The Graphic Design Disco

Every product we see, hear, smell, taste, and hear has been designed. Sometimes the designer put great effort into helping you understand the product; sometimes not so much. Great design makes a product stand out from its competitors. Iconic design paired with excellent merchandise becomes synonymous with a product. Kleenex means tissue. To hoover is to vacuum. When you’re in the American south and you ask for a Coke, they ask what kind, as you might actually mean any number of sodas.

A good graphic designer mixes pictures, fonts, and colors to visually convey the core of your product. Ideally, your brand grabs the attention of the audience you’d like to sell to.

Below are a few examples of my work, from full websites with brand identity to boots-to-the-ground intake forms. I loved developing and building all of these pieces. Not sure if I’m the right person for your project? Shoot me an email with some basic details and we can schedule a free 30-minute zoom to talk it over.

Brand Identity

I enjoy the process of bringing my client’s vision to life. What is your goal? What are your needs? Whose attention do you want? We’ll dig into the heart of your product to find the best way to present it.

Bottom Dwellers LGBTQA+ Scuba Club needed an updated logo & website. Combining a few iconic elements of the club’s essence, I designed this logo flag and their new website.

https://bottomdwellers.org/Check out their spiffy new website here

I am currently redesigning a website for S*P*A*M, the Society of Properties Artisan Managers. That will launch in September, but in the meantime, here’s the 2021 annual conference t-shirt I designed based on the same concepts used for the website, along with a snapshot of the icons I’ve built for the site.

Stay tuned for a website link!

Ye Olde Paperwork

Karen Bonnell is a coach, mediator, and author whose graphic design work I’ve been building since 2020. She had existing corporate branding (rock graphic, color scheme, logo, fonts), and I built these pieces to match her style.

Above is a 3-page syllabus, one of a set for Karen’s online training courses

Below and to the side are a LinkedIn post and a Certificate of Attendance for the same seminar. The Certificate is an interactive .pdf that Karen was able to fill in with attendees names.

Below is a project I am, admittedly, quite proud of. It is a paper prop I built (in Microsoft Word) for Seattle Children’s Theatre’s production of The Story of Ben Uchida (designed by Carey Wong). I had two pieces of reference material from which to build, and the final item was printed to around 4’ tall. Afraid your project might be too tedious for me? Bring. It. On.

The first two images were my reference copy, and the larger image is the one I made…in Microsoft Word, lines and all. Did I mention I made it in Word?

Posterizations

I like the clean simplicity of posterizations; turning a photo into graphic art is just fun. Bring me your pooches, your vacation shots, your trophy fish (see mine below), and I’ll make them art.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

I’m sorry to say it but the silliness and puns aren’t going to slow up anytime soon…

Here is a basic posterization
I can make from almost any scanned image

This is my dad and me
Are we cute or what?

Here is a basic posterization
I can make from almost any scanned image

This is my dad
and me

Are we cute
or what?

Here I am in Ancient Stagiera,
the birth and burial place of Aristotle

Those hills in the background are my header graphic, straightened & stylized

Here I am in Ancient Stagiera,
the birth and burial place
of Aristotle

Those hills
in the background are
my header graphic,
straghtened & stylized

My friend, Monique, and I got to hang out at Asbury Park Beach and this little critter was kind enough to pose for me, so I stuck them in my website footer