Category Archives: Conceptual

Project 3- Conceptual

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Vinyl Revival Opening Spread. Depicting a heart monitor and record needle.
Click to see full pdf

For project 3, I chose the story on old technology. The main idea of the story is about the increasing demand for older technologies, such as, vinyl records and Polaroid cameras. Vinyl records are the main focus of the story, which is why I chose “Vinyl Revival” as the headline, since there has been a rise in demand for vinyl records after years of slowing dwindling sales. To conceptually convey the idea of v records making a come back, I looked for inspiration in heart monitors to show that vinyl is not yet dead. I subtly used the rising and falling pulses to convey the diminishing demand of vinyl and then a sudden jump up to show that there is still a want of vinyl, by consumers. I also added a recorded needle to make it clear that the pulse is being created by vinyl records. For the headline font, I used a 16-bit font face to convey a sense a downgrade to draw upon the old technology concept. The green color I used was from the color palette of the film The Matrix (1999), I felt that the bright green is not only eye catching, but also provides a retro feel, drawing on the old computer screens with bright green code on a black background. Finally, for pages 3 &4, I took the grid background on the spread and used it in the side bar. I also added the pulse and record needle to the bottom the page to further connect the opening spread image with the remainder of the story.

Tech. Conceptual Illustration

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For our second to last creative project in this class we were tasked to create a four page magazine article (two spreads) choosing one of the three stories we were given, our main priority was to crate a conceptual illustration for the article of our choosing and display the story text in a creative way. the three stories we could choose form were:


DIY HOME: A story about the perils of making your own home a “smart” home.

OLD TECH: A story about why obsolete technologies — like vinyl records and film cameras — are still with us.

WEARABLE: A story about the inevitable junking of wearable tech.

out of the 3 I decided to go with Old Tech (seen in my spread below)

Click the Image above to see my 2 full spreads!

When thinking of concept ideas I first thought of an image like the one show below, the evaluation of man walk thingie, but that idea died quickly because of how dumb I think things are when people just put legs and arms on inanimate objects and personify them.

After that idea I then thought the irony of buying old tech on new tech, I know I’ve done it to buy an old camera thats most likely worst quality them my iPhone Im buying it off of, its a funny concept to me. This was I the idea I then decided to base my main illustration off of, I thought it would get the point across of what the story is about. I also thought the tea line I chose for the illustration went perfectly with it all. Past being the old cameras and vinyls we still hold on to after years of new and “better” tech, Pixel being the new and improved tech we have available now.

when it came to displaying the story and imagery around it I thought about a cool way to show past tech right next to new tech, a side by side.

I think it’s an interesting and different way of showing both Past and present, while also framing the story text.

As for the side bar info. I wanted to think of another interesting way to frame this information inside of having a colored rectangle indicating to the reader that this is different info form the story around it. I began to think of things on theme of this tech story thats also a rectangle… a phone screen!

To show some different/ to better block the information in the side bar I decided to show it as a text thread so it’s easier to fallow.

I had fun with this project, I don’t get to work with text/ magazine layouts that often so getting to do a project like this is always fun to me. it helps me better my thought process when it comes to layouts, visual elements, and overall flow of a project. if I was able to do anything thing different I would try and push myself with the visual a little more, I like the final version I have I would of just liked seeing it maybe a little more cleaned up. But overall I’m happy with I created in the end.

Conceptual Illustration

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Click the image to see the full magazine spreads.

When this project was introduced I was excited about being able to choose an article of my own. I decided to make a cover image and magazine layout for an essay I wrote in Spring 2024. The story is about how media depiction of space and intergalactic travel has warped humanity’s expectations of what space is and could be despite the realities and limitations of space explorations. 

During the brainstorming process, I tried a few different designs for the cover image. Similar to the final product, most ideas made use of use photographic and illustrative elements. Instantly, I loved the idea of showing space from inside a fictional cockpit.

When beginning to design the cover image. I felt that it was necessary to combine elements from the fictional Star Wars universe and from the reality of space exploration. I found that the best way to do this was to depict both kinds of spacecraft outside from the perspective of the viewer. 

I did have to spend more time creating the spread layouts than expected because I ran into difficulties. I knew I wanted to bring the first part of the story onto the cover image, but this part gave me the most trouble because I had to adjust the two different text spaces to fit their placements while still having the text connect between the two pages. However, I did enjoy finding and/or creating various elements to add character to the second spread. I found it best to use the same typeface for the subheadings as the main title to connect those elements. I also had the idea to add pops of the blue and red hues from the buttons in the cover image to emulate the iconic lightsabers from the Star Wars franchise. 

