Marigold: A Girl's Guide to Growing
Marigold is an imaginary magazine for preteen girls. I wanted the perception of the magazine to be cool and trendy to a newer generation. My motivation for this came from my own experience of reading magazines like American Girl or Girl's Life which really benefitted the growth and development I was going through but I felt embarrassed next to girls reading Teen Vogue or Seventeen. I based my color selection and art style off of my target demographic of young, impressionable girls. I wanted the colors and images to be considered "cute" but not "cutesy" as to not turn away girls who were wanting to be taken seriously. I choose these bright colors to be attention-grabbing and retain my audience's attention span without defining or generalizing what "girly" colors were. My article titles came from my ideas of what knowledge I was lacking when it came to my adolescents and what advice girls could use that wasn't restricted to boys, clothes or popularity.
Book Design
I designed these book covers and spreads based on my interest in them.
Girl in Translation
Girl in Translation is a coming-of-age story about a girl who emigrates from Hong Kong to New York with her mother. They end up working in a sweat shop to make ends meet and eventually move into beading. Even though I liked the book, I didn't feel like the cover did much for it or was very interesting to look at. I included a fabric texture and photographed the beads myself to create the design based off the characters' experiences. I also drew the thread-like text to signify this. Even though the story is about a young girl, I didn't want the cover to be childish because it covers serious subject matter. But I also wanted it to have a colorful element to show the character's girlhood and development which is where the beads came in.
Typographic Cinematic
Typographic Cinematic is a book about type found in cinema. Saul Bass was one of the first designers I learned about and ever since I've been interested in his unique design style and use of kinetic text. Type in film can communicate much more than just written word, it tells us something about the character's personality or how they are feeling and adds to film's aesthetic. As a film studies minor, I always think its fun to check out the different typefaces being used at the movies so that's what this book is for.
