There’s a bit of a debate in the professional design community on whether designers should be showcasing school work in their portfolios. As a person in the position of vetting and hiring designers I’ve found that I enjoy the inclusion of school projects. To me it showcases early fundamental design skills and a general eye for design, as well as displays pride in your roots.
With that said – below are a few of my early projects created while at Pratt Institute that I still hold dear. #noregrets
This project was inspired by my strong love for sunflower seeds. The idea was to create a faux product that would be an elevated take on the snack that is often associated with pedestrian activities. I made up a series of sophisticated natural flavors that enhance the taste of the roasted kernel. I wanted the product line to appeal to a more upper scale audience, but also introduce a bit of playfulness to the packaging with the bright colors and the name ‘Sédies’.
In addition to branding and hand crafting the actual packaging, I also created the illustrations for each one of the flavors. This packaging project was featured on The Dieline and a few other design blogs.
For a handful of years Fishs Eddy ran a contest with the Pratt institute where they would chose a topic and have students submit their concepts. In 2008 the theme was ‘Childhood’ for which I created this playful yet very simple series of dinnerware pieces playing off of the universal game of Connect the Dots.
That year my design won first place and I briefly worked with the design department of Fishs Eddy to iterate on these designs and skew the items featured from vegetables to more nuanced foods, like sushi. To my total devastation (at the time), they never did run these into production.
Pretty early on into my college career I discovered a passion for silk screening and book binding. I found any excuse to combine those two passions and one of those outputs was this small collection of stylized character books. The characters were modeled after notable Brooklyn personalities that we were surrounded by at Pratt Institute. New York is a very diverse place, and Brooklyn has always been even more so. It was hard not to be tempted to leverage that diversity in your work. I created two-color silk screens for each stylized character and printed them over book fabric that I then bound into blank colorful journals.