PORTFOLIO
FLEXIBLE MYSTICAL ‘I’M NOT GIVEN TO SELF-ANALYSIS, BUT I AM GIVEN TO INSATIABLE CURIOSITY.’ -A L A N F L E TC H E R
AUTHENTIC I N N O V AT I V E
KIA JOHN GRAPHIC DESIGNER
I use a variety of different materials and mediums in every project, with a consistent methodology. Every piece begins with sketches and concept designs, grouped around a specific theme. My style is flexible to fix client needs, with constant and detailed communication at every stage of development. Aligning my creative process with client or brand needs, does not take away from my very personal, unique, dynamic, and intriguing imprint.
ENJOY MY REALITY, AS PERCEIVED THROUGH YOURS!
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Client: Heritage Herbal Project Title: Swipe Right: App Design
This project entailed creating a user friendly application (app) icon and interface for the Heritage Herbal brand. The App was designed to have a visually pleasing interface that provided a lot of content and functionality, while still maintaining a cohesive brand identity. The inspirations for this design stemmed from textures found in nature, bold color blocks and blank spaces true to modern, minimalist style and African and Native American tribal art. The culmination of this process lead to an app designed for the young, with respect for the old and grounded in the laws of nature, all which fully embodied the essence of the brand. Theoretically, this process would involve numerous stages of concept testing, especially with regard to varying device functionality, and would consequently include design edits; however, the overall stylistic or aesthetic effect would be maintained.
WELCOME PAGE TUTORIAL- A brief description is given for each icon found in the app. This screen is to ensure seamless navigation and is only present the first time the app is opened after initial download.
1 APP DESIGN
APP ICON
NAVIGATION BAR MOVEMENT - Swipe to reveal the full navigation bar.
USE SECTION- Heritage has built a database of herbs with medicinal attributes for everyday remedies. The use section ensures users know how to use the herbs. Users can toggle between a list view and overview. RECIPE SECTION- This is where social media interaction occurs. Users can post recipes they like.
OVERVIEW PAGES- Linked to the use and grow sections, the overview are detailed pages of individual herbs and recipes that allow users to gain information, add Heritage’s recommended schedules, add items to the supply list page and include video tutorials for each individual step of the growth process.
GROW SECTION- Heritage seeks to ensure it provides useful and accurate information, so that users can start and maintain their herbal medicine gardens. A touch of the plus sign provides more detail by linking to the overview pages of particular herbs. SUPPLY LIST SECTION- Linked to the use, grow and overview sections, this is a running digital grocery list for herbs.
SCHEDULING SECTION- Scheduling calendars can be generated for all activities, for example watering. Depending on the herbs the user chooses, Heritage generates a recommended schedule which can be linked to personal calendars. NOTES SECTION- Alerts or reminders can also be set through the device’s reminder app.
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Client: Onyx Project Title: Step It Up
C ATA L O G DESIGN
The Onyx pamphlet showcased the collaboration between myself and the company for their “wearable art� collection. The shoe designs included a lot of bright colors and textures, for a unique design that would stand out. The pamphlet itself was to be featured in the store as marketing material for the campaign. For this a contrasting sleek and minimal aesthetic was opted for. The juxtaposition served as a highlight of the center piece, the shoe artwork. Furthermore, it added an air of modern sophistication to the design.
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Client: Melody & Flow Magazine Project Title: Publication Design
EDITORIAL DESIGN
This project petitioned the design for the layout of the publication’s issue focusing on up and coming artists of today, particularly the featured artist Khalfani aka Slim Paradise. Geared towards the new-aged, conscious Hip Hop and R&B culture, not only was the objective to create a visually pleasing spread for their featured artist, but also to create artistic portraits using provided photographs.
The artist himself, served as the source for the concept and final designs. For example, given that this particular featured artist is a songwriter as well as a singer, both of this portraits are typographic. Furthermore, having researched the artist’s music, personal style and general aura, his persona inspired a mood board based on words such as gold, royalty, dirty, genderneutral, art, free, color, lost, unique, same, overzealous and passion, to name a few. The final product mirrored the spirit of the mood board while maintaining constant consideration for the magazine’s typical style and its focus on an artistic element as its distinguishing factor among entertainment magazines. This overall process made for a visually stimulating issue and feature spread that not only reflected the magazine but truly reflected the artist himself, in image and in essence.
