Portfolio Projects
Before diving into the projects featured in my portfolio, let me first provide an overview of what this blog post is about. This post will focus on the projects themselves, explaining why I have chosen them and how they align with my specialism in advertising. Two are from my university studies and one from a passion project.
These campaign posters were created for my activism module and in order to do this, I researched past historical protests, other campaigns, advertisements, websites and health books to get a thorough understanding of the societal issue and how I could design it.
There are other elements to my campaign, but these were the two I was most proud of because they have a strong emotional element to it and uses a donation based call to action with a QR code. As campaigns typically use advertising techniques, I wanted to try my hand at it, through the messaging, emotional appeal, strong visual language that’s concise and collaboration with a charity organisation for credibility.
As a very recent piece of work, I felt it was relevant and very suited to putting into my Portfolio (also it’s mentioned in my CV too). I strongly believe it shows my development in advertising and how I’ve applied my learning. In my opinion, it’s one of my best work in terms of how I’ve used colour, typography and imagery to bring it all together.
This is also one of my university works from last semester, but I find it again relevant as it also shows a different way of thinking.
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As this was a community-based project and I’ve always had a love for my childhood obsession, Scooby-Doo, I said, “You know what? Why not do my project on this? I’m not embarrassed at all” (Spoiler, I was for a while but I got over it). Anyways, my idea was to create an editorial that was unique and mysterious to match the plotline from the old episodes. I decided to take a new approach by subverting the fan art, (where it was very colourful and used typical imagery) by using a monochromatic colour palette, and imagery that linked to the specific episode transcript I used. I wanted it to be interactive in its function, where there were many hidden areas and you had to find the ending by following the arrows.
The reason I chose this editorial to go into my portfolio is because it shows I can work with print materials if ever needed. It’s also because I made it difficult for myself by choosing to create a triangular editorial in which I learnt a lot about printing and how to keep dedication to my work- even though I struggled a lot. Another reason I chose this is because, it’s very specific to its audience and is very much made for those who enjoy a good mystery to solve. In terms of my specialism, it proves I know how to target an audience and shows I know ways to entice them to interact through their need for finding out the ending.
Finally, we have my Thailand posters. Since the last post on them, I got some feedback on how to improve and structure them more towards advertising rather than just a regular poster.
As mentioned before, I wanted to make it real by using the official Thai tourist company (which promotes specific locations and experiences), in collaboration with a British airway company to reinforce the credibility of the advertisements. I’ve also arranged the logos at the bottom of the page to match typical conventions. By providing a call to action, which is to ‘Plan Your Thai Escape’ with a link, it encourages audiences to immediately look into planning.
Through its visual identity, I’ve chosen high-quality images that immerse the viewer in the culture and bring a sense of exploration and adventure, aiming to be persuasive. As well as this, I have combined my initial fonts, informative text, and background box into a clearer hierarchy to follow.
If I had more time, I could make further refinements and add more to the series with by looking into what different cities are famous for and structure it accordingly.
This passion project helped develop my skills in advertising, even though I know there could be more to refine. However, it also shows what I might be interested in, in general — exploration, history, culture, and food. The project I set up for myself reveals a bit about me and combines my interests with the specialism I want to pursue after university, therefore is suitable for my portfolio.
My portfolio work needed to be relevant to my specialism, which is what I’ve done. I’ve been selective, ensuring all the work shows important aspects of advertising, i.e., audience, and I’ve presented my (sort of) style of design that is structured and clean. As well as this, it highlights the type of imagery and typography I tend to choose that has direct links to the subject of the designs.
To summarise, all these projects link in some way to advertising, and they all have a way of teaching me something, whether that was software or other techniques. They also reflect me as a designer right now- where I am in my journey of development and areas I need to learn more in.
