Conceptual Project Reflection

For this assignment, I used the article “Old Tech.” I chose this one because it is something I am interested in. However, it was not the one that gave me the most creative inspiration. During the drawing process, I kept getting more ideas for the wearable tech story, but none of them felt fulfilling.
After reading the article the part that struck me most was that we are not getting rid of old tech due to nostalgia. That idea alone was what started the creative process. I began brainstorming things that were nostalgic about old tech for me. I couldn’t get this image of an old TV screen in the dark as its light illuminates its surroundings. I built my entire design of the illustration of the old TV on the front spread. I found a stock image of a TV I felt looked the closest to the one in my head and I built off of that image to create my illustration.
For the screen of the TV, I used the grain effect on a box. This gave it a screen-like look. For the title, I used the warp tool and the Silver Streak font. I played around with the bulge effect until I felt they looked natural. I also changed the title of the article to something more fitting of my design angle. I felt that “Channeling The Past” in conjunction with my illustration gave a good insight into what the story was about.
To drive home the nostalgia factor I created a pretty standard 90s pattern. Although I was born shortly after the ninety’s they have always felt very nostalgic to me, and I would say they are for a lot of people. I created this pattern by using references from real-world patterns in the 90s and making a small arrangement of the shapes I saw, then using the pattern tool to create the final product you see. By adding this pattern I was also able to introduce a color palette.
The color pallet I chose I wanted it to feel tech-like and have the same nostalgia as the pattern I created. Therefore I went with vibrant shades of; blue, yellow, green, and pink/purple. I felt the vibrancy honed in on the technology while the colors captured the ninety as well.
For my body text, I wanted to use a standard legible font since my background was already a bit overwhelming, so I used Bitter. For my subhead font, I wanted to also use a standard font, so I used Bebas Neue.
On the second page I wanted to use the same pattern but not obstruct the story itself so I made a triangular shape at the top to connect the two spreads. The story text was a lot shorter than I thought It was so I played around with the layout on the second spread for a long time, trying to balance it. I ended up centering most of the story in the middle of the spread and using other visual elements to fill the space. I made the sidebar match the same color already seen in the pattern and used the same fonts I used for the body text just making it a bit smaller.
The Last Thing I did was create the two illustrations on the second spread. I realized that I should include some of the technology listed in the sidebar as a visual element so I illustrated a floppy disk and a vinyl record, both of which featured colors already established in the pattern. I placed them in the blank areas and decided I liked the look of the vinyl being enlarged and going off the page.
Overall this project was fun and allowed me to learn more about magazine design. I would say I should probably have used a lighter background color but I played around with using white instead of black and it didn’t look good to me. I also think I could have laid the second spread out better.

Project 3: Conceptual

For this project, I designed a conceptual illustration and two spreads for the “DIY Home” story by Nick Bilton that was provided to us. This is a column about the writer’s experiences with “smart home” devices such as security cameras and locks that are connected to the internet and to the user’s smartphone, and his generally frustrating experiences with them.

I decided to use “Keep It Simple” as the headline for this story because something that runs through the story is the sense that it’s much easier not to have to deal with the complication of connecting your phone to things in your house; as he says “rather than making life easier, [the August Smart Lock] took 10 times longer to unlock than if I had taken the key out my pocket and turned the lock.” “Keep It Simple” references the KISS principle of design (“Keep It Simple, Silly”), that cautions against over-complication. According to the Interaction Design Foundation, “simplicity guarantees the greatest levels of user acceptance and interaction.”

Ironically, I initially found myself over-complicating this design at first, with the pixels from the key all over the page. Eventuallly, I realized that the solution to what was becoming a frustrating design was staring me right in the face, and I settled on this layout, which uses white space to emphasize the headline and keys. I also chose this font for the display text because of its simplicity.

