Brendan Downs

Taking the car out of the Cruise, this poster series for the Woodward Dream Cruise event. Students were tasked with finding interesting methods of representing selected event. Everyone knows the Woodward dream cruise is about cars, but how do you represent the ideas at play without showing it verbatim. The idea came together as Stop, Wait, Go is modeled after a traffic light. This gives the ability to highlight what the event is all about. Stoping to see your favorite cars, waiting to see upcoming action, and going to the next event at the Woodward dream cruise. Highlighting engine pictograms styles with warning sensor aesthetics.

Reframe and rebrand a contemporary American idea, person, institution, or value by developing a new brand identity and strategy that addresses the intangible aspects (ethos, promise, myths, etc.) and the tangible elements (visuals, type, color, etc.). The goal is to refresh, reboot, or reshape the chosen subject in a way that offers a more accurate or progressive representation of its essence. The public transit system was the focus of this project. Creating a campaign to make the Bus systems more appealing to non inner city dwellers.

Find and share three unique online or screen-based collections that display digital objects in unconventional ways, focusing on innovative methods of searching, sorting, and filtering. Adding an Interesting spin to the idea of randomizing fortune cookies. By giving the viewer the option to pick a fortune it makes for a more interactive experience. This is a vast array of fortunes from different Chinese takeout restaurants. Inspired by takeout package aesthetics and the Wu-tang clan from New York.

Create a system of 12 two-sided cards that represent a real or non-fictional figure. This individual can be either contemporary or historical, alive or deceased, but must be well-known. The purpose is to explore design systems while expanding visual and conceptual vocabulary using a historical method rooted in Surrealism. Divided into Three Categories: Blue Occupation, Green Leisure, Purple Mystic. Highlighting the characteristic traits of Henry Ford, helping to shed light on unknown facts pertaining to his life and legacy.

Develop a research-driven campaign for one of Detroit’s major sports teams, focusing on celebrating the power of play in sports. The campaign must represent the team’s brand identity while aligning with one of the assigned themes: Perspiration, Iteration, Inspiration, Motivation, or Collaboration. Deliverables should be conceptually unified and tailored to a target demographic of 12–24 years old. Representing African Americans & Latinos in baseball advertisements. Being underrepresented in the sport called us to create a campaign to relate baseball to school. Through inspiring kids & young adults to obtain higher plateaus, this campaign was overall based upon the Detroit Tigers team history.

Speculate and envision how communication and language will evolve 50 years from now, from 2024 to 2074. Consider how various factors—such as technology, society, and culture—will influence the transformation of communication in terms of look, feel, sound, expression, and experience. Alpha Numera Morse English was a language system crafted by the combination of old school analog technology and futuristic AI advancements. Messages are relayed from numbers through morse code ciphers into the English language. The crafted class system is dominated by robots who are the ones who do the heavy lifting in society over watched by Cyborgs, relaying info to Programmers and translated to the Bosses. 2075 was the context behind this project.