For the bigger elements, I felt that it was important to use these elements to give more context to readers who may not have seen the movie the article references throughout. The chart entitled “Portrayal vs. Reality” makes more general comparisons between the franchise’s sci-fi depiction of space and the real conditions of space. This chart can also serve as a concise summary of some of the points made later in the article. For the photograph, I wanted to use a scene from the movie to show how fictional the world is; while looking for the specific scenes, I kept finding photos from filming on set that featured the director giving directions to different actors and thought this could be an interesting way to show the fakeness of the Star Wars worldbuilding. In the photo I chose for the layout, you see J.J Abrams in his typical work attire instructing his two leads in their first on-screen interaction while wearing their unrealistic galactic costumes. 

I loved working on this project because I feel like I had a lot of creative freedom from being able to pick my own story to designing pretty much every detail of the spreads’ layouts. If I were to change one thing about my design it would be to bring the primary color of the inside of the ship in the cover image to the story spread as a background color and make the story text white. Overall, I am happy with my final layout and cover image and feel that I executed my vision for this project. 

Conceptual Project Reflection

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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.

Conceptual Project

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DIY House spread thumbnail
Click the image to view the PDF

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.

RoboBlast Magazine

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For this project we created a magazine layout for 1 out of the 3 topics. I chose the topic about Phonebots, which is about robots who sole purpose is to waste the time of telemarketers. I took inspiration with the title being called Phonebots. The best way was to illustrate a robot on one side and with the robot holding the phone on the other hand. For the other page on the right hand side, I had the bright idea to draw the robot hand holding the facts to bring more illustration to the spread and not be just words.

Project 3: Magazine Spread

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For my magazine spread I chose to do the phonebot story. I chose this because it seemed the most interesting to me from the moment I heard about it. I also was able to imagine an conceptual illustration for this as soon as I heard what it was about. I decided on the name scams for scams because its simple, rolls off the tongue and adds intrigue for the audience.

Click the photo to see the full magazine spread

I chose the muted green color as my base because I felt like it fit well with the colors used in the illustration. I decided to go with a scam likely call because it is an image that anyone would understand. At first I toyed with the idea of it on the screen where it is still ringing and you have to choose to accept or decline, but with this story I felt like that wouldn’t make complete sense for the first thing you see. So I decided to have the phone call answered and put 20 minutes because in the story they talk about how one time a bot had the scam caller on for over 20 minutes. I also played with the location of the time, because on an actual phone call the time goes above the name of the caller, but as I drew the animation it looked like the time the call was taking place, so I decided to make it less realistic and put it under (where I think most people imagine the call time to be anyways).

My biggest problem I had with making this magazine spread is the length of the story. Since it’s such a short story I knew I needed to add more things to the spread. I knew I wanted a sidebar so that was able to easily take up two columns. I also knew that I wanted text boxes of things the bot can say that was quoted in the article to pop up on both spreads of the article to keep the continuation going. As I said prior this story intrigued me a lot that I even did some outside research on the company. This research helped me find the logo for the company that I was also able to add onto the second spread. The logo was sadly only in not the best quality but I still wanted to include it in my project. I decided to also add a tiny phone with the phonebot’s number at the end of the article to tie it all together and clear the dead space. I think this tied everything together on this page and also the previous spread while still giving information from the article.

Conceptual Illustration: Old Tech

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CLICK TO SEE FULL SPREAD

Almost immediately, after looking at the stories, I wanted to do the Old Tech story. I thought it had the most creative freedom and the content was very interesting. I made myself sit down and for 20 mins write down every piece of tech that I could think of. Then I did that process once more but only thinking about things that symbolize the idea of “old”. After this 40 mins session, I looked at my two lists and tried to think of ways I could use and of the elements. I wanted the imagery to not be too obvious that it would be unoriginal, but I also wanted the idea and themes to be easy to recognize. I first landed on the idea of the dentures in water, in my mind they mean that someone is old and they have a simple enough shape to mimic. Then I went through my tech list and tried to mentally place items in the glass. I eventually landed on the older rotary style phones because of its shape looking like the top denture in a glass. I modeled the glass, phone, and dentures after real subjects and added highlights and shadows in order to make them seem more 3D. I wanted it to be realistic enough so that people aren’t confused at first glance. Then I based the typography and the name of the story off the illustration. The name came from the idea of a “bit” of nostalgia, where I replaced the bit with bite, referencing the dentures. The color came directly from the phone’s reference in hopes of tying them together. For the font, I knew I wanted a sans serif because then it is less likely to steal the show from the illustration. To finish off the type, I italicized the “bite” so that people would hopefully notice the wordplay. The piece still felt disconnected, so I went back to my references and saw the wire that connects the receiver and the phone and decided to model a brush off the design. This worked on two levels: it allowed me to connect the two pages and it allowed for some of the white space to be taken up above the title. The final decision/intention I had for the spread was to figure out the footer. I despised the way a traditional footer looked on and around my image. After much trial and error I rotated the text and it fit. I think it not only serves its purpose, but it is also a rule bending move that DEADHEAD Publications would be proud of. Overall, I am super satisfied with the result. 