The idea behind the illustration is twofold. First, the pixelated key references, on a very surface level, the idea of something physical becoming electronic. Second, the breakdown of the key into disappearing pixels references the intangibility of something that is electronic or controlled electronically. That is, if your phone runs out of battery or the wifi goes out, your key ceases to exist. Bilton closes his story by telling the reader about how he had to re-connect all his gadgets after his router died. This is an additional complication of “smart home” devices, but also speaks to the way in which the “internet of things” can actually make things harder to access because of their ephemerality. This is what the dissolving key references. The other keys on the carabiner provide contrast with the immaterial key. I decided I wanted to do a photo illustration because I felt that would emphasize this contrast between the real and the immaterial.

Before making the final photo illustration, I made a mock-up of the key to test both its appearance and the technique. I used a stock photo from Adobe for this. I used scatter brushes with a square pattern to create the pixel effect. The holes in the key are made with the same brush on a masking layer that creates areas of transparency. I then duplicated key and set both layers to different colors and offset them to create the glitch effect.

Once I had a sense of how I was going to make the glitched key, I moved on to the final photo illustration. The photo I used was of my own keys (with all the cards and tags removed), arranged in the particular shape that I wanted, and photographed with a digital camera. I used the same technique on the pink key, reduced the opacity of the shape and traced where the outlines of the key ring and the brass key would have been behind it, to create the impression of intangibility when compared to the other keys. Pink, blue, and the resulting purple mixture were chosen to complement the color of the carabiner and match the photo with the graphics.

For the second spread, I continued the pattern of purple pixels from the key, almost as if those pixels had blown in from the first spread, tying the package together. I also used the same colors and effect for the boxes in the sidebar. Because the story was so short, I decided to make the “sidebar” a full-page graphic.

Ultimately, I’m very happy with how the first spread especially turned out. I’m much less familiar with Photoshop and with photo illustrations than I am with Illustrator, and I feel like I learned a lot in the process about the more illustrative tools in Photoshop.

Conceptual Project

DIY House spread thumbnail
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The article I chose for this project is the DIY House, written by Nick Bilton. Throughout the passage, Bilton expresses his frustrating experience when setting up a DIY smart home. To visualize this experience, I collected ideas that would symbolize both the DIY element and the frustration these gadgets can cause. The illustration is a blueprint or an instruction manual on how to build your house, with speech bubbles coming out to add the details of the smart gadgets being implemented. There are symbols that depict errors and network disconnection to visualize the common struggles people can face with technologies. The illustration within the opening spread is framed with a silhouette of a smart phone, giving additional context of the smart technologies while also making the reader emerge into the experience firsthand.

The use of blue and white strokes weighs in on the idea of a blueprint. The bright, warm yellow symbolizes error and warning, which ultimately brings more attention as it contrasts with the rest of the simplistic visuals. The font used for the opening spread is Montserrat, as it is widely used in mobile applications and matches the simplicity.

The illustrations are used in the continuing spread, with a lower opacity level to use as a motif. The sidebar utilizes the same yellow used on the opening sheet to attract attention. Inside the sidebar contains cutout images of the smart gadgets introduced in the article to provide additional information about them.

Influence of Yusaku Kamekura

Click here to see my poster

For my influence I chose Yusaku Kamekura. I found him in one of the graphic design books that we looked at in class. The reason I chose him was because I felt he had a blocky color art style that resonated with my art style. In Graphic Design I, I made a poster that was similar to his method of color pieces put together to make one design.

Kamekura was a Japanese graphic designer who studied at the Institute of New Architecture and Industrial Arts located in Tokyo, Japan. The school took inspiration from Bauhaus. After his education he started working at Nippon magazine. In 1960 he became their managing director. Throughout his early life as a graphic designer, Kamekura gained inspiration from Bauhaus as well as Cassandre, and constructivism. He is best known for his work designing the 1964 Summer Olympics Tokyo poster. He would later go on to work at Nikon and design a series of logos for the company.

