Haute Magazine // Design team member
As a member of the design team of the University of Southern California's fashion and culture magazine "Haute Magazine", I designed the spreads for the 2021 issue’s theme "Dream State". The Assets are a combination between visual artists and writers.
Inception Re-Design
Inception has been a long time favorite film that I have watched more times than I can count. For a design challenge, I wanted to reimagine the film franchise marketed as a film noir and horror-esque production.
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Inception has always been one of my favorite movies in terms of visual design and conception. I wanted to make it in the style that the audience would not necessarily expect from the contents of the film so I incorporated both a modern and a vintage take on the posters. This is also emphasized through the stark black that is both contained within the boundaries and shown as the border to replicate the actual Film Noir era film posters. I imagine the Film Noir inspired renditions on actual printed posters to contribute to the style of something “old timey”, while also visually referencing the shape of a polaroid picture (somewhat ironic considering pictures can-not be taken in dreams). On a different note, the first poster I created,the main focus was to make it seem almost water like as one of the film’smain points of action is waking up from deeper dreams by falling into water. The orientation of the person was also intentional in the sensethat within dreams, normal physics does not always apply, creating imagery that is fabricated in the mind, outside of reality. The text alsoplays on the concept of movement where “downward” and “forward”are not actually practiced in the right sense in the imagery.
Exhibition Design
Conceptual design of Lauren Greenfield’s work in “Generation Wealth”, for the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, CA
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I felt Lauren Greenfield’s images were extremely engaging the first time I stumbled upon her workin 2018. I was traveling to Norway and she had a pop-up screening and exhibit as she was a featured artist. Ever since then I have come back to her work time and time again as I felt it posesstrong commentary on how our capitalist society functions. Her work provides a 25 year photographic journey, which I felt was perfect to feature in my exhibition.
The stories of the individuals are very touching, as she interviews people who lead very extravagant lives as well as those who lost their lives, metaphorically, to the chase of wealth. She gives acohesive story through contextual imagery and additional interviews of those who are involvedwith the main interviewees. For the critical moment, it was really important for me to highlightthat specific portion of her work so I created an interactive bubble of sorts, for visitors to listenand watch the individuals from their initial interview to their last interviews on each of the different panels. This would also included headphones so visitors can listen to them individually.Ialso provided a digital version of her book “Generation Wealth” so that those who want to take adeeper look at the photographs not featured in the exhibition.
Her images are quite visceral and vibrant so I really wanted to have the texts around the exhibition to be more simple and not take away from the images. With the support of the video, I want-ed the visitors to be focused on the stories the images told. Almost all of her work is featured inher film, so in the screening room towards the end of the exhibition, those who want to watch the entirety of the film to reference back for the photographs have the opportunity to do so.Forthe color palette, the chosen colors were reflective of the colors that were present in a lot of herphotographs. The main colors I envisioned was the two orangish yellows as they are similar to herbook cover color and symbolic of wealth. The color gold shows up in a lot of the things people inher images are wearing, as well as the house decor for some of her key characters that she choosesto focus on. The use of the cool tones of blue are there to juxtapose the yellow, yet still are representative of wealth (like diamonds). Ultimately, the colors were reflexive of her book cover as well(the image on the right).
I really wanted the experience to be customizable to each individual, so I made sure my layoutwas open with provided separate yet incorporated spaces so those who are interested in viewingher work more deeply have the opportunity to do so, and those who just want to enjoy the photographs can focus solely on that.
