Category Archives: A. Nakajima

Conceptual Project

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DIY House spread thumbnail
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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.

Influence Poster: Dima Shiryaev

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Dima Shiryaev is a Russian graphic designer known for his experimental and diverse design style. His work includes posters for nightclubs, festivals, and exhibitions, notably collaborating with Kunznya House. What defines Shiryaev’s art style is the use of typography, bold geometric designs, and hand-drawn elements, creating textured and visually engaging compositions.

I chose this designer because I have been struggling to find my own style. Shiryaev’s style allowed me the power of creative freedom to incorporate different elements.

To represent his work, I viewed certain posters with similar styles, specifically the Samo DJ poster and The Villars poster. I appreciated the combination of loose, sketch style with contrasting bold, geometric shapes. To incorporate these, I illustrated the silhouette of the bike with the trackpad to give a sense of roughness. This is then used to cut this shape out of a box to create a cutout element. This element takes direct inspiration from the Samo DJ poster, creating a sense of depth. This allowed me to have more freedom in placement of elements, such as the headline placed behind the cutout. Similarly, the tires on the bike have different arrangement. The front tire is positioned on the top, while the back tire is hiding behind the cutout. This is to create a sense of depth, as well as to bring attention closer to the center of the page rather than the border. The use of contrasting color weighs into this as well, as the front tire is a bright, saturated yellow, whereas the back tire having a less saturated pink.

The second element I incorporated from Shiryaev is how he organizes each element. Many of the texts are written within boxes, cutting part of the text off. This gives a sense of roughness. I accomplished this by using the “Draw Inside” feature on Illustrator.

Another important element that forms Shiryaev’s style is the hand-drawn forms. This helps create a contrast against the cutout and boxes. Besides the tires, hand-drawn elements are used for the underlining of the headline and to separate sections for information about the race.

Other elements include minimal text, overlapping elements, different text alignments, vertical text, and contrasting color palettes.