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Client: Yules Project Title: A Rose By Any Other Name
This brand required identity development based on two elements: 1) a rose in the logo and 2) packaging that would be a one color job so that pantone colors could be utilized more cost effectively. The subsequent packaging labels were inspired by and designed to highlight the brand’s unique central ingredient- the rose. Each product line would maintain the same style but differ in color; thus reinforcing a solid brand identity. The design contains only the rose as the graphic element and is designed to portray juxtaposing aspects of the rose both in reality and in the products themselves. The blank and solid spaces, symbolize the purity and delicacy of the rose petals and the products’ contents. This is only contrasted and balanced by the pointillism-inspired dots that add a rugged and strong side to the design to represent the thorns of a rose and the powerful and effective results of the products.
PACKAGE DESIGN
PMS 728C
PMS 5005C
PMS 337C
PMS 7753C
PMS 7522C
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Client: Vi NATION Project Title: Building the Brand ID
This project entailed creating a comprehensive collection of brand identity elements for Vi NATION, a clothing and lifestyle brand. The identity developed is based on an element in a photograph of one of my paintings. It was selected because it perfectly embodied the spirit of the brand as being fun, energetic, creative and gender-neutral, a spirit which was further personified through the use of a high-contrast, vibrant color scheme, reconciled in the circular logo graphic.
CORPORATE IDENTITY DESIGN
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Client: Altar Project Title: Beauty in the Eye of the Packaging
PACKAGE DESIGN
The Altar brand produced beauty and personal care products and required unique product packaging. The design is very clean to reflect the higher end organic natural ingredients within the product. Furthermore, given that this particular line of products would be sold using a marketing message of “the goddess in you�, the design color scheme was based in precious metals such as gold, silver and rose gold/copper tones The tin packaging itself also mirrors this overall marketing message but it also serves as a source of novelty to attract consumer interest because it is not the typical packaging used for this type of product.
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Client: Various Authors Project Title: Book Worm
This demonstrates two separate book cover designs. The design for “Before Dawn� utilizes the dusk color theory contrasted by the bright elements of the imagery in the painting. This color theory was to mirror the dark content of the book as well as to appear enticing or intriguing to the audience as the juxtaposition adds to the air of mystery. I painted the artwork in acrylic and then scanned in order to offer an abstract and almost 3 dimensional portrait of the terrifying protagonist. The entire design mirrored the novel’s theme of simplicity yet depth, lack of clarity and darkness.
B O O K COVER DESIGN
The second book cover was developed for a client within the fashion industry. The client need was for something that appealed to modern sensibilities yet embodied the simplicity and linear nature that is true to classic Italian tailoring. The design of stylized mannequins allowed for the use of a great deal of white space and an abstract modern aesthetics. The minimal color, long and rigid linear and angular shapes acquired the slender, sophisticated and discipline that is true to the classical art of fashion design. Furthermore, through the design the story of the book was illustrated. Only one of the mannequins stands out in color and in varying direction; thus, while united in similarity of design the variation indicates that the novel will enable a designer to highlight the shift necessary to set oneself apart and stand out within the industry.
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Client: The West End Project Title: Store Branding
STORE BRANDING
The West End is an e-commerce business with the aim of providing thoughtful pieces that survive faddish trends within various categories, from clothes to interior design resources and services to handmade artwork. Their customers are millennials, technologically savvy, early adopters, creatives and sustainably-conscious. They seek unique pieces and a unique experience with the brand; therefore, the store branding (including the packaging material) reflected those qualities. The logo developed consists of simple, structured shapes in a pattern (to reflect the modern affiliation with tech) disrupted with color to highlight the uniqueness/ individuality of the brand and the playful nature of the company and its client. The shopping bag and gift certificate are kept simple with the logo being the focal point and the full store name embossed for added texture and simplicity. In addition all of the product packaging is made with sustainable or recycled material to provide a contrast to the modern design and pay homage to the oxymoronic tendencies of the primary customer demographic.
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Client: Savalei
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Project Title: Crafted with Love
BRANDING DESIGN
For this project, the client need was for a branding design to reflect the spirit of their restaurant chain (which also sells its ingredients separately). The restaurant itself focused on simplicity, authenticity and organic appeal both in recipe and in ingredient; thus, so too did the design developed. To capture this essence, it was paramount that a minimalist design be created.