In terms of the influence I took from him. I was deeply drawn to his poster called Graphic ’55 Exhibition, 1955, seen on the left here. I think the circles, colors, and overlapping of both make for a distinct visual and a great artistic choice. This style can be seen in my poster with the wheels of the bike. I felt like they were visually captivating. The bright colors that Kamekura utilizes throughout his posters are an aspect I also wanted to take in with my poster. Through multiple posters of his I took the color dropper tool so I could use the exact vibrant colors that he used from his works. The back wheel on the bike has a little bit of overlap in terms of color where the bike chain is, I also added that style in inspiration from his Graphic ’55 Exhibition poster, as well as the “Little 500” text. In Kamekura’s work he often does a sandwich method in his work where he’ll have one line first, then the second increased in size and a bolder color, then more text below it to emphasize the text in the middle. I tried to do that with my text in my poster.

Another work that I took inspiration from was Kamekura’s poster called Nikon Mikron Binoculars, 1955. Upon immediate inspection of this poster, I was inspired to make a bike with the shape that the eyes are made in this poster. Hence why I used the above poster to as well to include the main visual to be a bike in my Little 500 poster. Again, the colors are vibrant and eye catching, The pink here can be seen in my poster too. This poster was the one I used to help me pick out my font, a lot of Kamekura’s posters are in Japanese and so I wanted to find something in English and came across this poster. The main link in my poster in yellow takes inspiration from the fonts used in this poster on the left. The art style of doodle type shapes were another thing I took inspiration from. I tried to draw my cyclist in a similar style as the yellow hand seen in the above poster.

I really enjoyed making this poster. I unfortunately, was crunched for time, but if I could go in and revise my poster I would add more color and a border around the poster that kind of looks like the checkerboard race flag but instead of black and white, I would replace every black square with colors I used in my poster to create a rainbow checkerboard. Overall, I think Kamekura has a minimalist and clean style with vibrant usage of colors, I tried my best to use his influence within my poster.

Anthony Influence Project

My Poster for the Little 500 Influence Project (Theophile Steinlen)

This is the final design that I decided to go with for my poster. My inspiration was Theophile Alexandre Steinlen. He was a French painter who had a very unique painting style. I used my typography to reflect his writing style by tracing his handwritten letters and forming them into the words I wanted them to say. I also attempted to create drawings with brush strokes that were reflective of the ones in his paintings. Below are the paintings that I used for reference.

Influence Poster: Josef Müller-Brockmann

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Designing the Little 500 poster through the lens of Josef Müller-Brockmann’s work was an exercise in restraint, structure, and purpose. Known as a key figure in the Swiss International Style, Müller-Brockmann emphasized clarity, order, and functionality in graphic design. His iconic Musica Viva posters and his seminal book Grid Systems in Graphic Design guided my process, showing me how structure can elevate visual communication. I wanted to emulate Brockmann’s Beethoven poster in particular. I started by sketching the composition of the wheel and adding elements of Brockmann’s influence as I went. I eventually got a good idea of how I would make it in Illustrator, mapping out where the typography would go.

Initial sketch

As I transitioned to the digital phase, I focused on incorporating Müller-Brockmann’s key principles: clean geometry, typographic hierarchy, and grid-based composition. The biggest challenge of this process was staying true to Brockmann’s minimalist style while simultaneously communicating to the audience that the centerpiece is a bike wheel. The grid design on the right side of the wheel signifies the motion of the spinning wheel. Brockmann’s work does not typically incorporate bright colors, but considering this is an IU event, I felt like the bright red was a must-have.

Josef Müller-Brockmann began his design journey in Zurich, Switzerland, where he studied architecture, design, and art history. He later opened his studio and became a leading figure in Swiss graphic design, known for pioneering the International Typographic Style. His work emphasized grid systems, objective communication, and the use of sans-serif typography to create clarity and order. Over time, Brockmann’s designs evolved from more illustrative compositions to purely abstract, structured visuals that prioritized function over decoration.

