KEXP Summer Drive

Summer One-Day Fundraiser

Timeframe: May-June 2021
Collaborated with: Michelle Billings (Design Director)

Roles:

• Graphic Designer
• Illustration
• Production

KEXP is almost entirely funded by listener donations, and has four(ish) drives a year. The 2021 Summer drive was based off of a postcard design I made as a reminder card for existing donors to continue their monthly donations/membership. 
The reminder card was from a request for something geometric, vintage looking, and maybe a little agit-prop inspired—with all the elements that make up KEXP included. We went through some old posters and found some styles we liked and found a palette we could add the KEXP gold into. The “golden record” as a sun (it’s also a space reference btw—they love space) along with coffee, nature, and music equipment.

To make it into the summer drive, we did a rotation of the same color palette, and changed some of the elements into a more summery/warm theme. For the record, just between you and me—I don’t know why a popsicle with sunglasses made the cut, but a hotdog with sunglasses didn’t. Anyways, for the end of drive thank you messaging, I felt that having the sun/record setting behind the water and mountains would be a nice way to show a bit of sentimentality in the end. This also required another color rotation to make it look more like a sunset.
The only swag item for this drive was their request for a tote bag that was supposed to look as “publicly funded media as possible” (boring) and emphasized to pick a font that’s probably default on MS Word. It was a huge hit and all were snatched up within hours.
This ended up being KEXP’s most successful fundraising to date.

KEXP Fall Drive

Annual Fall Week-long Fundraiser

Timeframe: August-October 2021
Collaborated with: Michelle Billings (Design Director)

Roles:

• Graphic Designer
• Illustration
• Production

As this was a swag heavy drive, in addition to the t-shirt, there were also five mugs (one for each daytime show) with the show title and slogan, a bandana, a beanie (much requested), a sling bag. The latter two were just logo slaps, but I needed to make them look real for the donors, as the product was yet to have been ordered.

This was a two part project, the initial part was creating a sticker-postcard. The ask was for something like a calendar, and they wanted 12 stickers on a 5”7” card. Michelle and I basically just went to town making a ton of illustrations with the concept of “Amplifiers help us keep a beat.” We tried a couple iterations of things that suggest or rhymed with beat, along with some seasonal images. The end product was kind of a grab bag of the client’s favorite drawings we made, that I layed out and scaled to look as much like a calendar as possible.

Part 2 was making a logo and style lockup to suggest beating. I added in some motion to the logo and lockup, feeling that the “Amplifiers” should actually amplify, and the heart should have some sort of beating to it. They hadn’t had anything animated for social usage for a while so were delighted to have a little bit of motion to post on their Instagram.

Miscellania

Just a collection of various illustrations from drawing challenges, stickers I’ve made, and just whatever other fun stuff I make in my own time. It’s fun, I promise.

Various stickers I have made in the past couple years. I *try* to come up with a new sticker every month.

While doom-scrolling some pandemic news, I noticed that the graphs for case counts looked a lot like Joy Division’s ICONIC album cover for Unknown Pleasures (designed by Peter Saville). I took the weekly case average’s from the beginning of this pandemic to the end of November 2020 (the most recent data at the time) and compiled the graphs for all 50 US states descending alphabetically.

Fun Fact #1: This was from late 2020, this would have been MUCH more work to make today, unfortunately (this is more true everyday).
Fun Fact #2: I started selling this shirt on my Etsy for some passive income, and it got reported and sent me to Etsy jail 3 times. Not for copyright infringement, which I probably deserved, but because it offended someone, 

Be A Bowie
Little gif that is part of an internal identity system developed for a silo/division of the Publicis Groupe. One of the five core cultural values is “Be a Bowie”— be original, take a risk, create something new, and inspire others to collaborate.

Peloton Seattle

Peloton Seattle is a bike shop and café in the crossroads of Seattle’s First Hill and Central District neighborhoods. 

T-Shirt for Peloton’s 5th anniversary.
The ask was for a wizard (based on one from a halloween drawing challenge) on a mountain bike, going down 5 hills/jumps (one for each year). 2 colors+white, along with accompanying sticker.

Peloton X Swift Industries
Coinciding with Peloton’s expansion, they collaborated with Swift Industries (a local cycling bag manufacturer) setting a Swift product wall in the dining area. I was asked to make an illustration for social media to announce the collaboration and support it’s opening. They additionally asked for usage of 4 of my concept sketches for ongoing event announcements. 

