The 2019 Me, Myself and Design (student conference) visuals were created by Kiana Ballinger, a graphic design student from Metropolitan Community College. We sat down with her to discuss her creative process and her experience with AIGA Nebraska.
What was the concept for your poster?
The theme for Me, Myself and Design this year is all about finding your path and figuring out which route you want to take as you grow as a designer. I wanted to portray this on the poster with a map, using different paths and direction to represent a journey. The roads are the process you go through to become a successful designer. I wanted to include icons that you would otherwise find on a road, but also be metaphorical to the theme.
Initial Sketches for the Poster Design
Describe your creative process.
I started the process with simple sketches to narrow down the idea of maps, direction, and paths to represent the journey of designers. I knew from the start that I wanted to include some hand lettering, even though I’ve never integrated it into any of my projects before. It was an opportunity to learn something new. I ultimately came up with three concepts: “Footprints” to represent different paths and direction, “Continents” which has the different design careers such as web, print, UX, etc., and finally, “Map” that is metaphorical to represent the designer’s journey from the start. We ended up combining the hand-lettering from two of the posters with the “Map” concept, but I had to redo the design of the map to integrate it. There was a lot of tweaking to make the poster as best as it can be. I had a hard time coming up with icons that you can find on the road but also fit in with the road names. I chose to write over the copy to give it that “imperfect” and “hand drawn” feeling that the rest of the poster has. One of the bigger challenges I had was keeping the poster to two colors. I didn’t want to lose hierarchy with the information from the poster but keeping it to two colors made the screen-printing process easy.
Iterations of the design as Kiana worked towards the final concept.
Talk about your first screen printing experience. Would you consider this process for future projects?
When Amanda Hoklin invited me to screen print my posters I was beyond thrilled! The Union for Contemporary Art was a great place to have access to the printing equipment and the staff was super friendly and helpful. The process to print was an actual workout (we were sweating) but having two of us made it very easy to make 100+ posters in a few hours. I would definitely consider screen printing for projects because it’s super fun and the end result is priceless.
Kiana working on screenprinting the posters
How has AIGA benefited you as a Student?
Ever since going to AIGA’s Me, Myself & Design event last year, I have gone to every AIGA event after that. It was a game changer for me. I have been exposed to local and national designers and the inspiration it has given me has made me want to push myself and my projects farther than I thought I could. I am a very anxious and quiet person—but by going to events I feel a lot more open to everyone and I find myself wanting to meet new people. I am a lot more confident in my work as a result and I plan to enter into the AIGA show this year!
Me, Myself, & Design 2019
Saturday | October 12, 2019 | 9a–3:30p
Metropolitan Community College
South Omaha Campus | ITC Room120
2909 Edward Babe Gomez Ave. Omaha, NE 68107