Poster for the Zurich Town Hall by Müller-Brockmann
“Swiss Style” poster by Müller-Brockmann

Influencer Poster: Erik Nitsche

Little 500, Erik Nitsche inspired poster, with cyclists on a track.
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My influence of choice for Project 2 is Erik Nitsche. The Swiss designer, famous for his posters for General Dynamics, drew my attention by the dull and dark backgrounds contrasted by bright primary colors. In my own work the color of the cyclists draw inspiration from the color used on the album Mendelssohn created by Nitsche. I wanted to create a similar color collage as the one on the album. Sticking to four cyclists per lain, I wanted them to have that same scattered feeling as in the album along with the color inspiration.

Album cover by Erik Nitsche

Nitsche’s Atoms for Peace poster was another inspiration for my poster. Nitsche’s poster has vertical motion directing the eye to the top of the poster presenting the message. I used the cyclists to create motion moving down. The sans serif font I used in my poster, Conthrax, was inspired by the font Nitsche uses in the Atoms for Peace poster.

General Dynamics poster by Erik Nitsche

Erik Nitsche started designing around 1936, working in Hollywood, on magazines. In 1955 Nitsche designed a series of modern and sleek posters for General Dynamics in order to outshine competitors in a blossoming atomic age. Nitsche’s modernist and clean, sleek is what drove me to choose Nitsche has my poster influence.

Influence Project – Josef Müller-Brockmann

For our second project, I took inspiration from Josef Müller-Brockmann. Müller-Brockmann’s work was influenced by Bauhaus and constructivism where he eventually became known as one of the pioneers of Swiss graphic design. He opened his own graphic design studio in Zurich in 1934 where he worked as a freelancer, soon joined by collaborators in 1936. He then began the communication agency Müller-Brockmann and Co. alongside with being a consultant for IBM.

Click the image to view the poster PDF!

I came to the decision to use Müller-Brockmann as I felt that I could come up with a clear vision for a poster when looking at some of his past work. His work really stood out to me with its minimalist vibe. I really thought that his style would be able to create a poster design that is able to effectively communicate the information related to the Little 500 race.

Some of the key elements from Müller-Brockmann’s design style I tried to include were sans-serif typography, asymmetrical layouts, and use of negative space. These were the features that I saw across most of Müller-Brockmann’s work and felt it was crucial to incorporate them into my design.

The typeface seen on the poster is Helvetica. Most of Müller-Brockmann’s work uses the Akzidenz-Grotesk typeface, but I was unable to find the font for free online, so I thought Helvetica would be a fine substitution. Müller-Brockmann does not really do anything special with his type, he just uses a clean sans-serif typeface. He does usually include lots of text in work, and I tried to include as much as I could without it getting too busy.

Automobil-Club der Schweiz, Schützt das Kind!, 1953
Musica Viva, 1958

I took inspiration from Müller-Brockmann’s Automobil-Club der Schweiz, Schützt das Kind! for the photographic elements on the poster. While photographic imagery was not a staple of Müller-Brockmann’s style, he does have some artwork that utilizes it and I thought that its inclusion would make for effective design in this case. I also really liked the diagonal directional force from his posters for Musica Viva, especially the one from 1958. I felt that the diagonal direction of the cyclist paired the two inspirations together well. I included the other cyclist in the bottom right to fulfill that element of asymmetrical balance, as well as the inspiration from the Automobil-Club der Schweiz, Schützt das Kind! poster.

Lastly, the use of negative space was a huge feature from Müller-Brockmann’s work. A lot of his designs were very minimalist and left a lot of open space. It seemed like it would be a crucial part of my design to not overcrowd the poster. I again tried to incorporate the use of asymmetrical balance with my negative space by leaving lots of openness to the top-right and bottom-left of the “Little 500.”

Under the influence of Lucian Bernhard

Click here to see my Poster!

