Sabrina T.

Drexel Graphic Design / Class of 2020. This is a blog made to inspire and to be inspired by other artists.

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Amazing design sequences

1. Bioshock Infinite

2. Venus Fly GRIMES ft. Janelle Monáe 

I am showing you the best of both worlds. A video game animation sequence and designs used in a music video’s opening sequence.

I chose these two because I think they’re very intricate uses of what logos can do and can add. Not only do I highly recommend playing the Bioshock triology for the plotline but for the graphics as well. But as a graphic designer I highly reccomend playing Infinite because it is less gorey and more scenic. You’ll love all of the 1920′s logos and the designs/colors. Bioshock Infinite, in a gist, is about a man who gets played by two ginger twins who decide to mess with him and force him to rescue his daughter. (You find out his daughter was actually gambled off to the two ginger twins.) The man goes back in time, in an era where American patriotism and nationalism is at an all time high and everything starts off as peachy and beautiful and progresses to become darker and deeper. This title sequence is so amazing because it foreshadows what is to come when you start playing this game. You have an amazing clean cut logo that transforms into something rustic, dark, very eerie almost. It also goes so well with the sound... turn up the volume it’s like a record player?/radio? scratching off and receding into incoherent noises.

 And we do find out in the end that behind the glorified American patriotism is a totaltarian leader the man must kill!!! This is such a deep game I will fangirl about this till the end of dawn. 

Again I highly recommend going to your local gamestop to experience the amazing GRAPHICS of this!

Also I threw in a video of Grime’s song in collaboration with Tidal because the first minute of the video really sets up a scene for the song and I think it’s an artsy use of the negative/positve space/colors.

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Advice ? From the Wise Folks

I was thrown into a pool of juniors and seniors when I went to last week's Uni 101 class. What did I learn from everything as a whole? I'm going to probably end up sleeping in the Westphal building doing my work. Knowing this sort of scares me because I have to commute. I've been told that the professors will tell you one thing and then want another. That kind of bothers me too. However, as a workaholic I'm living for the thrill of adding more items to my portfolio. Anyways the most interesting fact that I found out was that our co-ops will pay by either commission or weekly basis. There was a really spunky girl with a chunky green necklace who told me that she commuted from the city to the suburbs for 40 minutes for a sweet gig that allowed her to see her own ad be placed somewhere along the road. She also created flyers and infographics that were really simple and straight to the point. I also learned that there are jobs for everyone and we shouldn't worry about not getting one. Phew! Thank goodness.

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Design Event: The Whitney Museum For my "Philly Design Event" I went to the Whitney Museum of art which was a trip that was hosted by DART. Before I delve into how the modern art was, I'd like to take the time to appreciate its interior and exterior architecture. The building's design is so sleek and fits along with the modern art that it holds. The exhibits I went to were funky 70's-80's art and were arbitrary. My favorite art piece in this museum is this wax man that's bigger than life size melting away as time goes on. There's probably going to be a time lapse of the melting of the candle that you can find on their site somewhere. Anyways, there was also a live art exhibition where these people live in a 4x17 area of space and viewers can observe them doing everyday human actions, such as peeing or doing yoga. It was very weird experiencing this because it is practically a human sized fish tank. But all in all, I enjoyed my time here in Chelsea, NY.

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The book I chose was Face Paint by Lisa Eldridge. What fascinated me about this book was not only the subject of matter, the evolution of makeup, packaging, and its culture impact, but the entire layout of the book. As you can see from the book cover, the front is a high definition of a face covered in primary colors. It's probably highly pigmented eyeshadows. The composition of the photo is aesthetically pleasing. On the back is a bunch of makeup products arranged very neatly and nicely. This book is very cohesive as a whole because the incover of the book is filled with old makeup products. The back cover of the book is filled with new makeup products. Also the use of the serif font actually works with bridging the old with the new together. As a whole this book works together and has very nice crisp photos of vintage ads and new ads for makeup. 10/10 I would highly recommend picking it up!

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National Constitution Center

Today I went to the National Constitution Center to learn about the process behind one of the coolest exhibits to happen in Philadelphia: the Prohibition Era. How I even got to know about this was through the gorilla marketing techniques they used in SEPTA cars. (They were disguised as speakeasys on the inside)

I found out about the budgeting for the exhibit itself, which was overall, 3 million dollars. Because they didn’t have any sponsors and only one grant, they couldn’t go and do the same thing they did in 2012 (The SEPTA wraps) but I am curious to see the marketing techniques that they’ll use to promote the exhibit again. There were a lot of aspects that I didn’t really think of when I think of curating a museum such as layout, color, motifs repeated throughout, the psychological feeling when walking through it, interaction, and so much more besides cute graphics. I learned that a lot of images were taken from Getty, other museums, and other sources. This took a chunk of their budget. I also learned there were 3 in house designers who had 500 images to work with. They were presented with information necessary to create graphics that would mesh well together. They were also told to redesign a lot of images because the team had an image altogether. 

Imagine working with that. I hope the team got paid well there!