Branding

The Vera Project

Rebrand of The Vera Project

Timeframe: January-March 2020
Collaborated with: Kayli Putaportiwon, Martin Lindberg, and Adam Smith (on research, tonal territory, and mission, promise and positioning statements.)

Roles:

• Branding
• Layout Design
• Graphic Designer

Skills:

• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe InDesign
• Procreate
• Research
• Typography

Background

The Vera Project is a non-profit organization
providing youth in the Seattle an all-ages music
venue, classes and workshops for the arts and
music industry, volunteer opportunities, and a
safe and inclusive social space.
The primary offerings of Vera are:
• All-ages shows up to 5 nights a week
• Screen-printing classes/studio
• Audio-engineering classes and facilities
• Live production workshops

Problem

As the most visible all-ages venue (and workshop space) in the Seattle Area, The Vera Project has been a fantastic community asset for Seattle’s youth for nearly 20 years, but is currently facing several issues such as:

• Lack of a cohesive brand idenity
  
• Misunderstood target demographic
  
• Outdated website
  
• Poor environmental visibility

Objectives

The end product was to create a physical brand book (unfortunately, we could not actually print it because of obvious coronavirus related reasons) that showcased the new brand identity.
However, that was a small aspect of the whole project which was:

• Research the services, history, and audience of Vera
• Create a brand identity–Purpose, Mission, Promise, and Concept
• Build a set of brand standards and guidelines
• Create a logo/wordmark
• Build out assets and applications for the new identity
• Create examples of collateral that would be used

Process

We started by researching the history, audience, services, and culture of The Vera Project, along with interviewing the operations manager. From that we learned:

Audience

• 18-24 year old Seattle Area Youth looking for creative and social outlets, along with untraditional learning experiences.
  
• Their parents and Vera “alumni” who support Vera financially, through volunteering, and community engagement.
  
• 25+ Adults who are interested in music and art and are looking to see a show or learn something new.
  

Mission Statement
Based on looking at what tonal territories we saw fit we found that:

The Vera Project is creative, inclusive, and empowering–committed to building community through music and art.

Brand Promise
We believe that expression powers personal and community growth. That’s why we are committed to providing an all-ages, safe and accessible venue for entertainment
and education.

Solution

The Vera project is an outlet for the musical and artistic creativity of Seattle’s youth, empowers them to grow as individuals with confidence, and works to include all, no matter their background, race, gender, religion, class, or ableness.

My overall concept became “Amplify your DIY,” with advertising and overall messaging promoting Vera as a platform to elevate one’s creativity, self-fulfillment, and self-actualization.

This also led to the most controversial decision I made: the color palette, which was almost, CMYK, utilizing the lightest Pantone shade of yellow available to make a distinction. This was to emphasize that just like CMYK, Vera provides the components to build something larger, more creative, and different.

For the identity I utilized several elements such as:

The lightning bolt
This has been repurposed from the original logo and Vera’s origins in the old Electic Union building, and has been integrated into the logo.
Ink smears/blobs
As one of Vera’s primary draws is the screenprinting studio, I used an element that is both a common sight inside the buildinb itself, but unique to stand out visually, especially when place unexpectadly or out scale.
Overlapping and blended visuals
Vera is an inclusive mix of folks from all ages and backgrounds, and the mixing of colors and elements is used to evoke that.
Legible type
Inclusion requires accessibility, which requires bold, but still legible type solutions.

Application

The assets I built up besides the brandbook with its logo, type, color, and photo guidelines contains examples of:

Exterior/Environmental Graphics
Vera is currently in a large grey building and is easily overlooked by its neighbor KEXP (in fact the barista inside KEXP said they frequently get guests who were looking for Vera).

New Website
A more fun and modern look, with an emphasis on the class offerings and show schedule.

Print Ads
To bring attention to programs and other offerings.

Merchandise
Vera runs largely on donations and city funding, merchandise can be sold to donors, alumni, and parents to help raise funds, with the added advantage of much of it being able to be printed in-house and onsite.

Reflection

When reviewed, all components in the guide were described as looking like what The Vera Project intends to project. The guidebook itself is extremely comprehensive and shows a full range of the tools and usage of how the brand is used.
This project was a total roller coaster of emotions but overall was incredibly rewarding.