Damon Designs Package

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This was one of the longest-running projects I have ever had in any class. We worked on it for a month and a
half straight. Granted, we had that course twice a week for 3 hours, but most of it was done outside of class.

Essentially, the assignment was to partner up and pretend to be each other's client. Sounds simple enough, right?
WRONG. Do you know how picky designers are? We may seem nice on the surface, but inside we look at what we
bring to the table and say one of two things: "I wish I had thought of that," or "I could have done so much better."
It's true! We're constantly critiquing each other, which is great since it helps us grow, but boy did it make things
complicated. Sketches I thought looked great, my partner hated. Sketches I spent the least amount of time on,
she loved. It was so odd to design for a designer instead of a normal client, but I learned a great deal doing so.

We were both pretending to be head of a design company. She was a tropical hardscape/softscape/water feature
design house that did work for high-end homes and commercial spaces. I think I was a modern interior design
firm for expensive corporate offices and banks… Anyway, I put the most thought into the logo. The overlapping
diamonds represent hardscape design, the leaf shapes to either side reflect softscape design, the curling shapes
at the bottom stand for water, and the half-circle in the background is reminiscent of a tropical sunset (as is the
color palette). Once I had that and the wordmark designed, the rest of the package sort of fell into place. I got a
little lazy with the brochure (I always do, brochures are just frustrating for me), but I really like the other pieces.

What you see here is the graphic design portion of the project. The rest of it was a lot of professional documents,
such as: in-depth project descriptions, production schedules, terms & conditions, estimates and invoices, graphic
standards, print estimates from three different vendors, separations from the source files, etc. I don't want to bore
you with the contracts and such, so I won't upload those, but they were certainly ⅔ of the actual project. I had no
idea how much work freelance artists go through in order to manage their business. I so want to work for a firm
or something, lol. I am, however, glad to have been exposed to the legal side so that I know what to expect later.

Speaking of which, although this was just for a school project, I made sure to use only stock photography. Most
designers will use placeholders like this from iStock Photo in their comps when they show them to clients; it really
makes sense for clients to preview the intended images before purchasing the hi-res photos (which can cost a lot).
Also, garbled filler text is the best way to express what the design will look like before the copy editor sends their
final document to the designer, so it's not cheating—it's dang smart! But enough of that nerdy mumbo-jumbo, lol.

Everything was made in InDesign except for the jacket systeming, which was accomplished in Photoshop since
it required a slight displacement map. You can really see it if you download the full-size image and look at the
big wordmark on the back… Designing and printing these five pieces was done over the course of two weeks in
that six week period, to give you an idea of how our time was distributed. Most of our in-class time was taken up
by lecture and field trips to local print houses, so my partner and I met outside of class several times to keep on
schedule. She really liked the final comps and I ended up liking her designs a lot more than I thought I would. XD

My favorite piece is the business card. It was the first thing I did (I love making business cards). I can't say that
corporate identity is my favorite thing to do, but there are certainly a lot of worse things I could do, lol. Enjoy!

<sub>Created in InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop CS5 from April-May, 2011. Completed May 26, 2011.

Typefaces: Garton, Sanvito Pro, and Chaparral Pro.</sub>