HELLO I am Filip Alexandru, an enthusiastic digital designer, who has recently graduated the Digital Arts course from The University of Kent. Throughout the following pages I will be showcasing my best personal and academic projects from the past few years. Given that the coursework and my interests are varied, the upcoming projects best reflect the range of my skills as a digital designer. 1 HIGH HANGERS High Hangers was a recent client who wanted a logo design for pub with a nature-inspired theme. Brief: Design a modern logo for printing in small and large format, with forest elements and with a hammock as the centrepiece. Process: I started by creating 3 different styles of logo, that would be in line with the client’s brief. The first design was made in the style of a patch, the second one was more typography based, while the third one was a combination of the previous ones. Since the client wanted a modern design, I chose a flat aesthetic for the elements. After presenting the initial designs to the client, for the first revision we decided to combine some of the elements from the first and third design, to create a new look. After that iteration of the design was completed, the client asked for a second revision, as they wanted the main elements to be coloured. In the end, they decided on a flat colour scheme for most of their printed assets and on a more three-dimensional colour scheme for their merchandise. 3 Initial designs 4 First Revision Final Version 5 TECH TRIBE During my second year of univeristy, I was part of a team for the major project of the year. Since we had the name, we also had to have a logo. Being the one with most experience in terms of logo design, I assigned this task to myself from the start. Brief: Design a sleek and modern logo for an indie tech company. Process: Initially I decided to go against the flow and base my design on african tribal motifs, all the while using more modern typefaces. The initial designs were plentiful, so, during a team meeting, the first revision was carried out and the decision was made to alter one of the initial logos. A few concepts were made, with the centre point of the logo being a spear shaped element that divides the “Tech” and “Tribe” words, in order to suggest the integration of the old within the new. Finally, in order to build more upon the aforementioned idea, the “Tribe” text was coloured in a very earthy tone, simillar to the one the ground has in the West African plains. 6 Initial designs 7 First Revision 8 Final Version 9 MINDSIGHT With “MindSight” being my final university project, it was necessary for it to have a nice logo. Since the application was designed to help people focus and deal with mental health issues, the key elements of the logo had to be related to the subject. Brief: Design a minimalist logo that suggests mindfulness. Process: After carrying out some research into the symbolism surrounding mindfulness and inner peace, the idea for the logo became clear to me. As such, I took the symbol for mindfuless, which is represented by two droplets of water falling into a whirlpool, and the symbol for wisdom, which is the eye, and combined them in such a way that the logo suggests mindfulness is reachable through wisdom. 10 11 MINDSIGHT The main idea behind “MindSight” is to be an online hub for people suffering from mental health issues. It does so, by giving the users an interactive experience, in the form of short multiple choice stories, and by providing them with the resources needed to seek help or to better understand what they are going through. For me this was a passion project, as I too had dealt with such issues in the past, and regardless of the multiple setbacks along the way, I still created a finished product. Brief: Design a modern and easy to use website for people suffering with mental health issues. Process: Since the focus of the project was Depression, I started by conducting research into how the people suffering from this condition use web based applications. The conclusions were that it has to be well laid out, so it’s simple to use, and also to spark interest in the users through the use of visual cues; as people suffering from depression tend to give up on things if they are too complicated or not intersting. Even though the challenge was big, I managed to create a sleek, easy to use and attractive design. 13 14 15 16 PLUSHIE “Plushie” was the second year final project that me and my team undertook. The idea was to create an interactive toy pet, that would come alive in a VR environment. The goal was to create a therapeutic experience for people suffering with neurodegenerative diseases and for people who are immunocompromised or allergic to animals. Since “Plushie” would be a physical toy, the team decided to also create a website that would inform potential buyers about what our product is and why we came up with it. As such, I was assigned with designing the marketing website for the project. Brief: Design a colourful and modern website that showcases the product and goals for potential buyers. Process: Given that our product was meant as a tool for therapy that would evoke feelings of happiness within the users, I thought it was appropriate to create colourful visuals for the website, as such, each section is coloured different. At the same time, since the idea behind the product was quite complex, for the users to easily understand what we created, I had to summarise our content and present it in a easy to understand manner. Thus, the website I designed is easy to navigate, colourful and straight to the point. 17 18 19 20 NEW HORIZONS I am a huge fan of the “Forza” game series and one of the spinoffs, “Forza Horizon”, is based around the idea of a massive music festival, which also hosts car events. When I was presented with the opportunity to create a poster for a fictional festival, I instantly decided to render out my idea of how a real life poster would look for the fictional “Horizon” festival. Brief: Create an appealing poster for a music festival inspired by the one from the “Forza Horizon” game series. Process: Since the majority of the audience that frequents music festivals is composed of teenagers and young adults, I started by choosing a vibrant colour palette. For that I researched the festivals from the games and analysed the colours used. After choosing the palette, I decided that the main elements would be motifs that suggest the music being played there and images from past festivals, in order to show to potential customers how mcuh fun past editions of the festival were. In the end, the poster looked as if the festival was actually going to happen. 22 23 STUDY MORE The “Study More” poster was a creation of mine that I did for an online campaign. The campaign was aimed towards final year highschool students in Romania, and it insentivised them to study for the Baccalaureate exam. The idea was to create a compilation of works, from all ranges of creative people that would encourage the students to get more involved with their academic activities, as a lot of highschool students usually give up taking this exam. Brief: Create an motivational poster that sends an important message about education to highschool students Process: While I was researching ideas for a catchphrase to put on the poster I remembered about the classic “Keep calm and carry on” posters from World War 2 and since the main theme of the project was to encourage students to start studying, one of the phrases had to be “Study More”. After remembering my own days during highschool, I realised that one of the main things everyone liked to do in highschool was to party. As such, I decided that the first part of the poster had to be “Party Less”. Thus, “Party Less And Study More” was the catchphrase I used within the design. 24 25 DEEP DOWN Within the “MindSight” project, the main feature were the short stories that are depicting what is like living with a mental health condition. As such, I wrote “Deep Down”, which shows to the users, through the perspective of a fairytale, what is like to deal with depression and how to overcome it. Brief: Draw illustrations, in the style of a fairytale, that create a visual representation of the actions happening in the story Process: Since the story plays out like a fairytale, I started the design process by looking into old, hand drawn storybooks. After looking at lots of diiferent styles, I decided to combine a couple of them and then modernise them a bit. At the same time, since I also wanted to have visual cues that would help the user better understand the feelings that the main charater has during the different sections of the story, I decided that I should mark the feelings of happiness by having the scenes or different objects in colour and the feelings of sadness drawn up in black & white. In the end I was very happy about both the written part and the drawn one. 25 26 27 28 PERSONAL PROJECTS The following artworks are a compilation of different projects I did for myself, or to help freinds by creating a visual representation of their ideas. While they are quite eclectic, I am still very proud of them and even more so for the ones that went on to become character art, game splash screens and even wallpapers. 29 30 31 32
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