Paula Toranzo Work Sample

PAULA TORANZO WORK SAMPLE

show goes on despite rain, spring 2022

YALE SPRING FLING FESTIVAL PAULA TORANZO AS PRODUCTION + OPERATIONS CHAIR YALE SPRING FLING COMMITTEE PHOTOS BY RENEE THEODORE AND COURTNEY CHENN SPRING 2022 + 2023

Spring Fling is Yale’s spring concert, the largest student-run event of the year. Spring Fling is typically held outdoors every Spring during the first days of Reading Week. In Spring 2023, due to extreme weather warnings, our team moved the entire production indoors, working with our staging, security, administration, and artist relation teams to let the show go on!.

As the largest student event on campus, the Spring Fling committee is committed to providing a safe, fun concert for all members of the Yale Undergraduate community and is continuosly looking for ways to expand creatively, with a Boiler Room-style event and a wellness area for guests with different sensitivities. Spring Fling features a number of artists selected by the committee as well as a number of student acts.

crowd looking up to Japanese Breakfast, secured perimeter for stage and student dorms

student artist opening in first indoor Spring Fling due to extreme weather

team redoing 200 artist and staff passes for 24 hour venue turn over

student artists looking out to makeshift ampitheatre

YALE BATTLE OF THE BANDS PAULA TORANZO AS PRODUCTION + OPERATIONS CHAIR YALE SPRING FLING COMMITTEE PHOTOS BY COURTNEY CHENN

SPRING 2023 students coming to support friends

Battle of the Bands is an annual Yale student music festival where Yale student acts will perform and compete for a spot to open at this year’s Spring Fling festival. Audience members enjoy live music, local food vendors, and drinks(for guests 21+), and vote to decide their favorite acts that they want to see on the stage for the main Yale Spring Fling Festival.

This event was typically held on an off-campus site, ran unofficial event, and our team in 2023 decided to formalize the planning in collaboration with Yale administrators. We created a secure venue at the Yale Farm, handled all ticketing and food vendor relations, and sourced all production equipment for various student performers from bands to DJs.

hyped crowd throughout the day

intimate crowd/student artist set-up

(RE)CLAIMING PAULA TORANZO IN COLLABORATION WITH NAIMA BLANCO-NORBERG SCALES OF DESIGN WITH BIMAL MENDIS SUMMER 2023

This project captures the impact of gentrification over a 5-year period in our communities. We spotlight the invasion of trendy businesses displacing local gems, symbolized by gentrifying entities like “Colonizer Foods Market.” Through satire and visual elements, we challenge the notion of a smooth gentrification process, emphasizing the resilience of existing communities against franchise giants. The blue-painted existing community contrasts with the red-painted gentrifiers, highlighting the stark separation between lives and intentions. Our work seeks to question and (re)claim community spaces in the face of increasing commercialization and urban transformation.

10 x 15 x 8.5 in foamcore, terracota, and bass wood, (re)claiming our cities

dull parking lot being reclaimed as a skatepark

ADDRESSING HEAT ISLANDS PAULA TORANZO IN COLLABORATION WITH JAZZ HENRY, SUSTAINABILITY LA28 OLYMPICS AND PARALYMPICS: GAMES DELIVERY AND PLANNING SUMMER 2023 GIS heat map to identify heat islands and potential sites

As part of our LA28 Summer Intern Cohort’s capstone presentation, we were challenged to address the 20% of Angelenos who believe that the 2028 games will leave a negative impact on the city. In collaboration with the Sustainability team and representing the Games Planning and Delivery department, we decided to address concerns for gentrification and potential impact onsmall business owners and street vendors. We used GIS to create a heat island map focusing on areas around Gamestime stadiums, identifying empty lots or public spaces to create impactful interventions. We took inspiration from heat resilience centers to propose a water refill station that can also serve as free advertising for small businesses impacted by Gamestime infrastructure and security, sponsored by LA28. Our team presented this to our co-workers including the C-suite. proposed water refill location

IT’S HUMAN BROCHURE PAULA TORANZO INTRODUCTION TO GRAPHIC DESIGN WITH HENK VAN ASSEN

FALL 2022 For our prompt we were first asked to create an identity for an event or program of sorts. I chose to imagine how a conference discussing the future of AI and the definition of “life” would brand themselves. This discussion on ethics and what is real or not, challenged me to not only find a font that balances the humanity being discussede but the future in a modernistic way. The gradient ‘it’ flower has a green core for the discussion of AI, slowly turning fuschia, interacting with the world to be more human.

I chose to do an accordian style booklet that can act as a conversation starter, biography, and conference calendar. The condensed form can easily fit into a pocket but also stretch out to playfully engage the conference goer.

AFROFUTURES MAGAZINE PAULA TORANZO ADVANCED TYPOGRAPHY WITH HENK VAN ASSEN

FALL 2023

This magazine was an exploration of a movement that has strongly inspired me whenever I wanted to break the mold. Whether it be when learning saxophone and listening to Miles Davis, or researching for my next fictional essay and reading Octavia Butler’s Kindred. This movement that is uplifting new Black artists, embracing them through all mediums and allowing a people to finally reflect their history in the US and feel empowered from it.

final construction 11x17 in. vessel, varied size articles chipboard and paper

As fluid as this movement is, I did not want to restrain the articles or artist I featured in one form of magazine, I wanted the reader to discover them and work their way through different feelings of touch and sight. The vessel is a piece of art on its own and each medium is reflected in the shape or formatting of the unique article. For example with music I used a record shape, spinning Sun Ra’s infamous albums, or for film, using an accordion fold with stills from Black Panther formatted into a film roll. The literature article featuring Octavia Butler was inspired by 70s sci-fi books, in their bulky, small, rectangular form with minimal type and design on the cover.