illustration / infographics

Spring 2017

Bethany Lancaster is a harpist from Winston-Salem, NC currently living in Ann Arbor, MI. I took some photos, developed a logo for her, created some business cards, and a put together website (via Wordpress) to help her expand her client base.

Internship
Spring 2015

I interned at the Marbles Kids Museum in downtown Raleigh, NC, with the graphics and program teams. I did a variety of design work for them, including illustrating educational masks/toys, creating signage, and developing a summer theme for their lobby and threshold area, all while maintaining continuity with their established brand.

Backyard Explorers
A new program was beginning to take off in the garden area, and I got the opportunity to do some illustrations for it. Here I have some initial icon designs and a sample of the coloring pages I created.

Lobby Design
This was mostly a conceptual project (as I wasn't able to be there for the final product) but designing potential looks for the lobby and entrance area fitting the museum's "Summer Fresh" theme was my biggest undertaking. I got to learn a lot about the chain-of-command process, creating iterations, getting ideas approved, etc. 
My final result was a bubble theme, intending for the shapes to be cut from coroplast (a material the museum uses for many of their props) and layered. The design is fun, colorful, and playful without being too scenario-based (they weren't looking for a scene or story, but a general visual that expressed summer fun). I also wove in an element of interaction in the form of a scavenger hunt, so that children could find different objects hidden in the bubbles.

Puzzle Game
A new puzzle game was being added to one of the interactive, brain-teaser exhibits and I was asked to illustrate three characters that would be used for it. I tried a variety of ideas, and the three bears were chosen for the final product. The idea behind the game is to have the child follow a series of clues to place each bear in its right place.

Birdhouses
ainting birdhouses was a fun side-project I did some days in between these other projects. Initially, the birdhouses were built and painted by children in one of the museum's programs, I added some fun bird-themed graphics to the houses that some children had chosen to donate to the garden.

Spring 2015

The class Visual Data and Mapping focused on representing information in an aesthetically pleasing, legible way. We were charged to choose a single research subject for the entire semester. I picked color blindness, because I wanted a subject based in the biological realm and I knew it would be intriguing to learn about (as I am partially color blind, myself). As I moved forward, this eventually became a more broad subject covering vision deficiencies in their many forms.

Over the course of the semester I created the following diagrams (in the order as you scroll down):
Process Map - A visual representation of the step-by-step process of vision.
Literature Map - A general diagram of articles I found both online and in print about my research topic organized into three main categories.
Word Map - A map constructed of links and nodes representing commonly used words in a single article about color blindness, showing how often they appeared and what other buzz words with which they shared paragraphs.
Data Map - A visual break down of statistics, genetics, and types of color blindness.
Geographic Map - Using the program ArcGIS, I plotted the coordinates of a handful of institutes and services for the blind within the United States, then I chose one of the most successful American Institutes (Perkins School for the Blind) and charted its numerous worldwide connections.

As a final project, I compiled my completed infographics into a booklet, pairing them each with information I learned during the semester.

This piece was commissioned by Kevan Chandler for his short story A Bridge Over Time. I experimented with a variety of simple, single-image bearing covers before we decided the scenario-based approach was more intriguing. 

The book can be purchased here (either paperback or for the kindle).

Animation Studio, Fall 2014

The prompt for this studio was to develop a story around the idea that "there is no drinkable water left." I tried approaching the prompt from different directions, asking questions such as: Is the entire world devoid of water? Or just certain regions? Is there still water underground? These inquiries led me down dystopian and sci-fi trains of thought that are not akin to my usual style – so I asked a different question. Where did the water go? Was it sent somewhere? Used up? Stolen? I liked this approach better and began thinking of who or what would have the desire or need to steal all the water. This point of view eventually brought me to the idea of fishkind having an uprising. My final story is based on the idea that fish begin taking over the human race (in a zombie-esk epidemic sort of style) in order to hoard all sources of water for themselves. Because the end product for the assignment was to be in the form of a minute-long animation, I chose to tell the tale in a quick-paced dream sequence from the perspective of a young boy falling asleep in class.

Some icons I created for my business cards. I was going for something playful and self-representational – so each of the icons symbolize something about me or something that I enjoy.

Fall 2014 - Present

I love the look of customized and hand-drawn type, these are a few examples of some styles and techniques I have played around with.

Spring 2014

In the Spring of 2014 I studied abroad in Prague, Czech Republic at the NC State Prague Institute. The studio I was enrolled in focused on user experience design. We worked in teams of three to develop mock start-up companies and brainstorm concepts for an iPhone app. We then chose one of those app ideas to pursue a little farther–designing wireframes in Sketch and coding (primitively) some functions in Xcode. 

My start-up group, Grate Design, developed an app called Take10. The idea was to merge the limitations and permanence of analog photography with the limitless and ephemeral nature of digital photography. The app would allow users to work on separate rolls of film (with the limit of 10 photos a piece) at a time in hopes of instilling a sense of thought and purposefulness to the digital world. The app would also allow users to "reload" a roll of film they had already taken photos on to create double-exposure effects.

Spring 2014

Some photos from a series of photography I took of an assortment of drinks. The purpose of the project was to create a series of coasters, so I took all the shots with the drink centered in the composition from an aerial perspective.

Illustration Studio, Fall 2013

The prompt for this project was to write and illustrate a story that explained the origin of a thing. After writing several of these fables, I chose to illustrate a story I came up with that "explained" both the end of the woolly mammoth and the beginning of the elephant. The gist of the tale is that due to an increase in the earth's temperature over time, mammoths were too hot and sweaty to maintain their long fur–so a kind stranger taught them how to shave.

I chose to illustrate the story with a fairly limited color palette with a heavy emphasis on patterns. The story was eight pages long, so each of the four spreads had one patterned page and one illustrated page. I created the illustrations in Adobe Illustrator and added textures and text in Photoshop.

Some conceptual cover designs for a few of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.

The assignment was to choose a hand tool with some sore of mechanical/moving element and transform it into a place while doubling its size in each frame. Each drawing is done with a ball point pen on a 12” x 12” piece of bristol paper. The first drawing (drawn at 100% scale) was done with stippling, the second with line, and the rest with a mix of both methods. The graphite drawings are a few of the studies I did of the pipe-wrench before starting the ink drawings.