For this project we looked to some of the greats to get inspiration for the Little 500. Little Five is a famous bicycle race held annually at Indiana University Bloomington. It started in 1951 and is modeled after the Indianapolis 500, but with bikes instead of cars. It’s argued as the biggest week here at IU, and with that it’s advertised and talked about the whole Month of April. We were tasked with creating a poster for the event but in the influence of a famous graphic designer.

When looking at some designers to get inspiration from I found myself circling back to Lucian Bernhard and George Olden, two amazing designers with vary different styles. because I was so stuck with who I would pick I decided to sketch some of my ideas down and see what style my vision would look best in, muted black and white photo collages or sketch style colored designs. I the end I went with Lucian Bernhard.

Lucian Bernhard was a German graphic designer, type designer, professor, interior designer, and artist. He is best known for pioneering the Plakatstil or the poster style movement, characterized by bold, simple designs with flat colors and minimal text. ​

With my designer now picked it was time to work on my poster. like I said before I already sketched out two ideas one was a close up on a bicycle seat and the other I wanted to do a race track with a racer on it.

The bicycle seat one was pretty straightforward, the only thing that stumped me was choosing the color way. I know I wanted to stay with the cream, red, and black color palette, I just didn’t know how to format it the way I wanted.

In the end I narrowed it down between these two color ways

next I worked on font and copy placement, I wanted to do a similar fort to one you find in Lucian Bernhard’s designs. I found a font called Attic Antique Italic, I thought it resembles perfectly with fonts Lucian Bernhard uses. but also for fun I went with a simple font called Transat Black just to see. in the end I went with Attic Antique Italic, I just looked better and more cohesive to me with the design.

And these were the final designs I turned in because I couldn’t ick what color way was better.

at this point of the project I was just messing around with more ideas I had so I ended up making another post for this project. this poster shows more of the racers. and combining 500 into the actual drawing of the racer.

I stared making the design as a vertical poster but I looked too smushed so I switched it to horizontal and it was much much better.

click to see the poster better!

this is the final design for the horizontal poster and I think it Turned out perfectly.

overall I have a lot of fun with this project, even though we have to “copy” a creative style I still felt like I had a lot of creative freedom.

In the Spirit of Seymour Chwast for Little 500

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For this poster, I drew inspiration from Seymour Chwast’s signature blend of satire, bold color, and playful visual metaphors. Chwast’s work often turns everyday objects into quirky characters or symbolic icons, and I wanted to bring that same energy to the Little 500.

At the heart of the poster is a bicycle made of cherries, an over easy egg, and a rain cloud. This gives a whimsical nod to Chwast’s love for blending illustration and concept. This unexpected bike functions as both a visual pun and an anchor for the overall composition. The winding green track beneath it adds motion and direction, guiding the eye through the design while echoing Chwast’s use of bold, simple forms to convey depth and story.

I used flat colors from a retro palette containing a mustard yellow, cherry red, olive green, sky blue, and cream peach to reflect Chwast’s printmaking aesthetic, and paired them with checkered patterns in the title to add texture and dimension. The playful gendered stick figures with quirky rear faces are a subtle nod to Chwast’s satirical tone, hinting at the tradition of the race while poking fun at iconography we take for granted. The typography was carefully planned with the title at the top, event dates prominently in the middle, and URL tucked at the bottom, ensuring everything feels cohesive yet spontaneous, just like Chwast’s designs, which are structured but never rigid.

Overall, this poster captures the spirit of Seymour Chwast by combining unexpected visual storytelling with humor, color, and a hand drawn sensibility. It’s fun, strange, and invites the viewer to look closer just the way Chwast would want it.

Seymour Chwast Design

Seymour Chwast is an influential American graphic designer and illustrator well recognized for his humorous and fun style. He co-founded Push Pin Studios in the 1950s, challenging the mainstream modernist design style with more artistic and unconventional approaches. His work includes posters, publications, books, and political art, and it frequently incorporates comedy, hand-drawn illustrations, and typographic experimentation.