contrasted by the visual of a rolled diploma. Jon rolls his receipts, gum wrappers, napkins, drier sheets, etc. It was the distinguishing factor that made this design special to him.

After I’d settled on the direction, I started to add elements that further solidify what I lovingly call a ‘Jon Puddle.’ It’s usually what emerges next to his computer while he’s studying for a midterm. It consists of a rolled napkin, a few rogue pumpkin seeds, tangled headphones (though he’s recently switched to cordless), and a couple discarded toothpicks. He always cleans up once the dust settles, but a new pile emerges once finals approach.

The color palette and execution of the design felt natural once I nailed my subject matter. Since Kelsea’s shirt had a palette that matched so seamlessly with her university’s branding, I wanted to do the same thing for Jon. I found a navy tri-blend shirt that was soft and blue enough to allude to Drexel University. From there, I sourced a white and goldenrod hue from the printer to ensure the colors appeared properly once the fabric was screen printed. I then started experimenting with line weight and illustrative styles to give the design a more ‘hand-made’ look. I wanted it to look sentimental and special rather than overly polished because the design is personal in nature. I referenced my stiff line drawing as a guide and transferred my drawing to Photoshop to merge my digital and illustrated typography.

In the end, I’m so happy with how my designs came out. I’m absolutely more proud of my friends’ monumental achievements, but these unique keepsakes are something we’ll hold close to our hearts for years to come. Not only that, but I’m thrilled that we’ll all have ample opportunities to wear matching outfits. We’ll be the coolest kids on the block with cheesy academic tee-shirts.

Help Me Excel Logo Design

Following my graduation last spring, my Uncle Jamie approached me with a project. For a long time, he’d worked as a financial consultant, and he’d finally made the decision to launch his own website: Help Me Excel. There was one caveat, though. He needed a logo.

When we had started the project, there were a number of things we discussed. We wanted Help Me Excel to have a fresh appearance and feel different from its competitors. Taking a new visual approach is always risky, so I developed a number of concepts that felt relevant, but not always inspired by the financial nature of his business. First, I had experimented with cues I’d taken from Microsoft Excel since that’s Uncle Jamie’s go-to tool. I was particularly inspired by the rigid grid within the program and looked for ways to integrate its essence into a modern typographic design. I also went with an approach that was less obvious. Since the slogan for the website is, “Saving lives with Excel,” I wanted to create designs that speak to the helpful messaging, without seeming too tied to the idea of finances.

My first round of concepts focused on the idea that Help Me Excel is your ‘helping hand.’ I found that your hands could create an ‘x’ and ‘l’ shape which might act as a fun visual reference to the actual name. At this point, we were also inspired by tropical color palettes because it was unlike anything we had seen in this industry, and he was drawn to the bright nature of the colors.

Introducing a fresh color palette can differentiate you from your competition, or alienate you from your subject matter. It’s a fine line to walk, and it was important to me that we did it right.

Ultimately, there were a few issues with these designs. The pink and purple option didn’t provide a clear read on the hand gesture and its color palette felt more appropriate for a health care service, in my opinion. The yellow and teal option was funky and read more legibly, but it was at this point that we realized utilizing finance-driven imagery might convey the purpose of the company more effectively.

The second round of concepts was inspired by the grid in a Microsoft Excel document. It has a very distinctive form—made up of long cells that are immediately recognizable. These two designs were ultimately more contemporary in nature and gave the logotype a geometric modernism that was missing in the first round of concepts. It felt more masculine but still friendly.

The first design cut into the letters in a way that resembled the cells of an Excel document, without sacrificing the legibility of the name. Though I felt it was a successful design, Uncle Jamie was particularly drawn to the second option that featured an ‘XL’ shape. I integrated the grid pattern into the letters without interrupting their overall silhouette. It was a quick read, and we both felt strongly that this design had the most impact…but the color was all wrong.

During the revision phase, I worked to refine the type in the mark, tightening its overall presence. It was important to me that I made the logo versatile so that it could work within the website for any screen size. It had to be responsive — moving from a single mark, to a vertical, and then horizontal orientation.

