College Portfolio Vol.2

HASSAN ABUABDALLAH Port Of All You: A College Portfolio

7,00 Miles Motion Graphics + Book

In my final Motion Graphics class, our final project was to make a film with a narrative of personal experience, a “what I’ve learned” kind of video. This short film discusses character, and how a person develops it when they are tossed into a situation that isolates them from the comfort of their home environment, or rather, it shows them what it’s like to be in the real world. This video is targeted at high school students, college freshmen, and generally everyone on the verge of embarking on a big step. I wanted something homemade and child book look and feel to stand out from everything else, I wanted to stray away from how the media, or rather,“the adults,” try to appeal to teenagers; there’s always this awkwardness, they try so hard to keep up with a demographic that switches trends in a blink; I sticked with my own personal style, something that no teen or adult would forget easily. I chose chicken and birds as my characters because I can’t draw humans, and I used band-aids as a metaphor for labels and stereotypes because they’re indication of a wound in the process of healing. My accompanying imagery was varying shades of green and red (and sometimes blue) to match the chicken and the ducks. For the book, I made the cover out of tinfoil as a metaphor for chicken sanwdiwches and fast food, and the book is made sloppy to connect with the sloppy drawing style.

This work is featured on the 2017 Reveal Showcase.

Lumen Brand + UI/UX + Video

Lumen was a mock-startup I was involved in with a group of students from all kinds of different academic backgrounds: software engineering, mechanical engineering, CAD, and so on. Being the only graphic designer, the duty of branding the product fell on me first, plus wireframing the app that the software engineers based their work on. Our product was targeted towards the upper class families, so I made a logo that communicated luxury, elegance, and control. I chose yellow to highlight the candle aspect of our gadget, and gold for the text for the luxury. For the wireframe, our priority was making an app that was easy to use and navigate through, so I designed a swipe interface where users can seamlessly switch between screens and options easily, I wanted a design that combines both comfort and function. Swiping left and right would switch the device controlled, reaching an empty area allows the user to add a new device. Swiping down allowed users to change the settings of the device, and swiping up revealed the timer function. Clicking the info button on any screen brought a status overlay, and clicking on an empty area showed help with navigation. Lastly, I made a promotional Kickstarter video. Since the actual product was never finished, I combined my original material (shown above) with stock footage I found online, then combined it into a story to introduce our product. I incorporated some 3D animation to showcase the inner workings of the device, and set up our engineers to explain how it works.

4542 Stop-Motion Video

4542 was an independent side project of mine; I had the idea to make a stop-motion video while on the California coastal highway. I wanted to encapsulate the expereince of visiting San Fransisco, plus I was already experimenting with doing time-lapses at the time. I was inspired by a Honeymoon Roadtrip video made

by Mike Matas, but his video focused on his wife and himself more while mine focused on the diversity of attractions in San Fransisco. I started compiling photographs on the highway then continued to do so in the city, setting my shutter speed fast enough to allow taking multiple photos within the same frame of movement.

I eventually ran out of memory space and had to stop. I chose an upbeat rock song with a high BPM to match the spirit of the trip and the quick cycling of the photos. I still could have done this project better, I wasn’t equipped for this project at the time but if I had, I would have included much more: airport experiences, more attractions and fun things, airplanes taking off, and returning home.

VisitK.SA UI/UX Web

In a collaborative project between me and another Saudi designer, we made a tourism website for our country, Saudi Arabia. When planning the website, we wanted to address different aspects of user experience by making up personas and putting them in different scenarios, which led us to a website that makes it easy for the user to learn about Saudi Arabia as well as prepare them to visit. First, we researched different destinations’ websites and compared their user experience to each other, and filtered each aspect to suit their needs. We used Foundation as our base to create a responsive, grid-based website that accomadates mobile, tablet, and computer displays seamlessly. While my partner handled gathering information to put, preparing and choosing images, and dedicating a color scheme, we shared research, coming up with personas and scenarios, wireframes, and choosing what to put in. I handled all the coding (both HTML and CSS), wrote the content, handled plugins, and refined the overall user experience by coming up with extra features and other essential solutions to our scenarios. Our final product was VisitK.SA, where KSA stands for “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” (.SA is the domain name for Saudi Arabia). Our pages are compromised of a navigation bar, which gets shrunk down when on Mobile, with a burger nav that reveals a quick jump menu. The burger nav turns into a normal nav when on Mobile. We made it this way because other tourism websites had two navigation bars, which I didn’t like. I wanted this product to be original. Website is live on hassangraphics.com/Visitk.sa

BMV Brand

BMV: Black Market Vodka was an idea I had for a while and had the opportunity to bring to life during one of my classes. I was inspired by the prohibition era of the past, I wanted to deliver a brand of alcohol that was mysterious, dangerous, and inticing; something associated with class and exclusivity. BMV combines luxury with party culture, I wanted it to be associated with the underground, to have a reputation for being mature and sophisticated but also to be playful, so I made a flirty brand that delivers that message. I chose yellow and black because they’re the total opposite of the traditional Vodka colors (blue and white) because I wanted this brand to be entirely different, plus they communicate that danger.

For the flavor colors, first I chose red and green because they’re close to yellow on the color spectrum (and orange was too similar so I didn’t consider it), plus they’re opposing colors, so I chose purple as my last color because it opposes yellow. Then I chose different shades of green and red to complete my color palette.

I chose geometric shapes and straight lines for my icons, each with a different number of vertex. For my merchendise, I went with lapels and cuff links, because I wanted to create this underground “secret club” culture to be associated with my brand. I also made a set of tumblers because Whiskey, Bourbon, Scotch, and Vodka are associated with maturity, and I wanted my brand to be associated with them. The print ads incorporated subtle repetition in the background of clear text.

