Aaron

Graphic Design Portfolio

In 2010, I enrolled in Full Sail University’s Master of Media Design year-long online intensive program. Our “Master’s Thesis” for the program was a Project Book that was to be a collection of our year-long rebranding effort for a company of our choosing. I chose to rebrand Korean tourism (previously “Korea, Sparkling”) to “Discover Korea” which I felt was a much more dynamic and intriguing invitation for tourism. Over the course of the year, we focused on:

  1. Brand Development
  2. Design Strategy
  3. Production Workflow

Courses were each held for one solid month of intensive study and included:

  1. Designing Success
  2. Defining Client Needs
  3. Brand Development
  4. Effective Copywriting
  5. Design Research
  6. Organizational Structures
  7. Design Strategies and Motivation
  8. Design Integration
  9. Multi-Platform Delivery
  10. Measuring Design Effectiveness
  11. Professional Practice (Ethics of Design)
  12. Presentation of Design Solution

Project deliverables included:

  1. Project Book
  2. Moodboards
  3. Research Paper + Presentation
  4. Ads + ad copy
  5. Logo
  6. Style/Branding Guide
  7. Video
  8. Web design (sitemap → wireframes → PSD)
  9. SWAG (promotional merchandise)

Discover Korea Campaign Rebrand Book (Student Project)

Our Master’s “thesis” at Full Sail University was to create a Project Campaign book for the major rebrand we performed on a company of our choosing throughout the course of the year. I chose Korean tourism for a number of reasons: I felt that Korea had a lot to offer and was getting a bad rap …

Discover Korea Tourism Campaign Deliverables (Student Project)

The following is an excerpt from my 122-page Master’s Degree Design book in which I chose to rebrand Korean tourism for my year-long project. (You can download the entire e-book here, or order a hardcopy from Blurb here.) Learn more about the Logo design and Branding here (upcoming) → Business Cards I went with a very simple …

Discover Korea Website (Student Project)

Visit the PSD mockup “website” →

Or check out the full Project Book here →

During my Master’s course at Full Sail University, one of the components of our “major rebrand of a company” project was to design a website to match the rebrand. This included:

  1. A sitemap
  2. Website wireframes (and sketches)
  3. A full Photoshop mock-up of the homepage (above)

In addition to these components (which took one month to complete in one course), we also spent a month analyzing and comparing competitors’ brands and websites in order to make more informed design and website structure choices.

Sitemap

website-sample-sitemap

Sketches

Wireframes

Full Designs

Discover Korea Style Guide (Student Project)

The brand Style Guide is one of the MOST important assets in any organization because it lays out in great detail the brand and usage guidelines. This was one of the first sections I completed for my my 122-page Master’s Degree Design book. (You can download the entire e-book here, or order a hard copy from Blurb here.)

The Style Guide section of the book includes things like:

  1. Logo explanation & proper spacing
  2. Brand colors
  3. Brand fonts
  4. Brand voice
  5. Examples of proper brand usage
  6. Improper brand usage
  7. Image (photography) guidelines
  8. Guidelines for creating branded deliverables (print ads, business cards, videos, websites, and so on)

Click any of the images below to “zoom in” and read the entire Style Guide for the Discover Korea brand.

 

Discover Korea Motion Ad (Student Project)

Storyboard The storyboard shown here was originally intended to be for a 30-second spot that would have picked out and shown EACH of the “SIX Unforgettable Aspects of Korea” individually. Food Food & Culture Ancient & Modern High-tech Adventure & History Nature Digital Storyboard Full text of the storyboard direction: WEB BANNER ANIMATION (PAPER CUT-OUT …

Discover Korea Print Ads Progression (Student Project)

The following is an excerpt from my 122-page Master’s Degree Design book in which I chose to rebrand Korean tourism for my year-long project. (You candownload the entire e-book here, or order a hardcopy from Blurb here.) Print ad development involved a minimum of SIX sketches for each ad (shown first), and FOUR different iterations of …

Discover Korea Logo (Student Project)

This post is an extension of the Logo Development section (pages 54-55) in my 122-page Master’s Degree Design book (in which I chose to rebrand Korean tourism for my year-long project). You can download the entire e-book here, or order a hardcopy from Blurb here. Why choose to rebrand Korean tourism? Frankly, I hated the logo at that time (“Korea, …

Discover Korea Moodboards & Toolbox (Student Project)

The following is an excerpt from my 122-page Master’s Degree Design book in which I chose to rebrand Korean tourism for my year-long project. (You can download the entire e-book here, or order a hardcopy from Blurb here.) In order to get a feel for the project from the get-go, I was asked to create a …

Cheonan Warship Civil War Poster (Student Project)

By far one of my favorite designs I made in grad school was in the first week of school. The teacher assigned us the task to create a poster in some kind of “period style.” I chose Civil War style posters to create “A Modern Civil War Poster for South Korea’s Cheonan Warship Sinking.” (The preceding link includes my thought process, research notes, and research paper for the design.)

We were required to design the poster on US Letter size paper, though were I to do it again, I prefer A4. (I personally feel that A4 paper is tall and strong versus US Letter size which looks short and fat.)

The following images inspired this design:

Be sure to read the full blog article describing the design and including my design research here!