CLICK TO SEE FULL SPREAD

Conceptual Illustration – Personal

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For this project, I decided to design for the personal article choice that is about connecting with those we have lost through technology, specifically social media.

At the beginning of my design process, I first gained inspiration by creating a design inspiration board on Pinterest where I gained insight into how I wanted my piece to look, which was collage-style. I was also really inspired by pieces Professor Layton showed in class that had a collage aesthetic, as shown below.

Illustration by Mike McQuade for POLITICO
Illustration by Mike McQuade for POLITICO

I wanted to bring in a “hand-made” quality to my conceptual illustration. For this, I first sketched out an idea for my piece, which involved hands reaching out from phones to touch one another. The idea for this sprung from wanting to highlight the importance technology has had on keeping connections close for those that are far away or may have passed and you want to continue to remember and commemorate in your life. I searched on many websites to find stock images and decided on hands that are sticking their pointer finger out to each other to indicate that they are reaching out to each other. They are coming out of phones because it symbolizes how even though they may not be near they can still connect through technology. It was difficult for me to decide what else to do to the conceptual image once I had the basic hands and phones down. I ultimately decided to add circles and rectangles around the image to give it more of a collage and “scrapbook” feel as though someone was putting stickers all over the page. Aesthetically to me, it felt right. I chose greens and blues for the colors in this piece because I felt they were calming and also represented Earth-like colors to me, which I wanted to draw upon because the piece highlights how you can connect with others on technology, even if from across the world!

For the title, I actually sturggled for a while as I found it difficult to come up with a name that would bring together the whole piece. I landed on Humanity Behind Tech because in the piece, the author Nick Bilton dicusses how he usually writes about the negatives of technology and how this piece actually dicussed a positve which I thought “Humanity Behind Tech” would be fitting because this time he gets to finally highlight a psotive of techbology, an aspect of it that brings people together.

For the whole layout, I ultimately decided to go simple to save space for the words and to unite the conceptual image of the piece with a more simplistic layout that gave space to the main imagery.

Overall, I enjoyed making this piece and found that it pushed me out of my comfort zone, as I don’t make many magazine spreads. Next time, I would spend more time on the overall layout of the piece and put more effort into the imagery on the second spread.

Conceptual Illustration – Personal

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Click to see a PDF of my full design!

For this project, I designed a conceptual illustration for the “Personal” story. This story is about how social media’s personal touch outweighs its downsides. It highlights examples where social media has helped people to feel connected to loved ones who have passed away. The story conveys the message that although these people are no longer with us physically, social media helps keep their memories alive in the digital world. I wanted my conceptual illustration to convey this same message.

I began my creative process for this project by sketching different conceptual images that all convey the message of the story. I eventually decided on this image of a social post of a family on a laptop. I felt it effectively illustrated the idea of connection via social media with loved ones who have passed. In this family photo, I added a halo above the father and also pixelated him while leaving the mother and son unpixelated. I made these design decisions to convey that the father had passed away, but social media kept his spirit alive and connected to his wife and son.

Next, I decided on the headline Connected Through Loss. I felt it effectively reflects the story’s message while also grabbing the attention of the reader. Lastly, I formatted the layout of these magazine spreads. I used blue colors from my illustration throughout both magazine spreads so that everything in the article was visually tied together. Additionally, I feel like blue can be related to heaven, and therefore relates to this story about social media connecting people with those who have passed on.

Overall, I am happy with my final design for Project 3. Designing a conceptual illustration is more challenging than many other graphic design projects I have worked on. I felt that it encouraged me to push my creativity even further than usual, however, I had fun working on it and am proud of the way it turned out.