I also fought with color palettes. I knew that the tropical color route wasn’t right for this project — it was random, and lacked any connection to the financial sector. I needed a strong green that wasn’t a carbon copy of what Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel had chosen. In the second round of concepting, I loved the jewel-toned purple I had chosen for the first logo. Obviously, I couldn’t make the Help Me Excel logo purple, but it drove me to pursue jewel-tones. In my research, it seemed that no one else had gone this route, so it felt unique to Help Me Excel. This path also helped me to develop a cohesive palette for the brand.

Once I had finalized the mark for Help Me Excel, I got into one of my favorite things: brand building. I love creating a story for the visual identity and supporting the logo with carefully chosen type living within a cohesive color system.

I’ve been saying for years that gradients are coming back to the design world—and for years my peers and coworkers called me crazy. The second Instragram rebranded and releaseed their new logo, gradients came flooding back into the mainstream. I was all too excited about this, and jumped on the opportunity to use them again.

For Help Me Excel’s brand identity, I used a deep navy and the green I worked so hard to decide on. The gradation between the two hues was beautiful, but I still wanted to integrate the grid into the color space. When I designed Uncle Jamie’s business cards, I used both the grid and gradient together. It created a high-contrast space that pushed his mark to the foreground.

I also typeset his brand in Gill Sans. The letters themselves have such a sturdy presence, and it’s honestly a classic. Not only that, but when I thought back to how this project started, Uncle Jamie made it a priority to communicate the helpful and friendly nature he wanted Help Me Excel to have. The humanist styling of Gill Sans makes his brand feel welcoming and helpful with its rounded geometry.

Developing the logo for Help Me Excel was one of the best early learning experiences I’ve had. I’m so lucky that one of my first freelancing projects was with someone I love and trust so much. It helped me understand the creative process between the designer and client much more intimately than I had experienced while working within a company. Now that I’m freelancing more, I feel comforted that I could figure the process out with my family before developing my business relationships.

Holiday Cards 2018

 

Holiday Cards 2018

Every year since I first started University, I’ve made an effort to design and produce my own holiday cards. In the past, I loved sending them out to friends and family to spread holiday cheer and show how I’ve grown as a designer. To be honest, I love sending them out because it encourages my friends and family to also send a card my way. Receiving my family’s Christmas photos makes it feel like we’re celebrating together – despite the fact that they’re thousands of miles away.

This year, I also wanted to send holiday cards to designers that inspire me. It’s so easy to share your work with the world now, and I find myself following a number of artists on Twitter and Instagram. Some live in cities I’ve never visited, and others speak languages I don’t know. Regardless, I wanted to reach out and send some seasonal joy their way.

I’ve been contemplating on and off since September what I wanted the cards to look like. I was recently inspired by the line work used in optical illusions. I didn’t want my final design to make anyone’s brain throb, but I’ve been interested in the dynamic quality the lines would often have. I knew I wanted to somehow incorporate that, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. As I was falling asleep in some time around my birthday, I finally had that eureka moment and knew what I wanted the cards to look like. At 11:30 at night, I turned on my bedside light (waking up my boyfriend in the process), and began to scribble in my notebook. I wanted to do high contrast dynamic black and white lines weaving around bold red type with some collage work.

 

I started the project off by visiting my local Michaels. I dug through their faux plant section hunting for cinnamon scented pine cones, pine tree branches, and currants. Because I figured out my concept in October, a lot of foliage was a beautiful orange color…or dead. Either way, it wasn’t very reminiscent of the ‘Winter Wonderland’ spirit.

That night I shot each of the pieces individually on my living room floor and mentally prepared to cut each pine needle out in Photoshop for the next few days.

In my initial sketch, I planned on using a landscape orientation for the card. I figured I could weave the lines in and out of the text and build a border using my collaged nature. Once I had it laid out, I couldn’t help but feel unsatisfied. At the end of a project, you should feel good. You should have that prideful “I made that” moment. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t quite pin it down. I loved my initial concept but felt the whole thing ended up looking safe and predictable. After three years of typography and a number of years studying composition, I decided to start over with a blank sheet. I had all the elements to make a great card – I just had to use my brain.

I revisited my sketchbook and tried to disrupt my design thinking by using a portrait layout instead. By just looking at it sideways, I noticed that I liked the lines pointing upward instead of to the right. I started thinking that I could use them as a visual cue for my composition. Moving them off center helped make my composition less static, but I wanted to stagger the type to activate more of the space rather than just stacking it vertically. I also felt that using a Christmas ornament in the ‘O’ has been done about a million times. I didn’t want to follow that cliché, so I scrapped it. Pushing the foliage together and having it directly interact with the type and line work added interest to the composition and made it look less random.

