February 18th, 2022. The Birmingham ADDY Awards.

In the design classes I've been in, it seems the ADDY Awards is always the end goal. At least it is for me. The idea of designing a project so fantastic that it beats out the other students from the surrounding schools is daunting, yet exhilarating. 

This year, I entered two projects. My Social Awareness Campaign, Harts for Hope, and my senior project, Thanks for the Verbal Harassment. I got the notification I had won an award but wasn't sure which project won. When I got to the awards gala, I was shocked to see I had won three awards. My campaign won silver and my senior project won gold and best in show for students. It felt so good to be recognized for my hard work and introduced to agencies in the Birmingham area. 

The link to the article that was written about me and the other students who won awards can be found here.

Mockups:

Mocking up work is one of the best things you can do as a designer. And good mockups are hard to find and often take a lot of hunting to find. Some of my favorite mockup sites are Unblast and MockupWorld. Mockups are a great way to see how your work will look on products without actually going through the manufacturing process. If you can use a mockup early on and frequently, you can catch mistakes or see things that don't work quite as much as you thought.  

Mocking up for Guac and Roll was super fun and I honestly let the mockups I found kind of lead the way for content to create for the brand. Socks? Heck yes. Enamel pins? Absolutely. The whole project was theoretical so knowing I could have fun with it and make crazy products for my company was refreshing and exciting!

Tips I have for mockups:
- Never underestimate the power of a good background color!
-If you can't find what you want online, make it yourself!
-If you want to tweak something in the mockup, always duplicate everything, and lock the original so if it messes up it's easy to access the original!

The Process

One of my favorite parts of the design process has to be the preliminary design phase where I get out a lot of my bad ideas. For my project called Guac and Roll (which you can view here), I originally had an idea for this wild avocado that would be playing an instrument to lead my brand. After some consulting, my professor encouraged me to go back to the drawing board and think some more. He liked the idea of the letters forming an avocado shape as seen to the right but we both knew that would need some tweaking.  

After a long period of trying and testing, I came to the solution of a typographic mark that could fit in a variety of environments and not feel repetitive. When I have an idea I love to see it through immediately but this project allowed me to take it slow and try a new approach I didn't think I wanted to take! This project became one of my favorites I've ever made!

Calvin and Hobbes Cereal Project:

I wanted to show this project off but didn't really have a reason to give it its own page. For this assignment, we were asked to make a type out of something that wasn't a traditional typeface. I grew up reading and loving Calvin and Hobbes (probably where I get all my not as lovely personality traits, thanks Calvin!) and wanted to pay homage to that time. One of my favorite parts of the storyline is that Calvin continually eats Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. One time the cereal is mentioned, Calvin is trying to get enough proof of purchase seals to get a propeller beanie (every kid's dream) and so he asks Hobbes to help him eat the cereal. After a bowl full, Hobbes tells Calvin, "This is like eating a bowl of milk duds." 

I made this project by cutting the type out of paper and using the stencil shape that was left to photograph on top of a pile of chocolate cereal. In the background are comic strips that reference this reoccurring motif in the comics. I had so much fun getting to play with cereal and eat cereal over the course of this project!

Hello!

I wanted a space to be able to write and connect with those who come to my site so I figured a little blog page would be the best place to start. I thought I wanted to be a journalist in middle school (yikes!) so I feel like this is a way I can relate back to those days. I got into Graphic Design my freshman year of high school when I thought it would be a fun class to take. I never knew I would end up loving it and wanting to study it in college!

My first projects were NOT great, they were quite awful looking back at them now. Regardless, it was an amazing learning experience to grow and get a lot of my bad design ideas out of the way, and also kickstart my skills. (I'm looking at you pen-tool!)   

I hope you will enjoy checking in on this part of my site every so often to check back and see what else I post! I'm hoping this space can be a place where I share my processes, other projects, and updates!