Resident Designer at Latitude 53

My name is Skye Oleson-Cormack and I am Latitude 53's first Resident Designer. The purpose of this blog is to document and review my design process during my one year residency. Ask me anything!

[l53design]

A few quick illustrations done for a fundraising campaign between Latitude 53 & Mongolie Grill. The campaign involved a competition where participants were encouraged to take Polaroids of themselves inside the restaurant. The winning entry received to tickets to New York City.

[l53design]

During the summer season, Latitude 53 hosts the Incubator Series, which features new work from local artists every week throughout the duration of the Patio Series.

Below is the stage I set up for photographing the objects after I spray painted the letters and frame white:

Here is a gif showing my process of digitally editing the photograph & adding colour:

The final result:

[l53design]

After my first meeting discussing "Patio" with our development coordinator, Tyler, I got a pretty good sense that the identity should be energetic, playful and fun; really evoking the event's light-hearted party atmosphere. So with that information and a bit of research, I came up with two rough concepts to present: Looking at my sketches for the invite/postcard portion of the project (pictured above), the first concept would be made up of multiple vector based illustrations that would highlight all the different types of summer activities happening at "Patio". This was definitely the safer option for me since I had done many vector illustrations in the past. The second concept was simple in comparison to the first, but the materials & colours used would help to make it very dynamic and eye catching. For me, this concept was a lot more interesting and exciting because it combined photography, real objects, and getting to work with my hands instead of strictly working digitally. Luckily, Tyler agreed that we should move forward with the second concept. The first step in bringing my concept to life was to get letters made: These letters were made out of medium-density fiberboard and were cut on a CNC machine by Devin Hobbins. He did a great job with them. I specifically chose a typeface that would look good with slightly rounded edges (Brandon Grotesque) since the CNC's drill bit radius would cause the inside corners of the letters to round off. The next step was to spray paint the letters and the rest of the objects I would be using: This was one of the first times I've spray painted anything...so it got a bit messy! But luckily everything turned out with a nice and smooth even coat. Now it was time to set up the stage and photograph the scene. This included setting up a mini studio in the middle of my living room: In order to be cost effective, I chose to make all the objects white and shoot on a white backdrop. It was difficult and expensive to find coloured backdrops or even coloured paper that I could shoot on, so the best solution was shooting for the shadows and digitally editing the colours. Here is a gif showing my process of digitally editing the photograph & adding colours: The image above was used for several materials including postcards, digital invites and facebook events. I came up with four different colourways for this image. This event ran for 11 weeks so by having alternating versions, we were able to keep the event looking fresh and exciting.  Backside of the postcards/invites:

For the drink punchcards, I again digitally edited and added colour to a photograph I had taken. Here is the outcome: Finally, I created a huge backdrop for the photowall featuring "Patio"'s sponsors. This was a repeating pattern done in illustrator and was the only material that did not make use of photographed objects (because of its size). Here it is in action: (photowall images taken from Latitude 53's facebook page) That wraps up the more prominent materials I created for the 2013 "Patio". I am quite happy with how everything turned out. This project allowed me to experiment with new techniques and helped me gain more confidence to try new things when designing. Thank you for following along!

[l53design]

As I approach the end of my residency, I thought I would use my last month to look back and blog about the work I have done throughout the year at Latitude 53. Please feel free to follow along and don't hesitate to leave comments or ask me questions along the way!