Fall 2024 ACC Viscom Grad Show
Project Details
Fall 2024
Event Branding
Deliverables:
Brand Guidelines
Poster
Instagram Post
Table Tents
Directional Signage
Name Tags
Commemorative Sticker
It was an honor to be asked to create the branding guidelines and collateral for the Fall 2024 Visual Communications Grad Portfolio Show.
Collaborating with the department head, Josiah Spence, and department advisor Taylor Green, I developed a creative brief and got a sense of what would make this a successful design. The central aim of the branding project was to create a theme and collateral that would entice local design professionals to attend the event, but also to interest students and to create a cohesive visual language and a bit of intrigue around the event.
One thing that stuck with me from our meeting was the client's definition of what would make the design successful. When I posed the question, Josiah replied that a successful design would be memorable, and it would make the viewer want to know more. This information guided a lot of my design decisions throughout the process.
Discovery
Ideation
I was tasked with choosing a theme for the show, so the first thing I did after our initial meeting was begin to create a long list of words related to the program, design practices, ideas of transition, and different ways of viewing things. Choosing a theme and creating sketches were by far the most time-consuming and intense parts of the project, as the theme needed to appeal to our target audience as well as represent our diverse graduating class.
Through the discovery process, I began to think about the parts of a design that are seen (the end product) and the parts that are often unseen (the design process, and the changes made from iteration to iteration). Similarly, I considered the portfolio show itself as a glimpse into our creative processes, but not the whole picture. And, of course, the showcase was debuting never-before-seen work to the world. A theme started taking shape.
Mood Board
The images I was inspired by had mixed type; bright, solid colors; and a viewport or oculus theme. I was experimenting with ideas of what these images reveal and what they conceal.
Sketches
Type Experiments
Seen & Unseen was chosen as the tentative title for the show, but as I was experimenting with various type treatments, I landed on the idea to put a shadow on the "Un" part of the word Unseen. This allowed the title to do double duty, conveying both the "Seen" and the "Unseen" parts simultaneously.
Iterations
Imagery
In order to impart a bit of a gritty film photography feel into the piece, I chose to use vintage photography as the source of my images. It took many hours of scouring the public domain for images depicting different means of viewing (binoculars, microscopes, lenses, X-rays, film negatives) and things that are used to hide or reveal (camouflage, macro photography).
The iteration process was an exercise in paring down.
Final Collateral
Mockups
Reflection
This was an incredible opportunity, and the design process for this event stretched my skills as a designer in many ways. In the ideation phase, I was given a lot of latitude to take the design in any direction I felt inspired to go in, and, wanting to honor my fellow classmates, I really challenged myself to explore the design problem from every angle.
The need to expand the branding to so many deliverables also pushed me to consider early on how the design could scale from a poster to table tents, directional signage, and many other touchpoints. I particularly enjoyed creating a gif to be posted on Instagram and am inspired to experiment more with motion graphics on future projects.