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Client: Emoha Project Title: For All the Tea in China
PACKAGE DESIGN
This project responded to the client need for herbal tea packaging to reflect a natural, holistic brand. The design was inspired by tribal art, nature, music and Egyptian and African aesthetics. This made for a bold and intricate yet simple pattern and logo founded on geometric elements and symbolism. While each product has its own color scheme to distinguish between products and evoke the experience that each individual tea provides, the signature pattern embodies the brand’s philosophy of growth and ascension through a consistent and unique brand experience across all varying packaging.
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Client: Hopeline NC Project Title: “Don’t Bottle It Up”
The client need that this project addressed was to develop eye catching posters to be displayed as a source of outreach for the crisis help line. The campaign slogan “Don’t Bottle It Up” drove the poster’s concept designs. Illustrations were either literal or abstract yet varying designs were unified through a characteristic style which embodied the campaign’s message.
1 CAMPAIGN DESIGN
The juxtaposition of distinctiveness and cohesion ran both within each poster and between different posters. Each poster, while different, maintained consistent color schemes, styles and typographic choices and within each individual poster the style utilized complementary warm and cold tints, unified through the blank spaces. The end result? Visually charged posters that both drew viewers’ attention and connected to the feelings of the target audience, evoking a sense of hope and unity beneath the seeming disjointedness.
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Client: Davesté Winery Project Title: Mining the Millennial Market
W I N E LABEL DESIGN
The client goal was to create an updated, cohesive look for Davesté Winery which would target millennials. Therefore, all concept designs utilized fun, bold sketches that, while different from traditional Davesté labels, would allow the brand to stand out against other local wineries and still remain true to the heart of its brand identity founded in art. Each label design was kept clean but edgy and incorporated an artistic element to pay homage to the winery’s art studio and gallery. This overall style was achieved by using, among other things, the primary color palette for vivid simplicity, paint brush strokes for type to symbolize the winery’s gallery. Each label was printed on velvet paper with a soft touch coating to further enhance the buyers experience as they handled the bottle.
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Client: Various Project Title: Posters in ABC Minor
TYPOGRAPHIC POSTERS
These are prints and posters utilizing the technique of typography. The first is an ode to the typeface Baskerville and is designed to provide information about the font and its creator as well as emphasize the shape of the letters and numbers. The second is a 3 dimensional quote poster to target millennial dorm decoration, which is in line with the inspirational trends in social media. The last is a portrait of Erykah Badu comprised solely of letters and numbers so as to represent the intricacy in her musicality and song and/or poetry writing.
Client: Pantone & X-Brite Project Title: Annual Training Series Event
The purpose of this event was educationeducation about the management and education on the use of the color system. This project came with only one design stipulation: that a chosen “signature 8� swatch be incorporated into a theme for the event, as seen through three deliverables - a tour informational poster, mass mailer invite (kept within post office guidelines), and tickets.
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EVENT DESIGN
The consistent use of the same vivid swatch theme maintained a cohesive appearance which made for a novel, eye catching design whose intensity was balanced through the use of black, white and blank spaces. The tickets -the tangible objects that could not be misplaced or easily forgotten by the user- were designed to mimic a swatch book with a cover page and subsequent event informational pages. Therefore, they not only stayed within the boundaries of the event theme, both in style and concept, but given that the cover page was designed to be removable and only the subsequent pages were needed for event admission, the tickets were multifunctional. The cover page could also be used as a bookmark; thus providing a longer marketing lifespan beyond the event itself.
R FF ATHLETICS
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Client: Various Project Title: Logos, Logos and Logos
L O G O DESIGN
These are a few logos developed for various clients. Given that all logos are adopted as graphic or symbolic representations of an organization’s or individual’s brand, each of these logos use a different style and visual elements so as to remain a unique embodiment of each distinct identity and philosophy.
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ABSTRACT PHOTO GRAPHY
LINKEDIN.COM/IN/KIAJOHN FACEBOOK.COM/KIJOBYKIAJOHN TWITTER.COM/KIJOBYKIAJOHN BEHANCE.NET/KIAJOHN
KIA JOHN GRAPHIC DESIGNER
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