A design portfolio by Maria Sprow
I’m a graphic designer who loves to tell stories through my designs. I believe good design pleases the eye, grabs attention, provokes thought, makes sense, flows well, solves problems, communicates clearly, controls the gaze, connects the elements, excites the viewer, sells the subject, shows the story, differentiates and meets constraints.
NEWSPAPER PAGE LAYOUT & DESIGN
One of the things I’m most passionate about is telling stories, which might be why I’ve always had a fondness for newspapers and the newsroom. It’s a tough business, a fast-paced world in which things must be done quickly and accurately. When I design, I want to surprise readers, tell stories in a more interesting way and draw the eye in to the heart of the story being told. I generally have about 30 minutes to work on a feature cover from the time I first see the materials to the time I must move on to the next page, so ideas must come quickly and be easily executable.
FAIR AND ‘SQUARE’:
The editor supplied the main and secondary headlines, as well as a plain Andy Adams portrait, the album cover and a promotional photograph (pictured at the bottom). I came up with the “Square One” concept by creating a grid of squares and moving the photograph around each square to represent a sliding square puzzle — in which the puzzle solver must often go back to move forward.
MIKE, ANIMATED: I decided to cut out both the animator from the supplied photograph and the characters from the animated film screen shots and place them on the main subject to make it look like the animator was standing with his creations. I also created the top cut out, to make it look like the characters were falling toward the animator.
HOME IS WHERE THE ‘HEART’ IS: I found a stock image of a turnpike and blended it with the supplied image of the band. I then created the house with the upside-down heart-shaped roof to better illustrate the headline, and used other necessary elements — the album cover and the concert box — as features of the house.
‘NO DAY BUT TODAY’: To help tell the story of RENT, I wanted a layout with just as much rebellious energy as the play itself. I alluded to the included images of the RENT poster, which used the tilted stencil lettering and the ripped-from-the-newspaper effect.
STORM, WEATHERED: I wanted to show a transition between a before and after. I blended one image behind a second image, which I cut out from a busier background, and gave the blended image a little bit of green tone.
FOR THE ‘BIRDS’: I was inspired by the paper airplane found on the album cover. I found some stock images of origami birds, cut them out and placed them in front of origami clouds I created in InDesign.
‘10 PARKS THAT CHANGED AMERICA’: An infograph to compliment a Local Plant Source blog post about the PBS series on America’s most innovative city parks.
2016 PLANT SHORTAGES SURVIVAL GUIDE: An infograph that illustrates why growers have a hard time meeting demand when it comes to certain plants and explains the steps contractors can take to ensure they have the right plants at the right time for their large commercial projects.
SAFER SURFACE SOLUTIONS: A Dallas-based company in the commercial flooring and safety sector, Safer Surface Solutions needed a way to showcase their high-end products and safety auditing services to a variety of potential customers. After discussing the product and its selling points, I wrote the copy, photographed the product, created the yellow tile logo and gave the company several flyer and trifold options to consider.
FAR LEFT: ‘FAIRY GIRL’ — illustration based on composite and manipulation of two photographs
TOP LEFT: ‘GALAPAGOS’ — Digital sketch based on Galapagos sea life
TOP RIGHT: ‘BIRDS OF A FEATHER’ — Digital painting/manipulation from a photograph taken at a zoo.
BOTTOM: For this tiny world photograph, I took approximately 30 photographs of the city of Austin skyline and Palmer Long center, stitched and blended them
together in photograph and then distorted the blended photograph using its polar coordinates to create the sphere. This tiny world was created as part of a brochure and poster on the city of Austin’s zero waste initiative.
IT’S THE CAMERA’S JOB TO CAPTURE WHAT SOMETHING LOOKED LIKE.
IT’S THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOB TO CAPTURE WHAT SOMETHING FELT LIKE.
FAR LEFT TOP: ‘IN MY OWN SKIN’ — Photo composite and manipulation
FAR LEFT BOTTOM: ‘SLEEPING BEAR’ — Photo manipulation from Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes
LEFT: ‘GIZMO’ — Pet portrait digital illustration
Two of my most recent illustrations — left created in Illustrator and the right created in Photoshop.
LOCAL PLANT SOURCE SUBSIDIARY: When my contract client said they were creating a secondary product for landscape architects, I jumped at the chance to work on their logo and branding development. Lead by a consultant, we discussed what the product would do, how it would make clients feel and the main message we wanted to come across when the product was being discussed. They wanted to create a tool to help landscape architects discover the right plants for the right project and then locate the right growers to ensure adequate availability and supply. During a brainstorming session, I supplied the name — EMPLANTED — and was then tasked with coming up with a variety of colorscapes, logos and taglines for executives to choose from.
WATERJET WORKS: I use vector drawings to create high-end mosaic tile kitchen and bathroom backsplashes for a laserjet cutting company that then allows potential customers to color the designs themselves. The backsplashes must be 3’ by 3,’ with no tile being larger than 8” X 18”. Each mosaic must be broken up into no more than 14 different coloring groups.
Book, album and poster mockups (not created for commercial or client purposes).
GIFS, MOTION GRAPHICS AND VIDEOS
I do have some personal experience with creating GIFS in photoshop and editing using both Premiere and Illustrator, and am currently learning how to do 3D modeling in Blender and 2D animation in Animate. Below is an animated GIF I created from a stock photograph, a 3-D bear I created in Blender (based on a tutorial), and a video (including animation) I edited together in 2013 for the Texas Association of Counties.
More Graphic Design Work