Showcase
Introductory Note
Hi! My name is Miranda Hernandez and I am a senior at Freestyle Academy. My focus is in Design.
To tell you a little about myself, I enjoy reading, drawing, dancing, and taking walks through nature. Outside of school, I mentor and tutor my younger peers and write for a student-run publication called SLAM Magazine through which I seek to help create change.
I am pleased to be able to gain critiques from an external audience. I look forward to gaining critiques in whatever areas deemed necessary, as well as how to improve the effectiveness of my visual communication. Any parting advice for future works too. (Specifically, how do you maintain a vision of the end goal? I have learned that as time progresses, I tend to deviate.)
I have chosen my Movie Poster, Product Design, and my Pastel Painting project. Being closely intertwined with my personal life, I believe that they most honestly represent my determination and growth as a digital artist. I look forward to meeting you soon!
You can connect with me at: mira.hdz04@gmail.com
My Projects:
Movie Poster
For my movie poster, I sought to capture the pre-revolutionary essence of rich history and bloodshed. I specifically wanted to showcase the resilience of the women during these times.
In order to create this, I first started in Photoshop using a combination of clipping masks, the curves tool, and adjustments to saturation to form the image I wanted. I then moved my image onto Illustrator and with image trace recolored the pieces. From that point on, I created any necessary elements.
About the Movie
Maria Guadalupe is the daughter of a poor, struggling family in Mexico. For that, she must marry Enrique, the son of one of the most powerful men in el Pueblo. On the eve of the Mexican Revolution, she runs away with her forbidden beloved to join the revolutionaries.
Misfortune befalls her and she is then forced to continue with her arranged marriage. Little did she know that her life would be all the unhappier, in more ways than one. She realizes she is with child, meanwhile, Enrique continues with his abuses, when Maria finally snaps. During that time, she has to figure out if she’s strong enough to come out against all odds. Including her family, society, and even her heart.
Product Design
For my Product Design, I wanted to create something fun, engaging, to look at and something people would purchase. We were tasked with choosing a food product to create a logo for. This included doing lots of market research in order to make my product stand out.
As I child I used to like seeing colorful packaging or cutesy designs and wanted to buy them. As I grew older though, they began dwindling since it was oriented more towards a younger audience. So for this project I wanted to evoke nostalgia and good times. Especially going out of the pandemic, people are more drawn to lighthearted things. As people want to get reacquainted with new things people will be all the more expressive in showing and feeling the love.
I intended to play on that fact and allow people to purchase a not overtly cutesy design perhaps exhibited in a slightly more mature way. Especially going out of a pandemic, people are especially drawn to more lighthearted things as they want to get reacquainted with the world. I think that I do a good job at evoking nostalgia and good times.
I used a combination of Illustrator, Place it, and Indesign to see it all come together. In Illustrator, I designed the logo and picked the color scheme then. That meant having to be well aware of the target audience. Moving on to Place It, I had to make the images to the scale of the required one. This required a bit of playing with dimensions. After all, we were tasked with ultimately creating a triptych using those same images.
For our Magazine Ad, we used InDesign to set a margin and a gutter. In addition, we used our overall research to better present our product and make the public buy with intention.
Pastel Painting
In Digital Media, we were tasked with digitally painting an image of our choosing. Painting is a new medium for me. More so was digital painting. It became a bit more difficult as we were supposed to use only one image.
This meant doing the almost impossible: finding the perfect brush. Since I believe that a real-life pastel painting would have various degrees of colors and shading, I made sure to use smudge tools and different levels of opacity.
Closing
As a future Freestyle graduate, I look to the future and reflect on my experience at Freestyle as a great toolbox of camaraderie and knowledge. It gave me the chance to learn about myself more in-depth and be exposed to so many new mediums. I believe that it has bettered prepared me for the future.
I plan to attend Cal Poly Pomona this fall studying Apparel Merchandising and Management with a focus on Apparel Design. There I hope to be involved with outdoor and leadership activities. I look forward to meeting new people and gaining hands-on experience. I anticipate getting to meet new people and gain hands-on experiences through internships and AM^2. I will channel my knowledge gained at CPP towards expanding my skillset but mainly towards becoming a successful fashion designer.