The following pieces are projects that I am most proud of from my 2 years at Freestyle.
Documentary Book
We began this project in the early weeks of February 2023. With a wide range of options about what we could document. At first, I was overwhelmed, but as we read Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner’s Seeing Silicon Valley in English class, a specific story stood out to me. It was about a woman named Mary who moved from Africa and lives with her son in Silicon Valley. Although she was living in a better home and was with her son, she said she constantly felt lonely compared to when she was living in her village back in Africa. She claimed that although living conditions may have been worse in Africa, she was constantly surrounded by her community and, therefore, never felt alone. Whereas in America, she felt as if everyone was alone with themselves, and the sense of community she had back at home was not found in the States.
This story stuck with me because it made me realize that in the world of modern consumerism, people often order and review their food with barely an exchange of words, if even, and continue to go on with their lives. That inspired me to make my documentary on the issue of convenience over community. And when I think of community, the first thing that comes into my mind is the Sweet Shop.
Product Design
You only live once; make it count. Yolo is an energy drink that embodies everything exciting, riveting, and spontaneous. Whether you’re Skydiving out of a plane or powering up before a hike, Yolo is your energy drink. The can is a colorful ombre that gives off happy and energetic vibes. Surrounding the iconic YOLO are figurines of people doing extreme sports such as mountain biking, skydiving, wakeboarding, and skateboarding. The idea behind the design of the logo was that it would catch someone’s eye in the grocery store and inspire them to go out and live life to its fullest. I chose to design an energy drink because it’s something that I associate with buzzing excitement and is something that I believe has a wide range of uses. For example, someone could drink a Yolo while trying to stay awake while doing their homework or a Yolo before completing a toeside back roll 360.
I designed and created the logo with Adobe Illustrator and then formatted my logo onto my products using the Placeit website. Moreover, I could display all my products by placing them on a triptych, which I made in Adobe Photoshop. Some of the problems I encountered while working on this project were figuring out how to grab the consumer’s attention and how to adapt my logo to my other products appropriately.
Personal Mandala
Using Illustrator, I created a detailed yet simple and imperfect Mandala, just like me. The message behind my Mandala was that not everyone is as perfect as they seem. Along the way of this project, I confirmed that everyone is special in their own way; each Mandala is unique regardless of how much detail they have.
I initially struggled with so many options and ideas I didn’t know where to start. Another problem I had was working on my Mandala too zoomed in, meaning that it was hard to see any of the details once I zoomed out because they were so much smaller than I realized.
I am proud of the outcome of my Mandala and that it’s true to who I am and the ideas I had in my head. I wouldn’t change anything about it, and I look forward to using my Mandala template again to create new and exciting Mandalas.
Food Things- Zenith
The Zenith project is one that combines all the skills we have learned at Freestyle over the past two years. I chose to make a cookbook called Food Things in Adobe InDesign. I combined childhood photos with childhood recipes and decorated each page with graphic design elements to make them unique and reflect my vision.
A Fall Moment Rotoscoping
Using Adobe AfterEffects, we learned how to add text effects and rotoscoping to a video and ended with what you see above. This project was definitely challenging since AfterEffects is not my strong suite but I am very happy with the outcome 🙂