Samantha Mantua

826 National is a network of youth tutoring and writing centers. Each 826 location has a unique storefront that makes the tutoring center more enticing, while also providing a steady revenue source. After being assigned a town to research, I was tasked with creating my own 826 store identity. The result: “Knock on Wood,” a store for the superstitious. Based in Bangor, Maine, the theme combines Maine’s lumber industry with the spooky tourist attractions prevalent in Bangor.

Tulip is a fully-functional typeface. It was derived from my love of bold type. It all started when I was first introduced to wood block type in my letterpress printing class. ‍ To make this typeface, I pulled from the techniques of producing wood type. The most notable distinction is the roundness that a router would have made in the interior corners of the characters. The corners are typically notched out, by hand, later. These curves organically led to making a rounder font overall. As a result, the typeface has a bounciness reminiscent of spring and the tulips that come with it.

Chapstick is an unofficial lyric video for the band Coin. The goal of this project was to use the beat and lyrics to influence the motion and imagery. Similar to \"official\" lyric videos, this provided an opportunity to add to the visual language of the band.

Making Space is a zine of found content about outer space history. Inspired by Room Project, and their shared working space, we were given the prompt: Making Space. After a few interpretations, I landed on a more literal approach: Making Outer Space. The content of this zine refers to specific things that made outer space history: how the rocket for Apollo 11 was made to get to the moon & back, the demographic of NASA astronauts, and a list of “first ___” in space.

Detroit Month of Design, hosted by Design Core Detroit, is an annual festival that gathers designers and the community to celebrate Detroit as a UNESCO City of Design. During my summer internship at Design Core, I was tasked to implement the 2023 Month of Design branding within social posts, merch, & a collaboration with Eastern Market Brewing Co.

After reading the manifestos of other designers, I was tasked with making my own manifesto. I was inspired by Dieter Rams\' \"Ten Principles for Good Design\" and a journal prompt of \"I believe design (is/isn\'t, should/shouldn\'t, can/cannot, etc.).\" From there, I worked toward defining how design has been conveyed to me throughout my studies at CCS.