Christian Bearden

B.S. of Visual Communication Design
Portfolio

I am a fourth student studying Visual Communication Design at San Francisco State University. I want to focus on user-centered design, and create in a way that prioritizes a user experience. This is seen in my web design, where a clean interface allows easy navigation, and elements on each page allow for the reader to easily scan the page for what they are looking for. I am also interested in uplifting the voices of peoples often overlooked in society, and creating visibility for them within the design community. I have been studying design at SFSU for almost two years now and have cultivated skills primarily with Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. I am also comfortable with Adobe XD, and have used invision, figma, brackets, and p5 in courses as well. Having group work has given me experience in collectively creating a project, and delegating roles between a team. Solo projects have also helped me better my skills in ideation and documenting each stage of an assignment. As I work on a project it is important to me to remain organized, properly naming and placing files to keep track of all my resources and progress. When out of class and not busy with assignments I enjoy sketching and trying new food places with friends. I also am an avid movie watcher and sans COVID I love going to the movies with friends to see whatever is out.

Lindt Chocolate Bar Re-Design

The first step of researching a communication audit and swot analysis were completed to deepen the understanding of the Lindt brand and its most prominent competitors within the marketplace. The last component of this fist step was a mood board of the three flavors, already having decided on including fruit as part of them these mood boards became mostly an exploration in possible color palettes and flavor mix ins, with some other brands packaging designs mixed in.For this design the primary detail on the front of the pages is the illustrations. Their more classic feel paired with the wrap around the bar, and an older typeface such as Bodoni help uphold the sophisticated, past designs of Lindt bars, while including the font Mr Eaves allows it to still have a modern flare to it.

Book Cover re-Design

The first phases of the assignment involved experimenting with various materials that related to the novel, and creating a unique, abstract typography for the front cover. In the science fiction novel Binti the conflict between the alien Meduse and the Humans is at the center of the novel. At the center of this conflict is Binti, who’s unique clay mixture possessed the ability to heal the Meduse’ jellyfish like body. At first the type tried to reflect these two materials, clay and jellyfish. A homemade clay mixture was used for the clay, and ribbon in water for Jellyfish. I decided to focus more on the clay, specifically how it would look still in the earth, fingers dug into it. With the homemade clay this proved difficult, and it looked much more like dough. So for the final the focus moved instead to the salve Binti would have made from the clay, which was much for thin and creamy when applied to herself. The strokes were intended to still reflect the brush of a finger on skin, made on card stock paper patterned like the night sky. The type for the title on the side cover as well as the authors name was Astro Armada, a science fiction font that reflected the themes of the book, as well as complimented the original cover’s font. Degular was used to compliment this font, being set for the description on the back, as well as other smaller texts.

Complete Neat

For this project the goal is to create an app that helps roommates better organize the chores between them, while avoiding any awkward confrontation. User would simply enter their own profiles and information into the app, including all the necessary rooms that require shared cleaning, and the app would divide and allocate these tasks evenly between the users.

Capstone Advisor: Debra Glass