reed dance

front

back

This is a post card I designed as part of my Reed Dance campaign.

Te reed dance is part of my culture and it's been going on for years. It's a ceremony where the king gets to choose a new wife amongst Thousands of 'virgins'.

This campaign is something that would run a month before the reed dance and it can be seen as being for or against the reed dance, as people who want to be chosen can feel like it's talking to them directly but then again there are some of us who respect it but think it has lost it meaning to our culture.

This is definitely a Fun exciting project as I am working with a personal thing and voicing out my opinion.

The Design:

This is obviously all done in illustrator (love it!). I took an image and traced it not live trace but actual tracing with the pen tool this way i get to feel like I have some form of control.

The colours red,black and white are the Swazi National colours that you would see if you were to attend the reed dance as our traditional gear is red,black and white.

I obviously once again insisted on using blend I feel it works well with absolutely anything and everything (I stand corrected.)

The red in front of the card also symbolises Passion: passion the girls have for attending and being part of the reed dance and most importantly the passion the king and all the other men have watching the reed dance.

The circles around are smaller putting emphasise on YOU and how you will look amongst all other maidens.

"The King Wants You" is based on the propaganda or war posters. I chose to write it in black and outline it red beacause black is quite a bold colour like our very bold king and the red ouline is to represent his "hot blooded passionate manner".

I am still experimenting with the reed, if you look closely you might see it in the left hand corner of both the front and back.

The back of the card is a blend from white to yellow a symbolism I used to represent the purity before and after the king gets you. At the bottom I have the words "Calling all virgins!" as the reed dance is meant to be for strictly virgins (king can't dine where another man has dined!).

Obviously if I was to publish this in Swaziland I would most probably get arrested but design follows no rules.

Look out for more from this campaign.

Spa Life

outside

inside

This I did helping a friend who's studying health and wellness or reflexology?

He was meant to come up with a price list for his made-up spa. So we came up with a simple name "Spa Life".

Being the designer that I am I decided to turn his price list into a brochure. I worked with an off white and blues as I believe them to be calming colours and I felt that they worked well with a Spa. He wanted bubbles everywhere so thanks to my blending once again I gave him bubbles.

It obviously was not meant to look like it was professionally done as it was just a class exercise so I decided less is definitely more in this case.

I found pictures which related to what he was selling and designed it in such a way that the product is next to the price so as a client you know what you're getting.

All in all it turned out fine and he liked it but given more time I would have worked more with the layout of the pictures as some of them look more like they've just been pasted in and don't form part of the whole design. But for a day's work I say it turned out okay.

Plasticism

Before

After

This is an experiment i did on photoshop (first photoshop experiment) called plasticism.

After realising that I haven't done enough experimentation with photoshop I decided to start with the basics.

I played around with the contrast to make the image darker and easier to work with. Then I cleaned it up using the smudge and paint brush tools. I enjoyed this because as I worked onto it I realised that it started to look more like a painting (the face that is) so in future I would like to actually work on a photograph and make it look like an actual painting, should be fun.

Yes Onica photoshop is amazing!

one insurance policy

This is by far the worst logo I've designed!
I designed this logo for an insurance company which covers all areas of insurance from house to life insurance. The main objective was to make it a "united" logo to stress it being No.1 and all in one.
The colours are the company colours.
Working on this logo was very difficult as I was working with a difficult client who would not listen to a word I was saying. For a person who claims to be competing with companies like OUT SURANCE he doesn't what he's talking about anyway that is besides the point.

I quite like the fact that it is sort of iconic and I loved experimenting with the whole 3D look, which I must admit was quite a mission until I came across ctrl+alt+B i.e Blending it worked like a charm hence the reason why you'll be seeing a lot more of it in my work. It also made my client happy because felt it was exactly what he was looking for.

The main reason why I hate this logo is because every time I look at it I feel like I've seen it somewhere before so guess that's a big fat zero for originality!

logo design

This is a logo I recently designed for a record company called "slam records".

This company is for young and upcoming musicians mainly in the 'hip-hop' genre.

It's based on their existing logo using the record. My task was to have the type and image work together to convey the whole slamming message (exact words from my brief!).

The image is a slammed or smashed record as they insisted on it, the typeface I chose to link with hip hop culture of graffiti but also thought it could mean they're making their mark like graffiti artists do.

I chose these colours because they work well together and for something that will be printed on CD covers it's not too bright which could distract the design on the cover. Most importantly red and black is my theme this year.

Working on this logo was quite fun and easy, I would have loved to have it look more abstract (which I did) but my client insisted on sticking to the image of the record being the most recognisable item.

on that note, would you like me to post different variations on work that I do for the same thing or is the final product just fine.