Your adventure: Making a seed blossom
This crab is more of a footnote (pun intended, you’ll soon see) in a bigger story where Hercules fights the Hydra – the beast with many heads. As he fought, the crab bit the hero on the foot and was immediately crushed to death. Hera, enemy of Hercules, later placed the creature among the stars as the constellation Cancer for its attempt at foiling her nemesis.
Here I’ve assembled projects that started with something small and sometimes insignificant – like the crab – that I’ve managed to transform into something much greater or beautiful than it originally was.
A campaign to increase appointment bookings in hair and beauty salons during their quieter months.
The challenge
Creating these types of campaigns on a regular basis eventually made our inspiration run a little dry. We wanted to keep these engaging and fun visually, while always doing something a little different.
Highlight
Inviting salons to participate by postcard (in addition to via the usual digital channels) was suggested during a brainstorming session. A travel gift card was to be the campaign prize, so this sparked the idea of creating a kitschy “greetings from...” postcard with large letters as windows to fun travel destinations. I used this for both the postcard sent to the salons and the contest page for their customers.
Room for improvement
While it’d be a bit of work to make the images on the desktop and mobile pages different, making small adjustments on mobile would’ve increased the legibility of the stylised text. I’m now much more conscientious of the mobile experience and take the time necessary to optimise it.
All the printed material for my wedding, including invitations, table cards, game instructions, prizes and thank you cards.
The challenge
Creating something completely from scratch I would be happy enough with to show my closest friends and family. I’m a perfectionist who, for once, had the time to indulge in getting all the details right, so this felt like a lot of pressure!
Highlight
My scanned doodles turnout out to be a lot more versatile than anticipated. I used them as different types of frames and borders without changing much and it resulted in my creating a sort of brand for the whole event. Serendipitously, even our wedding rings and party favours had heart motifs.
Room for improvement
I spent a lot of time getting every single comma and fold perfectly into place – this was for my wedding, after all. If I can’t say I’m entirely happy with it, I don’t think there’s any project with which I ever will be!
A student project to adapt one of Montreal’s free cultural newspapers, Voir, to a magazine.
The challenge
Needing to incorporate elements from the original newspaper, while still being fresh and vibrant as a magazine. This was one of my earliest attempts at looking at other designers’ work and distilling the essence of a brand in order to use it myself – something I feel I’ve grown quite good at over the years.
Highlight
Oddly enough, files getting corrupted and unusable are what made this better. I originally created two mockups: one used Voir's mix of wide lines with rounded cutouts, while the other focused on the paper’s recurring bull's-eye symbol. When needing to recreate everything from scratch, I found that I could combine elements from both proposals for a much more dynamic spread.
Room for improvement
This spread would have benefited from more breathing room. A recurring thing I see in my earlier work is that there’s hardly a blank centimeter anywhere, but I’ve grown much better at balancing the use of white space.
Picture frames painted with patterns of my own design.
There have been a few occasions when I’ve wanted to give framed photographs as gifts, but my local shops only had rather dull frames. I decided to take matters into my own hands by sketching out a rough pattern on paper and recreating it with acrylic paint on the available frame. These suddenly made for much more special gifts!
While I don’t always have the time for it in my digital work, I enjoy being able to draw my own patterns and illustrations when I can. It allows me to create something that’s usually symbolically better suited to the project and unique, like I did for a charity event program and my wedding.
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