Here’s the link to my presentation about the work I did for Elizabeth Sutton Collection:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1AwX_FvP3_DRNAZa_0gnw3Ec9XuHInUYedt3YpfTz6NA/edit?usp=sharing
Author: Alexandra Pagan
On November 11th, I attended an in-person book talk. The event was to discuss Anthony Dunne’s new book titled “Not here, Not now”. The book was published on May 6, 2025, and it discusses speculative thought, impossibility, and imagination. My first impression was being intrigued and also curious. “Designing not for the sake of finding a possible solution, but for speculation” is a line that has stuck with me and made me think a lot in regard to my design process. Oftentimes, I do design to find the best layout/look, and I do see the limitation in that. It allows my perfectionism to take over, and as a result not a good design. Anthony suggests designers embrace inquiry, encouraging to design out of the box to create different perspectives.
For a future personal project, I am interested in creating a comic, which is why I decided to attend this exhibition. Emmanuel Knight is the creator and artist behind “Magna AX.” He drew inspiration from his childhood experiences, including PS2 video games, shows from Adult Swim, and SEGA. The manga series aims to explore the themes of self-discovery through combat and romance. The exhibition began with a tour led by Emmanuel himself.
I really like how Emmanuel laid out the compositions for each volume of the series. Each volume cover features characters in grayscale with a splash of color. However, I was most drawn to the cover that had a pink blue and yellow color palette. I really liked the front girl being portrayed in the center in almost full color, surrounded by characters that were in gray scale with slight color to them.
During the artist talk, Emmanuel talked more in depth about Magna AX, as well as gave the audience insight into his career journey. He is a self taught artist. Could you believe that he started Magna AX in his sophomore year of high school? I felt inspired by his passion and dedication to his craft. A piece of that he gave is this : “Look at things that inspire you and work from it. It is your story, you get to tell it the way you want to.” The quote stemmed from an experience where he got sent a contract from Tokyo Pop, which basically said that the work he would do, he wouldn’t receive the credit (he almost went through with the offer but declined after reading the fine print).
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Ethnics – Starbucks
In 2024, Starbucks faced a lawsuit over its ” 100% ethnically sourced products” (coffees and teas). According to the article written by Nadia El Yaouti, the national consumer reports that the Starbucks supplier farms in Brazil have been subjected to unsafe working conditions and labor abuse, which had been going on for a few years. Similar working conditions have also been reported in the coffee and tea farms in Kenya and Guatemala. You would think that once Starbucks got exposed for these reports on unsafe working conditions that the company would try to address the situation by improving the working environment. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Starbucks opted to seek out “third-party certification programs” to essentially keep up the facade that its products were ethically sourced. This is an example of false advertising. Starbucks is advertising its products as ethical but is not disclosing the alleged unsafe working conditions and labor abuse taking place.
Here’s the link to the article I mentioned:
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Adobe Max
I attended Adobe Max conference virtually in the span of two days. The keynote outlines all new features that are coming out across all adobe programs. Although I don’t particularly like using ai, i did find Michael Fugoso’s Ai segment regarding Adobe illustrator (character design) in the day one keynote most intriguing:
I thought it was pretty cool to use Ai in a way that doesn’t generate art but instead in a way that takes your art and makes creating turnarounds much quicker, not to mention eliminating the time to redraw the character in a different direction. I think I do see myself using this new feature because I struggle drawing in 3/4 view.
After the keynote, I attended the information session “Brand Design with photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign” by the speaker Eloise Rouet whose a graphic designer. She talks about working flow and she explains three ways to improve workflow: clear communication, smart tools, organization. In my opinion, I think I need to improve my workflow. I feel each program has a lot of tools laid out, some unnecessary and others being more important. So, I definitely need to organize my workplace much better in terms of tools I frequently use.
The following quote best summarizes the session well “design once, apply everywhere” This is where brand guidelines come into play which includes: color palettes, font properties, brand elements, etc. In creative cloud, there’s a tab called project tab where you can keep track of files from each program. I never knew about this feature, and I can say I will be using this in aid for improving my organization of future projects.
In the spirit of the holiday season, I was tasked to work on newsletters three and Newsletter nine. The third newsletter is related to limited edition prints. In jade’s instructions she had chosen which prints I should include. This was my first attempt at creating a gif. The first step I needed to take is to lay out all the frames necessary to create the gif. Its important to note that Newsletters 3 and 9 were done on different days. I didn’t get to create the gif for newsletter 3 due to working on a previous task. Newsletter 9 had more frames to create because there was more products to display. The challenge that I had to face was making sure the last frame matches up with the beginning frame so that the loop is repeated seamlessly.
Heres what the final gif looks like:
I would put the actual gif vid here but mp4 files are not supported, so each product in a new frame moves to the left slightly.
Elizabeth has been renovating the gallery, so the next task on her agenda is to design her awning and add her branding to the front door of the gallery. I was in charge of creating the front door and window mockup which includes the name “Elizabeth Sutton Collection”, and her logo. Elizabeth also specified that instead of saying “this is my store/ gallery”, she would rather it say “this is my atelier”. The front door dimensions are 36 inches wide and 89.5 inches high. The window is 62inches wide with no height defined. front window at the bottom would say “fine art, home, decor, fashion, creative workshops and inspiration” The window had three options to choose from: First letter capitalized, all caps and bigger front size.
Here is what the Front door and window mockups look like (illustrator file):
The next time I entered the gallery, I saw my work being displayed on the front door. The signage was transferred onto vinyl stickers would was then put onto the front door and window. The only thing that was added was Elizabeth Sutton’s QR codes to her shop specifically and to her website. There was a discussion where Elizabeth wasn’t sure which QR code(s) to be placed so she opted for both.
Heres what the Front door and window look like in person:
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Watermark/ pitchdeck
The ninth assignment focused on creating a deck where I had to watermarks products that Elizabeth had selected. The selections included butterfly, fruit, coffee + desserts, lemons, florals, list goes on. I was provided with the different variations of the watermark which is black and the other white so I can use them interchangeably. I also had to pull the images from their files and into the deck file I created. This is probably the assignment where I just don’t enjoy doing because of the number of files and images I’ve been given. At first, it feels overwhelming but eventually I have gotten into a groove where I can knock out collections pretty fast.
Here’s how I’ve been watermarking the products:
I think there were over 100 images that needed to be watermarked. The products were pulled from different decks. Although, over time the process got repetitive.
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Image Prep file
This assignment was given by Elizabeth herself since Jade was working with new interns on their first day. I had to remove the background of over 100 pictures then create an illustrator file and organize all the image together. I was prepping a file that would be then used to create different mood boards/collages for a new client.
Here’s just a few pictures I had to remove the background for:
Here’s what the prepped ai file looks like:
The three finalized collages that were sent to client:
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Gratitude Typography
Elizabeth had a client that wanted a wall print that read “Gratitude”. She told me she wanted to three different font choices with a color palette that she chose. Personally, I didn’t like the colors but ultimately it was most likely based on what the client specified. The font choices that Elizabeth gave me Bely Display, Impact, Beastly. So, one of Elizabeth’s ideas was to create clipping mask where the font has pink inside. You can see that some fonts are just too thin making the glitter hard to see. However fonts that are bold like impact, Bely Display, you can see the glitter much better.
Here’s what the font choices ended up looking like:
