I worked with These Days a graphic designer, helping to build and strengthen their brand as they enter their final year of showcasing up and coming artists in Chicago. My work consisted of designing editorial style Instagram posts for various article releases and taking lead on the graphics for their "Artists-to-Watch 2024" series. In my time with These Days, I've strengthen my skills as a freelance designer, adhering to their brand guidelines while also being able to highlight my design style. Additionally, These Days has given me the platform to connect with other creatives in a variety of industries and build a network of people to work with on other projects. One of the challenges I faced was adapting to their sporadic and spontaneous posting style. This often meant late nights working on edits for a post and quick turn-around times for briefs.
The title lockup design for "Artists-to-Watch 2024" was inspired by the idea that these various artists come from entirely different backgrounds and present different sounds, yet they can all tie together and connect with a larger audience. This is shown through the continuously changing fonts that all are different but end up working well together to create a unique design that is completely new. As we met, photographed, and interviewed each artist we learned of their journeys and how they grew into the personality and person they are today and I wanted to reflect that in the series' designs.
As lead for graphics, I was responsible for the title-lockup design, group and individual artist post designs, website cover design, and the teaser trailer.
The Instagram post designs for the "Artists-to-Watch 2024" stemmed from the set design and logo with the clouds. We wanted to stick with the blue/neutral toned colors that These Days is known for, but still bring something fresh and exciting to the viewers and followers.
Below are the artist article covers for Instagram:
Featured below are various article designs for Instagram for stand-alone articles as well as These Days' "Get 2 Know" series. In my post designs I really enjoyed the challenged of having slides intertwine and connect when scrolling. To achieve this sometimes meant working in Photoshop with their AI generative fill to extend images and exporting to Illustrator to create eye-catching type designs.