The new design had something the old one lacked: purpose. The elements weren’t thrown together haphazardly anymore, they were interlocked and working together.

I knew I wanted the inside of the cards to have an unexpected pop of red that still felt connected to the exterior of the card. The inside has a candy cane stripe that is the direct reverse of the pattern on the exterior of the card. Because of this, I also wanted to show the back side of the foliage. Lines that were previously covered by branches in the card’s exterior now sit in the foreground. I did this to give the design a three-dimensional perspective.

As a student, I don’t have an endless supply of money. I knew that these cards would be sent out to family and to designers I admire. Most likely, those designers don’t want the annual holiday photo my mom looks forward to every year. It was important that the inside of the cards had a solution for both audiences. I still loved the brass bells I shot in the first draft of the card. They didn’t make it to the final draft, but I wanted to still incorporate their color and texture somehow. In cards sent to family and friends, we printed our holiday photo and attached it with brass colored photo corners. This allowed them to remove the picture to place it in photo albums while not disrupting the final design. This also meant that the printer only had one design to print, instead of two; thus, reducing the cost of the job substantially.

I think my favorite part about this project was that I was able to send holiday joy to friends and family, as well as strangers I admire, by making my design flexible.

Holiday Cards 2017

Tis the season to morph my dining room into a design studio! Making my annual holiday cards is one of my favorite labors of love. Usually they’re a fun little piece of design I can send my family to spread a little joy every December; however, 2017 had a bit of a rough landing for me. The end of my Fall Term was enough work as it usually is, but was topped off by Drexel announcing the senior graduation dates. This meant I had graduation announcement cards to produce on top of my holiday cards that weren’t even designed yet. It was an extra item on my to-do list and I worried I wasn’t going to be able to finish everything. Austin and I decided to print and assemble the cards together at home for both graduation and the holiday season to save a little money and not have to deal with a professional printer. It was a financially savvy decision that resulted in us staying up most nights fussing with our die cutter and running back and forth between the printer and a cutting mat to score and cut every page. Somehow we managed to get everything out in the post a week before Christmas. That being said, the holiday cards went out a little later this year, so check your mailboxes a couple days after Christmas. I’m only human!

When it comes to the design of this year’s card, I wanted it to be elegant and personal all at once. After having lunch with my bosses at Michael Graves, I saw they were sending their holiday cards out in shimmery silver envelopes. Originally, my holiday cards were going to go out in some craft paper envelopes I had left over from my graduation invitations, but I’d immediately fallen in love with the silver envelopes at Michael Graves. Because my design was primarily black and white with pops of red, I felt like using these envelopes worked to elevate my design and make the entire package a little more cohesive than using a random brown color. Not only that, but I conveniently found them on sale at Staples when I was shopping for ink – obviously it was fate.

I always try to add an interactive graphic element to my cards. Every year we try to include a photograph of ourselves to send to our relatives, but I never want it to look like a Shutterfly template. I’ve spent too much money at Drexel learning about design to allow that to happen! The interactive element this year was a simple sleeve with a circle cut out to reveal our faces. It feels like an obvious choice, but I love how it simplifies the design and gives it a streamlined appearance. I chose a red stock for the sleeve that’s lightly textured to contrast the smooth paper used in the actual bi-folded card and the shimmery envelope. Once you pull on the downward facing arrow, you release the bi-folded card from its sleeve and it reveals the full black and white picture of Austin and I standing together in the snow. We wore the same color shirt that day, so I color matched our shirts to the sleeve’s stock to create a connection between those two elements. I also felt like the pop of color could be the unifying factor throughout the entire design.

Because the front of the card is so black and white, with very sparse areas of red, I wanted the inside to be an unexpected surprise. Once you open the card, you see a flood of red that matches our shirts in the picture and the sleeve. The flood of color is broken up with a tree branch texture I created that’s been placed at a low transparency in the back to activate the space and reference the trees in the photograph of Austin and I. I used the typeface Cursive Script for “Merry & Bright” because I felt like it was a genuinely lovely script. To contrast the ornate script, I used Helvetica for my body copy just to bring back some geometry to the piece. As a personal element, Austin, Wiggles, and I signed each card with white ink.