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When it comes to travel, I like going through a site that has a sleek interface and is user friendly. The Explore Brooklyn site had such a modern layout I really liked how it looked. The use of the red tab that was overlayed over everything was a smart decision because it keeps drawing my eyes towards it. On the other hand, there are beautiful saturated photos combined with a nice bold white sans serif font that makes it look like the viewer is in the pictures. It also acts as a blog sort of and has so many other tabs that follow the same format as the site home page.

I really enjoyed the under appreciated part of NY! 

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1. (1st 3)John R&all. This is a London is a London based designer who worked at Glad, which is an award winning design consultancy. He currently works for Here Design, which is another amazing company. I love Randall’s work because they all play with the shapes of silhouettes. The work is minimalist, and plays with puns and the deeper meanings behind the words he uses. My favorite design will always be the Swan & Mallard. I think it’s so lovely using the Ampersand to create the swan image and the mallard, which is a duck. The image to the right is a wonderful silhouette play of Lite beer. 

2. (2nd 3) Michael Bierut. He is known for a lot of things that we are all to familiar with seeing these days. The iconic Hillary Clinton logo, was designed by him and I think it’s very interesting how a graphic designer changed how we saw her entire campaign as. Asides from politics he designs so many logos for companies, one being Saks Fifth Avenue. He created the iconic typography that we love and see today, which is amazing because it’s an example of something complicated yet sleek. The third image I included with this set is something really cool he created.  The contrast makes it so easy to keep seeing two different words and it doesn’t hurt to look at! He’s such a well rounded graphic designer I love him!

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1. DG F/W 2015- 2016

2. Ted Baker  S/S 2014 

3. Valentino S/S 2014

4. Valentino F/W 2015-2016

5. Chromat S 2016

6. Alexander McQueen F/W 2013-2014

7. FENDI F 2016 

8. Guo Pei F 2015 

9. Alice and Olivia F/W 2015-2016

10. Giambattista Valli F 2014

Graphic Art in Fashion Design. What I see as Graphic Design is kind of what the product looks like as a whole. I always think details count so leave it to the big powerhouses in the Fashion Industry to generate such intricate and breath taking pieces.

I chose primarily the couture collections that each brand has with the exception of a few ready to wear pieces because these dresses all have a level of intricacy that excites my mind! There is a giant theme around each dress, which works so well because the details are enough to make the dress stand out from your every day crowd but doesn’t take away from the person wearing them. They’re bold, because of how much thought was put into them rather than just a lingo plastered on them repetitively over and over again. The color schemes all work out with each other I’m in love!

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One restaurant that executes their logo really well is SUGA by Susanna Foo. She made a restaurant that brings two unlikely entities together : Chinese food and gourmet. Chinese food is usually cheap and is also delicious but no matter where you go, there never seems to be a place that has gourmet food. 

SUGA is nestled in a cute little alley way. But it’s a gem!!! 

Anyhoo, I chose this restaurant because I love their logo. It’s very reminiscent of one of the... excuse me as I butcher this term, oriental/Chinese designs that you can find on lanterns, rice paper wall dividers, etc. While I’m not an expert on the culture and the significance, I think anyone will see that the logo resembles one of  these down here.

Okay, it gets even better because it’s so clean looking and you realize that the letters SUGA are made to look like one of these Oriental designs. It’s such a simple logo but I think it’s modern because it’s able to incorporate the restaurant name into it. 

And also their website is so sleek. I can’t wait to eat here one day. They’re also apart of Philly Restaurant Week so if you want gourmet Chinese Lunch for 20$ I suggest you go to SUGA!

http://www.sugabyfoo.com/

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Old City! And adventure to the original philadelphia! My group went to the historic town to explore and get lost basically. I don't think we came in with a plan other than to eat something decent and to have fun. And we did have a lot of fun! There is an artsy side to this part of Philadelphia that doesn't exist no where else. We first had lunch at a pizza/gelato place called Capofitto. This is a gelato and pizza cafe that has such a cute ambience to it. We obviously all partook in pizza but to our disappointment, we got soggy thin pizza with too much olive oil drizzled all over it. It was kind of a cute place though because they put our pizza on what used to be nut cans. It was overpriced and we all agreed that blaze pizza is better than this even though it was cultural. Unfortunately we passed by so many other cool restaurants that didn't show up in the Yelp app, Fork to name an example. But the fun happened after lunch because we went to explore all of what old city had to offer. We found an art store that's like the love child of AC MOORE and Blick! We also went to Shane's Confectionary which is home to vintage candies and homemade hot chocolate. I got a cup to share, which is made of their house made chocolate. We also found a really cool female ran and for female empowerment boutique! They had a lot of pink clothes and were local to philly! We also went exploring some more and found a trade what you want kind of book store, a movie theater, more boutiques, pet stores, pet adoption centers, and a lot of what is probably due to gentrification. I liked going to Old City!

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Best of 2016

Although we had to choose 10 designs we liked the best, I honestly couldn’t decide what I really liked. I chose items that were eclectic and colorful. I also chose minimalist and very intricate designs because there is beauty in both sides. I primarily focused on makeup and clothing because they’re what spoke to me. The designs on makeup packaging are pretty hard to forget because they’re so gorgeous. It’s also what makes them so iconic.

