The "Maine" Attraction

We are very excited to be working for our very first client Affinity Adventures, a gay adventures company. We have been asked to help brand Affinity Adventures by giving marketing ideas and creating promotional materials.

Our client planned on donating a trip to Maine in May at a PFLAG fundraiser. Two days before the event, our client asked us to fix a poster that they had already, but we've decided to help them create a new poster instead. Our goal was to create a new poster that would be more effective in reaching the target audience and visually appealing.

Hence, we've come up with "The 'Maine' Attraction." Since the target audience is affluent gay men between 30 and 50, one way to help Affinity Adventures appeal to them is to use a theater theme. So we've created a quasi-theater ad with an art deco influence for their Maine adventure.

Given that we had one night to work on this poster, I'd say we did an spectacular job!

At the event, our poster succeeded in drawing in our targeted audience. They were particularly drawn by its playfulness.

Pet Shop Boys: Nightlife

I looooove the album "Nightlife" by the Pet Shop Boys. So when it was time for me to create a CD design for my class, I knew that this cd had to be my obvious choice.

The goal of this project was to design the cd packaging that reflects the theme and style of the music. Given that the album was titled "Nightlife," setting the night theme was a no-brainer. Based on the lyrics and the theme of this album, I've decided to express nightlife as being cold, lonely and transient. The blurred images show just that.

As I was working on this design, I became inspired by the club kids and drag queens, people that fit the category of nightpeople, people that only come out at night. Given that these people only exist half of the time, I decided to make them transparent. Also, by just putting one person on each page, I hoped to show the theme of loneliness.

Fresca! Fresh, Food, Fast.

In today's "green" society, a vegetarian fast food restaurant will surely be the next big thing. For this class project, I had to create a logo for a mock healthy fast food restaurant called Fresca. I had to use just two colors and include the tagline "fresh, food, fast."

After scrapping many ideas, I've decided to create a logo based on an eggplant. Why? Because eggplants are amazing! It's one of the strangest vegetable. If you don't see why, try holding one.

On a designer's point of view, an eggplant is also way underused for anything to do with vegetarianism. Not being a part of the cliche family such as tomatoes and carrots definitely helps this logo to stand out and stick. Furthermore, the natural color combination of an eggplant converts beautifully on screen. Not to mention, this color combination is very popular among the vegetarian crowd.

Holy Whatchamacallit!

For this class project, the challenge was to design a candy ad to the college crowd. The guideline requires no more than three word for the tagline, the name of the website, and the image of the candy brand. I decided to pick whatchamacallit; it's about time for it to make a come back.

Given the target audience, how can I best reach them? If I was flipping through a magazine as a college student, which I am, I would definitely at least stop if I saw a comic style ad. After all, comic style ads are different from photographic ads. Not to mention, comic ads tend to be funny and intriguing.

Following that rational, I then proceeded to capture my own image and converted it to a comic book cover, featuring the Whatchamacallit as the title. The bar code has been added to the bottle to add to the comic visual and also provides a logical placing for the website. The models have been asked to wear green and red clothing to adhere to the complementary color model. As a result, the two models differentiate from each other.

Another success of this ad is the effective use of layout. The eyes naturally start from the actors' head level and follows the actor shouting "Holy Whatchamacallit" toward the candy bar on the floor.

I'm Burning Up

For my first design class project, I had to create a design using just text based on a song lyric. One restriction is that I could only use two colors. As a huge Kylie Minogue fan, I've picked "Burning Up" from her album "Fever."

Since "Burning Up" is a dance song, I wanted to create something noisy and chaotic, one that emotes a feeling of being in a dance club. The background has been layered to give off that sense. The main focal point is of a woman dancing up a flame.

The flame over her arm leads the eye to the event that is being promoted, a dance marathon. It sure is going to be a HOT event!

Feed Art

My computers for communication class required me to create a campaign for the Massachusetts Cultural Council, an organization that fights for children's art education.

Since healthy food is good for children and art education is good for children, why not combine the two? Thus, I've created the Feed Art campaign.

Here, I've created a 60 min ad that encapsulates the message of my campaign in a fun and captivating matter. Kudos to Mark and Jake for their fabulous acting!

Enjoy!

If you are interested in seeing my first ever created website, which was for Feed Art, click here!