Reese Mallon

Jardin Estrella is a branding project with elements of typography, logo design, web design, motion design, and merchandise design. The goal of this project was to learn the basic elements that go into building a brand. 826 is a national brand of literacy centers disguised as mythical stores themed around an obscure fact about the city it’s in, and are placed around the U.S. I used this as a starting point for the brand concept and built the brand for a new store in Tucson, Arizona (a place that doesn’t have an actual store). Through the process I created the name “Jardin Estrella” meaning “Star Garden” in Spanish. This is because Tucson is a dark sky city, a city that has laws to help decrease light pollution, making the night sky quite the beautiful sight there. The theme for the store was a star gardening supply store. You would be able to buy supplies to help “grow your star” as well as get the tutoring help you need. After careful consideration, I created a brand guide complete with a logo/word-mark, colors, and typography. To show how my brand would look in multiple settings, I designed a website, social media pages, merchandise, as well as specialty items that would be for sale there. I also created an event that the store would host in partnership with the Tucson Botanical Gardens. The event would be a nighttime storybook trail that would encourage reading and other skills involved in education, while exposing kids to the wonders of the botanical gardens. To advertise this event, I created a two poster set that would be able to work together or separately. My inspiration for these posters came from my study of both of the brands involved, and my careful research into event poster design. Overall, this project was very helpful in my understanding of brand design and components, and taught me how to properly see brand design in multiple different settings.

Alex Steinweiss: On the Record is a print based project with an emphasis on system design, book design, and a touch of brand identity. The objective of this project was to create a piece of design that fits within the context of the chosen designer. I chose Alex Steinweiss, the inventor of the album cover and a lifelong music industry designer. With this context in mind, I created a vinyl record jacket complete with a record, a dust jacket, and a “lyric” book. All together they would tell the story of Steinweiss and his place in the design world. After researching his history of brand design and album covers, I learned that he is very experimental with type and loved using bright colors to grab the attention of the consumers looking to buy records. I created my own template for a double sleeve record jacket and inner dust cover for a record. 

Laws of Simplicity: Book Design by John Maeda is a printed book with elements of typography, grids and system design. The task was to redesign the book using one primary typeface and one complimentary typeface. The research process was simple: read the book and understand the structure of it. Then began a lengthy process of iteration and designing one whole section. Once one section was complete and a style sheet was created in InDesign, design and production of the remaining sections was completed. The takeaway from this project for me was knowledge of consistency and its relevance in good design. 

This project is called Susan Kare: Design in Code. It’s a project centered around web design and coding with an emphasis on type design and image. This project's main objective was to learn and experiment with the relationship between code and design. I researched a popular UI designer and learned about their process and background. I used this information to create compositions displaying different coding explorations (image placement, text placement, and animation) as well as a homepage connected to the compositions. I chose Susan Kare, the designer behind the iconic Macintosh interface icons.  After conducting my research,  I created designs that were able to be connected to her by using the type of grid she used to develop the icons (needlepoint template) while also staying minimalistic like the original interface. The end result is a fully functional, and designed website. Throughout this project I learned the importance of research and how it is connected to creating a cohesive well thought out project, and strengthened my knowledge in basic coding skills. I now have a better understanding of screen based design.

In 2022, I was asked to create a music video for the song Out Walkin’ by Elliott BROOD. I wrote, directed, animated, and edited the story shown in the video. Stop-motion animation was used to create it. I used paper and paper cutouts to create the scenery and characters, as well as small found objects to create a whimsical sense of dimension. This project came about when I took an online animation course through my high school. The class prompted me to create a short stop-motion animation. I chose to create that video using paper squirrels. The band saw my video after it was shared on social media, and asked me to create a music video for them in that style.