A world
filled with
wonder
COMPETITION WINNER / PRINT MEDIA
2023
Wonder is the result of my winning vision for a competition hosted at Madison College for the design of a booklet for a student STEM event. Combining imagination, creativity, and a strong sense of purpose and community, this hand-printed booklet design captures the touching experience of wonder.
VANDERCOOK PRINTING PRESS | ILLUSTRATOR
DELIVERABLES:
1 Front and Back cover design, printed copies
FEEL:
Explorative, curious, open-minded, creative, natural
In my first draft, I had originally put a solid background color (green), which, while attractive, would demand an exhaustive amount of ink in the printing process and put the delicate line-work at risk. This was solved by swapping my two Pantone colors around & supplementing a background color with my paper selection. Another problem we faced was the nature of traditional printing. Given we were using an overprinting method to achieve a third green within the design, placement had to be exact & consistent with every pull through the rollers.
PROBLEM:
As a student of Madison College, I knew I wanted to create something that would reflect the supportive, open-minded culture MATC cultivated within their classrooms and peer spaces, as well as properly represent the event. The word "wonder" came to mind & I began my first draft in Procreate, inspired by a photograph I'd seen of two hands reaching for the other, one robotic, one flesh. I finalized my concept in Illustrator and submitted it to the competition in my print lab. A week later on a snowy Wisconsin morning with class canceled and my computer refusing to connect to our online class, I received a text from a class friend congratulating me for winning. I was blown away & ready to get it in ink! Under the passionate guidance of my lab mentors, we polished my rough draft for print and set forward using polymer molds to create a 3-color overprint design on cream cardstock, hand-pulling 600 copies from a Vanderbilt press that were distributed to guests.
CONCLUSION:
Getting the opportunity to bring one of my designs alive in ink and paper was a dream come true. I learned so much about printing practices, working realistically & creatively with limitations, fell in love, and had so much fun working with the print lab to take Wonder from an idea to a reality.
APPROACH:
