Jessica Buie

A digital portfolio of my design work beginning in 2010

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A note to my reviewers: I am pursuing a minor in graphic design and was not required to take the Junior Studio or Interactive Design class. 

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The History of Graphic Design class required me to create a timeline over the course of the whole semester. By utilizing lectures, videos, in-class discussions, and the miscellaneous other assignments, I was required to create a system which would be viable for a timeline that spanned over thousands and thousands of years.  The circular design for the core of the timeline was inspired by a stop-watch where each piece of information could stem from a separate ring, depending on what type of information it was. Key world events stem from the outer-most ring, while specific design pieces from the second ring. Information from the black core denotes certain influential movements in the history of graphic design. Notes, questions, and insights extend in orange text from related pieces of information. 

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The "Locating Place" assignment for Graphic Design III required comprehensive research on specific, chosen facets of the East Side of Austin. My research involved the extensive exploration on the process of investigating locale. I was influenced heavily by the field of psychogeography, in which a number of experiments and analysis on how the essence of a geographic location can affect not only the people who inhabit it, but also sequences of events, random occurrences, and the quality of self-evaluation.  I decided to design a Beginner's Guide to Psychogeography, containing a short collection of essays written by noteworthy psychogeographers. By creating a field guide of sorts, I hoped to incite the viewer to subscribe to the teachings of this field and attempt a psychogeographic journey of their own. I incorporated the East Side of Austin by weaving photographs of the area into each essay, giving pictorial examples of the concepts and ideas mentioned throughout the essays. 

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This exercise in which I was required to design a "symbol for a cause" provided an opportunity to think and create with a surprising amount of freedom. My chosen cause was the death penalty, and in order to create a symbol promoting the protest of the death penalty, I considered previously used successful symbols such as an 'X' to represent anti.  I then chose to bring in the skeleton hands as representations of death. By having them crossed in an 'X' formation, I attempted to iterate that more than one person is affected when the death penalty is enacted. 

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The Site Redesign assignment challenged my knowledge of both web aesthetics and graphic design history. Working with fellow student Mia Carameros, our concept began with combining design trends from the Art Nouveau movement with the design of the craigslist website. The decorative, "rococo" reminiscent style of Art Nouveau was in direct contrast with the straight-forward, list-like design of craigslist. Through the confident, curving oval shapes of the title typeface, and the contrasting background shapes and images, the juxtaposition of the craigslist listing content with these design elements produced an interesting, though altogether questionably successful result. 

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For my individual gestalt principle research, I decided to explore further the principle of figure/ground. This principle defines our tendency to separate figures from their backgrounds based on size, color, contrast, or other formal variables. Using an earlier image study from Graphic Design II, I altered my drawing into the image below as a study in the viewer’s ability to differentiate this solid figure from multiple shapes. The black squares influence the viewer to separate each cube apart from the figure as a whole.

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The motion portion of the "Locating Place" assignment required that a specific section of the East Side be analyzed in order to be better understood. To meet this requirement, I filmed the daily activity of a moon bounce rental company and incorporated animation and text to highlight the basic elements that made up this place.  Allowing the movement of the footage to dictate the animation enabled the place to define itself. I drew attention to the most definable elements of the business through motion of the pinata and the color of the products. 

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The Identity Series provided an opportunity to work in a new, unexplored territory - buttons. Designing for such a small scale required that the imagery be eye-catching, the type readable, and the series altogether informative. I chose to include type, despite the risk that it may be at too small of a scale to provide impact, and to pair it with imagery in order to juxtapose and associate the Blanton Museum of Art's name with the faces and work of the designers being shown at the fictional exhibit. 

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TASA 2012

The TASA assignment was the second book graphic design students were required to design, and attempted to embody a real-world example of how book design needs to be approached. Though the content was provided, the difficulty of this project arose in creating a comprehensive design which included type systems, layout, illustrations, graphs, and pagination.

The book has two spines in order to incorporate the pull out schedule that sits behind the front cover. 

