arturovargasdesigner designportfolio
We are graphic designers. We are nerds. If we want to be rock stars we should spend time playing scales on a guitar and not looking at typefaces or websites like The Egotist. I am a graphic designer/creative because the idea of spending my life doing design is inspiring and not depressing. I am a designer because I can make a living artistically without wearing all the purist hats that an ARTIST ( fine artist, conceptual artist, etc.) has to wear. I am a designer because for a good percentage of the time design is super fun. -Rob Helmstetter
aboutme
I am an innovative thinker who through research, thought, and initiative can bring new direction to design. In working with other people, I offer my experience in design and my passion for typography, branding, and photography to create innovative solutions that go above and beyond the client’s expectations. I was born on December 22nd, 1985 in Los Angeles, California. I was raised in La Crescenta California and then moved to Dodge City, Kansas at the age of 12. Rather than this being a bad thing, I see as getting the best of both world. I grow up in both a big city and a small town. In Dodge City, I graduated high school and went on to graduate at Dodge City Community College with an Associate of General Studies. Once graduated, I moved to Colorado to continue my educate at RMCAD. I graduated in the spring of 2010 with a BFA in Graphic Design + Interactive Media.
branding|identity
During my educational career, I had two classes that dealt with development of identities. These quickly became some of my favorites as I enjoy not just creating a logo for a company, but creating a whole system.
rumahandkopi
We were given the task to completely redesign a restaurant. The graphic designers teams up with interior designers to create a complete experience. We had to pick a unique culture and research every aspect of it. My team quickly decided on Java, an island in Indonesia. The graphic designers had to come up with the identity of the restaurant and retail place. This would be the first time many of us worked in groups to create one system. To this date, this has been one of the most difficult experiences I’ve had and the one that has taught me the most.
I first started looking into the nature aspect of Java. The island is made up of a volcano, one of the biggest on the planet. The first couple of ideas were coming out of the volcano, but soon I wasn’t feeling that direction. I started to look into Javanese batik designs and patterns. During this time, we were trying to come up with a name and soon came up with “Rumah” (home) and “Kopi” (coffee). I found a batik pattern that had something that looked like a house and quickly started developing something around that.
Once I decided that going with a house symbol was the way to go, it was time to work with the strokes. I worked with a couple different ones and this was the best solution. While working on this, as a group we were working the typography for the marks. We ended up using Brioso as the type for the name and Univers for the subhead. The Kopi mark came from turning the Rumah mark upside down and working with it to make it look as a coffee cup.
As the an identity was figured out, we were given the task to come up with a series of three posters that could be used individually or all together. The posters came from one of the sides from my original mark. I wanted to give the illusion that one was walking into something big and grand. When working with the color palette, we looked closely at colors that were used in the Javanese culture. These were some of the colors I thought represented the Javanese culture well.
Kopi is the retail part of the business and Java is well known for its coffee. It was only natural that we sold coffee and not just any coffee, Kaja coffee, a very expensive coffee. The pattern used here for the label also came from a batik pattern. The color for the background is the same one used in on the Kopi mark.
Once we came up with the identity for Rumah and Kopi, We moved on to the collateral part of the system. The colors for the envelopes and paper for the stationary are both warmer cream colors that went along with our color palette. We also designed the menu to go along with the same colors.
sandyalexander
For this project, a company, Sandy Alexander, came to us and asked us to re brand the company. Sandy Alexander is one of the biggest off-set printer on the east coast and have been around for many years. They are also one of the first environmentally friendly printers in the United States. This becomes one of the biggest factors when we came up with an identity.
When we were doing research about the company, one the things that kept coming up was that they were one of the first environmentally friendly printing companies. Jokingly I said “So they were green when it was still orange. No wait, they were green with it was still blue and yellow.� We laughed it off at first, but then we felt like we really had something with that statement.
For our typographic treatment, we decided that Sandy Alexander felt like more of a sans serif company rather than serif. We also went in this direction because it was expressed in the conference call that they wanted to update their look and have a modern look.
The whole idea for the logo came from the catch phrase “We were green when it was still blue and yellow”. We decided to overlap the colors in the logo to emphasize this point. Sandy Alexander is about transparency. Not only is it indicative of Sandy Alexander’s commitment to being environmentally responsible, but it also echoes back to the fact that they are a print company and printing is done by overlapping primary ink colors to create other colors. The yellow was changed more to an orange tint because we felt like it got lost on a white background.
The edge of the stems on the S and the A are perfectly aligned.
The overlap of the letters has been set up so the colors touch the sides with extreme precision.
The stem of the A has been adjusted so that the letters line up at the top and bottom.
The rest of the marks represent the branches that make up Sandy Alexander. Each different branch got the same type treatment as the original mark. Each word mark is made up of different colors and what those two colors would make up once they overlapped. We wanted to give Sandy Alexander a colorful look as they are prints and when people think of printers, they see colorful and bright prints.
The idea here is that each branch would have color coordinated attire. When a representative goes to a meeting, they would dress in a black suit and it would have color accents that would correspond to the branch. For warehouse workers, a black T-shirt would be worn with the corresponding word mark.
Here are some examples on how the branding can be used on other applications. These boxes could be used to ship prints or to give free samples at trade shows.
3dpackaging
ce ve i cha s sea that ne w tas racter ater t for e and istic its pre seaso is use n ser vin ing o d g fo r od. t pre drie pep com p as a mo con spice flav dime or f nt ood .
saltandpeppershakers
For this project, the task was to find an item that wasn’t packaged well and re package it. I found a set of salt and pepper shakers that only had a barcode on the bottom, nothing else. When researching more about salt and pepper shakers, I realized that salt and pepper shakers are very universal. People all over the world have them. What I decided to do is to put the definition on the front of the shaker and ways to say it on different languages. These would change with the location where they are being sold. They would also be sold as a set and filled with salt and pepper.
How Many Americans Expect to Buy Games?
43%
of Americans have purchased or plan to purchase one or more games in 2009
9.
videogamestatistics
This mission for this project was to package a culture. I quickly decided to package the video game culture and then it was time to figure out what part of it did I want to package. I settled on statistics on how video games have impacted our culture. I found good information and then decided to use old SNES cartridges and make boxes to put the information in. There is different bits of information on each side of the cartridges which make the piece very interactive.
userprototyping
techbariphoneapp
The task for this project was to come up with an iphone application that someone would want to use on a daily bases. At the time, I was working for RMCAD’s techbar, a work study based IT department. There are problems that happen almost everyday, so I decided to make an app that any new work study could use and understand to fix small problems that happened often.
This application would be one that any new tech would be able to use right away. The main page would have you pick either Mac or PC. On the bottom of each page would be a Live Chat button where you can talk to any other tech or supervisor, a Sysaid button that lets you connect to an online help page, and a happy button which would give you a photo of a kitten since this is a stressful job.
While doing the research, I narrowed it down to three categories where the main problems were. These are Printer Issues, Network Issues and Hardware Issues. Then these categories were broken down to three problems that might come up. Once the problem was narrowed down, full detail is given on how to fix that problem.
contactme
arturovargas 620.255.2748 art urovargasdesign.com art uro.vargas.designer@gmail.com
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. -Gandhi
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