Design
by knivesng

Knives Nguyen’s Design Portfolio

Welcome to my portfolio for the Design & Illustration track! Here you will find all the projects I completed for the Bridge Winter 2023 program.

Brand Style Guide

This is my Brand Style Guide for the video game company, SEGA. Combining typography with graphic design, I created this informational graphic showing proper usage of the SEGA logo.

Book Cover Project

The second project I completed was a re-make of Ocean Vuong’s “Night Sky with Exit Wounds”, one of my favorite poetry collections. I chose to feature art from Dang Xuan Hoa because like Vuong, a lot of his works center around the theme of family/family life.

Through this project, I got to discover what makes a good book cover. Color and typography are a big part of the visual aesthetics. Good visuals means more book sales!

PERSPECTIVES PRACTICE

This is an exercise I completed using paper and a colored pencil. After learning about two-point perspective and shadows, I was tasked to sketch out 6 different shapes on the same plane.

Creative Resumé

Here is a general creative resumé I built using Canva. I love using this site because of its HUUUGE library of templates and graphics and because it is super easy to use.

Creative resumés break a lot of rules about resumé making… but hey, at least they’re fun to make!

FIGMA Mini-Project: twitter banner

Using Figma, I created a banner for my Twitter account. I included images of things I like such as oil paints and Thee Sacred Souls. With this project, I got more comfortable creating image masks and using Figma’s pen tool, especially the Bezier tool.

PIXLR Mini-projects

Click on each image to expand the view!

  • Our peer teacher introduced us to Pixlr, another free Photoshop alternative. Using tools like cutout, clone, and the lasso tool, we made designs using multiple layers and images.
    • My first day trying the program, I struggled with the masking tool a lot. Although this project didn’t turn out how I initially wanted (masking the entire vase instead of a single arm), I was satisfied with my results.
    • Then, I had some practice with the clone and text tool. That day, I was feeling tired and stressed so I decided to create something immediately satisfying instead of visually pleasing. I had pictures of cats and motivational phrases to help lift my spirits.
    • My last work in Pixlr, I decided to make a digital collage using a photo reference. I used different colors, values, and textures to communicate an artistic rendition of this picture. My main tool of choice was the polygon lasso. It helped me create these rough edges that make the image replicate a physical photo collage.

NEWSLETTER PROJECT

For this project, I tapped into my inner journalist and wrote to an imaginary audience. I wrote in a personal blog-style manner, so I chose to bring in photos from my own camera roll.