Physician Assistant Instructional Video

The PA Film was a collaborative project that I took over from a team I used to work with in a previous term. During Pre-production, I took on the role of an instructor for the team. I mentored the other members on motion graphics then smoothened their animations and implemented some final touches on their graphics. During Production, I was the camerama, working closely with another student who was the creative director. I also recorded different versions of the voice-over. During Post-Production, I cleaned up the audio of background noise as well as mentored the rest of the team on cutting up the sound into usable segments, and on color correction. Then I was responsible of editing the video aspect and putting everything together, putting great emphasis on continuity. Due to the length of our trimesters, my team was gone after delivering the first draft and I became the only person working on the project. My scope of duties expanded to contacting the original client, working on new parts of the project, and keeping up with the clients’ new requests. I improved animations, edited continutiy and long parts, fixed some issues with syncing audio and video, and other minor fixes that the client picked up on.

Sinstagram Social Network (PHP)

I took a computer science class during which we learned to work with server-side code and databases. For my final project, I had the freedom to choose to make anything so I decided to put everything I learned to use and built a functioning social network, users are able to sign up after providing a username, email, and captcha code, and interact with the website by uploading photos, changing their captions, commenting on their and other people’s photos, and having the option to delete photos they don’t want. Futhermore, users are able to make themselves a customizable profile. The construction of each profile page is based on ‫ر‬a blank profile page that gets filled in by calling information from an SQL database, the database then fills in their information and generates their feed. I have 3 databases running: one for users, one for photos, and one for comments. The photo database is linked to the users database, so each photo is bound by a user. Then using the same concept, each comment is connected to a photo, so each user has a photo feed and each photo has a comment feed. Lastly, users can be contacted by a robot to notify them of alerts. Currently, I only set the robot to send a confirmation email when the users sign up and nothing else, but it can reach out to users who wish to reset their passwords for example.

Sinstagram is currently LIVE on hassangraphics.com/sinstagram

Brain Food Brand + Video

For my last project in Johnson & Wales, I had the option to work on anything. I knew I wanted to create TV ads because I wanted to take my design to the next level, so I set out to create a brand called Brain Food, a Snacks company. The packaging was inspired by horror movies, I shaped some stickers and cardboard packages to look like gravestones, and the stripes were inspired by Beetlejuice’s outfit. My TV ads had the most emphasis, they are set in a post-apocalyptic Earth where Zombies and humans didn’t destroy each other, but rather live in harmony, often going on adventures or playing sports together. Being the only person in my class, I had to handle every single aspect of this: logistics, location-scouting, casting, packaging, recording, writing scripts, storyboarding, editing, and so on. The biggest challenge was aligning schedules with my actors, myself, and the availablity of my desired locations. I rented, bought, and borrowed various props, makeup, and equipment, but it all paid off in the end. Each video follows the same pattern, they all start like a horror movie with creepy music and what seems to be an impending conflict, but then at the height of the conflict it is revealed that things are not the way they seem, and the zombies and humans turn out to be friends. I tried to mix up the divide between zombies and humans. Sometimes using one zombie and a group of humans, or a human with a group of zombies, and so on. I had a diverse cast of many colors and nations to reflect the core message of what Brain Food is, which is that we’re all human no matter how alive (or decomposed) we are.

Jeordia Profile Video

During my very first video class we had a practice assignment where we made a profile about one of our classmates. But then my rendetion of the practice turned out better than the actual assignment. Working with Jeordia, I worked with what I had , which wasn’t much. I wanted to capture my subject’s coolness, energy, and ambition, so I chose to capture her working on one of her art pieces from different angles, let her get in the zone. I also wanted to showcase her past art and current brand. The background music was composed using Garageband, I wanted something atmospheric and a little urban to both contrast and match Jeordia’s own vibrant voice and attitutde, then I followed up with shots of the things that she spoke about, namely the Providence Performing Arts Center (PPAC). I wanted the video to have a mellow, soft mood to it but I didn’t want it to be too soft, so I upped the pace of my cuts, I had the beginning a bit rapid to grab the viewer’s attention from the get-go, then let the mood settle once the narration starts, delivering the result I wanted.

Hisotria Nuntius Print

Historia Nuntius, or the history of news, is a calendar inspired by newspapers. Each and every page comes with a different style, fonts, and color scheme. Most of the pages are based on pre-existing newspapers, but a few of these designs were completely original. In order to create cohesion with variety, I designed the pages to be primarily black and white, (with photographic images treated to make them appear aged), with a few in color. I wanted the whole product to feel like a newspaper, so I used rice paper for its vintage properties, I trimmed the horizontal edges but not the vertical ones to keep it as rough and mass-produced as possible. I also added some smudges and a greyish background to the older newspapers I wanted to age while keeping the more modern ones clean.

InnerView Profile Videos

InnerView is a series of profile films, each around 2 minutes, that shows the passions of people that they don’t show at first, or you wouldn’t expect them to indulge in. InnerView captures the environment that these people work in, and the atmosphere that they create for themselves while in their process. This is an ongoing project for both me and Johnson & Wales university, my goal for this project is for other people to contribute it, either as subjects or as directors. I want this to be a “Humans Of New York” kinda thing.

I applaud you for making it through this book all the way through, in one piece no less (unless you just flipped through the pages, in that case stop cheating and start from the beginning).

If you see something you like, just look up and make eye contact, I’m right here.

Unless you’re seeing this online, then look me up and make e-contact, I’m right there.

You can reachme@hassangraphics.com

HASSAN ABUABDALLAH