To convey the contemporary combination of arts and community that the Texas Association of Schools of Art represents, I created a type system consisting of a thick, smooth script with an assertive, yet contemporary san serif for the titles, representing the relationship of art and the structure of community. 

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This project began with each of us choosing a specific task we wished to design a set of instructions for. Once being assigned to design "How to Introduce Yourself", I needed to decide on the medium that would be most easily understandable and accessible to my viewers. Initially, I wanted to design 5 different sets of instructions with each set differing based on specific time periods. This format, I thought, would work best as a humorous set of collectible trading cards. 

After further research, I finally decided that the 5 time-based instruction sets would work best as a museum exhibition. I wanted to design an environment that provided an enjoyable learning experience, and could instruct the viewer on the appropriate way in which to introduce themselves based on certain time periods. 

The results were a collection of images representing the dimensions of the space, what it would like, and the assorted exhibition graphics that would be involved, including the 5 instruction sets. 

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The Weather Report for Advanced Typography project forced me to confront After Effects with a large-scale project containing multiple layers and files. This was the largest project and longest motion piece I have created to date, and benefited greatly from having to animate for the sake of information design.

The objective of this project was to organize information, specifically a weather forecast for four different cities on three different days, and animate the information into three different transitions. The first transition I used was time. The second I used was location. And the third I used was hierarchy, as can be seen in the organization of temperatures from low to high. 

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"The Kitchen of Meaning" for GDES II project's objective was to strengthen our skills in visualizing an image that is performative of a word or concept. Through extensive research, studies, and iterations, I created a poster performative of the word 'dissonance'. The definition of dissonance is typically understood as disharmonious, cacophonous sound, however, in order to succeed in this project, I adjusted my perception of the meaning to fit in visually. I understood it to mean disharmony, discord, and asymmetry, or a state of conflict. 

In order to portray this definition, I designed the shape above with multiple cubes and arranged them into a pattern that hopefully felt like an optical illusion to the viewer. Then, I juxtaposed a harmonious color palette (the blue, grey, and orange cube faces) with a dissonant color palette, resulting in a state of conflict. Furthermore, I defied as many of the rules of visual balance as possible, creating tension in the placement of the exhibitors' names. And finally, I created a stable emblem for the title of the exhibit and gave it disharmonious colors to invoke another state of conflict. 

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The Blue Squares assignment was my first true experiment with After Effects. Doing this project with the assistance of Tuan greatly improved my technical vocabulary and knowledge for motion studies. Experimenting with basic animation techniques, predominately entrance and exit transitions, prepared me for later working more heavily with animation as a design process. 

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In Fall of 2010, I took Image Methodology with George Morrow. Our class did not participate in the Critical Mass Project. 

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The objective for my Personal Geography project was to successfully show the journey from one place on campus to another using illustration and interactivity to assist the viewer. Because this was my first real venture into using Flash, this project required an extensive amount of time and effort to produce. 

The concept of my project was to present the viewer with an interactive map in the vein of a nature documentary, having them encounter different types of students in different areas, and a choose-your-own ending type event. This project challenged by coding knowledge and gave me much more confidence in using Flash and Interactivity as tools of design. 

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The Scales exercise from George's Image Methodology allowed us to explore and utilize a specific design style in visually answering abstract questions such as: what is an icon? what consists of a good temple? This exercise was my first introduction to researching the International Style of design and practicing basic visual skills within that style.

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Symbol Methodology required us to create a series of icons that represented a specified topic that we chose. I chose to illustrate "Co-operative living", or in other words, living in a co-op. A co-op can house anywhere between 10-100+ people, and requires that inhabitants perform a specific labor once a week. Over the summer, living in the "French House" co-op in downtown Austin inspired me to illustrate what the experience was like. I chose the words "faulty", "equality", and "costly". Having to narrow down such broad adjectives into one single icon allowed me to utilize new design methodologies and brainstorming techniques.