Concept & Illustration
This collection highlights concept development and custom illustration across academic, professional and personal work. These projects show how I use visual storytelling, metaphor and original artwork to communicate ideas, explore different approaches and create engaging visual solutions.
I created this poster in Adobe Illustrator to communicate a simple environmental message through custom illustration and humor. The piece combines character design, typography and visual storytelling to make the message immediately understandable.
I created this piece as a teaching example for students learning how to select reference imagery and develop an illustration from it. I began with a DVIDS photograph of a service member, recreated the image by hand using graphite and colored pencil, then brought the drawing into Adobe Illustrator and converted it into a vector illustration.
This unfinished vector project was inspired by Skeelo and Game of Thrones. It was developed as a personal illustration exercise in Adobe Illustrator. I focused on facial structure, expression and stylized vector detail while experimenting with how text and portraiture could work together.
I created this poster in Adobe Illustrator to communicate a simple environmental message through custom illustration and humor. The piece combines character design, typography and visual storytelling to make the message immediately understandable.
Project Highlight
This 11×17-inch poster was created in Adobe Illustrator for my graduate Creative Methodologies course in fall 2017. The assignment asked, What is graphic design? I focused on the ideas that graphic design is communication, graphic design is cultural and the internet is a subculture that communicates in its own way. Because I was working full time in Washington, D.C., while attending graduate school in Baltimore, I approached the project by developing a strong concept early and committing to it rather than repeatedly changing direction. I developed the idea through collage, sketching and visual prototyping, then created the final custom illustration in Illustrator.
I created a concept list.
I started by defining what graphic design meant to me and identifying the ideas I wanted the final piece to communicate. This helped me narrow the direction early and work efficiently within the project deadline.
I drew sketches and compostions.
I explored different visual frameworks and page compositions on paper before moving into Illustrator. Sketching helped me establish the information hierarchy, visual metaphor and overall structure before committing to the final design.
I built a visual prototype.
I used collage to test the concept, imagery and composition before developing the final artwork. This gave me a fast way to evaluate the visual storytelling before investing time in custom illustration.
I developed the final illustration.
I translated the prototype into a custom vector illustration in Adobe Illustrator, refining the composition, visual hierarchy and details into the final 11×17-inch poster.
Digital Painting + Photo Manipulation
In early spring 2021, I was looking forward to camping with friends from work and started experimenting with photos of their RVs just for fun. Using Adobe Photoshop, I combined photo manipulation, filters, actions, the Brush tool, Clone Stamp and other editing techniques to transform the original photographs into digital paintings. Through an iterative design process, I explored color, texture and image treatment to create distinct visual approaches from existing content.
The project demonstrates Adobe Creative Cloud proficiency, digital design execution and visual storytelling outside the constraints of a formal assignment or client brief.
Instructional Visual Design
These classroom posters were created as teaching tools to explain design and production concepts through clear visual examples. I used information hierarchy, diagrams, comparison, typography and imagery to make abstract or technical material easier to understand and apply.