One design that I love in particular is the graphics on the Alice Through the Looking Glass palette by Urban Decay. There is an amazing use of black and other colors. The color scheme worked really well with this entire display and I really love the use of the butterfly motif. There are also clock designs that are repeated throughout as well which tie up the entire design.

[writing-prompt-s]

You’re an ancient Greek man coming home from 4 months of war to find your wife 3 months pregnant. Now you’ve embarked on a solemn quest: to punch Zeus in the face.

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What did I learn

Wow, this semester has been such a ride on one of those tea cup spinning rides. As a commuter, I'm very much accustomed to nearly every nook and cranny Philadelphia has to offer. So the thing I took from my Uni 101 class was the experiences of others who have graduated from Drexel and made something with their major. I think i enjoyed both speakers but I think a new light opened for me when I heard the first girl speak. Higher education is not usually the first work place I think of when I say "Graphic Design". But, the girl made it sound so cool bc her art was plastered basically everywhere on the roads that it's hard not to want to do the same and follow suite. I like Graphic Design bc it's a very powerful major that will bend and control how everyone sees things. I also enjoyed the minor dip into marketing with working in the design team for that university with the long name. I think it's pretty cool how connections can lead to opportunities so I'm going to try to do a better job with connections in the upcoming years.

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I risked life and death to attend this dope workshop hosted by DART. I went to their first workshop and they were doing printscreening on tee shirts. I learned a lot from this actually. I learned that you had to create a digital file first and then burn it onto a certain material so that the ink can penetrate the tangible parts of your drawing. I also learned that there's a certain ink you have to use that is for print making. And there's also a squeegee that's needed to apply the ink over the screen. I got to get my hands ever so slightly dirty for this assignment and made some really cool shirts. I got to choose where and how many designs I wanted on each of the shirts I had so this was an awesome workshop to attend to. There was also free pizza so you know me I will go where the food is.

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Over the weekend, I traveled to New York for fun and spotted some pretty awesome advertisements and received some pretty smart bold advertisements for pre- Black Friday sales. I think i'm drawn to the unconventional and/or smartly placed ads. Here are the reasons why I like these ads a lot (From left to right and top to bottom) 1. John Hardy's ad was placed in the Canal street station, just outside of SOHO where you can do a little last minute christmas shopping for your SO. 2. Come a little closer... It's a minimalistic ad but it's placement couldn't be any better for a funeral company. 3. Pretty and bold graphics! The colors work so well with each other as well as the angle of the syringe so that it leads you up the stairs of the Jay Street Metro tech station. 4. I remember being in Septa's silverliner cars when this campaign was launched! It's for the National History Museum in Philadelphia and turned the entire car into a speakeasy!! How cool and homey looking! 5. Snapple likes to do wrap ads on the Septa buses and trains. I like the choice of the big bold yet easily readible font on the bus. 6. This is really strange but really stands out to me because of the replaced head. The way the photograph was taken and the simple font to the right was placed draws my attention to Missguided's clothing. 7. This was an interesting ad I saw on the F line. It's an anti synthetic marijuana ad, but what is curious to me is why the city chose images of bags that invoke my curiosity. I like how it looks just as dangerous as the warning says. 8. Outside of the big Bloomingdales is this ad for Charlotte Tilburry. She recently launched a makeup line and the interactive advertisement for her lipsticks is honestly quite refreshing as opposed to advertisements on paper and online. I love the statue of the lips and the lipstick tube because this red is the perfect shade to go on any lip. 9. The infamous Kylie cosmetics line, although I haven't bought anything from her I do love the way the simple sans serif font is brought to life by the metallic look. I also think it is a big part of her brand, the not so iconic yet big font. 10. This is such a cute and visually appealing ad. The hands as flamingos and the neon colors make it really pop out as this ultra feminine sort of ad.

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How I Met Your Sophomore

I met up with a GD student named Kayla. Like me, she commutes and has to deal with toppling between work and travel everyday unlike other students at Drexel. I can relate to her on a lot of different levels when I discovered this: since she likes the fast pace of the trimesters at Drexel, the heat is definitely worth it. I found out that people usually don’t sympathize with commuters even when they’re lugging around their portfolios and work(especially for the spring semester). However, this will prepare me for the future (because I’m afraid someone is going to sit on my work). I’m definitely taking precautions to protecting my work because even now I have so much troubles with my art work because it’s always in the way. I’m gonna buy the biggest cheapest tupperware I can do that my work doesn’t get crushed.

That bring said, I learned that printing is expensive as hell and that it would do me good if I test printed on this other paper so that I don’t waste my expensiver and prettier paper. Kayla told me a bunch of other things, what to expect the next two semesters and as well as the required civic engagement class all sophomores have to take. Although she was busy, it was very nice of Kayla to take a slice out of her time to tell me what to expect. I know the world seems like it is turned against commuters but i’m going to work even harder so that i’m on top of my A game.

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Here are 10 of my favorite fonts on the world wide internet! My favorite font has to be the one from Hollika Holika. The font style is so girly and playful that it really drew me in when I first saw it. It works really well with contrast as well!