Laura Guardalabene Design

2012-02-14T23:01:00.000-08:00

FLOORED BY FLORAL

So I've recently created a Pinterest account to collect all the things my eyeballs take a pleasing to. Follow me here and check out some of my boards like Graphic Designy or Floored by Floral.

2012-01-20T00:26:00.000-08:00

Thank You

These are just some thank you cards I whipped up to thank those who celebrated my graduation with me.

2012-01-19T23:09:00.000-08:00

Paintings!

Recently I got back in touch with my fine art side. My good friend Bethany Clark had a farewell fashion show a couple weeks ago before she left to work for KeoK'Jay Design in Cambodia. The show was very collaborative with designs from a few individuals. I created these paintings to be hung at the show. I had a lot of fun making them! Right now I'm obsessed with bright neons, geometric art-deco inspired shapes, and animal prints... these paintings combine all three :3

2012-01-19T21:17:00.000-08:00

MY MOOD BOARD

My Mood Board is an ipad application that helps creative professionals brainstorm and organize their thoughts and inspiration.

The application is a virtual mood board. The user can create, find, capture and store creative inspiration on a project by project basis. It’s an easy and simple way to organize inspiration for a creative project that would otherwise be saved in various locations like on the users phone, digital camera, on the internet, and in physical form in their office. The goal of My Mood Board is to converge all of these different media into one easy to use application so that the user can streamline their creative process.

Download a PDF of my complete process book for this project here!

My Mood Board application for ipad from Laura on Vimeo.

2012-01-19T19:20:00.000-08:00

Chili Recipe

My final project in Experimental Typography class was to design a chili recipe card. We could pick any kind of chili recipe. Our professor encouraged us to choose a recipe that would be conducive to imagery and lend itself to a certain esthetic. My recipe is for Hellfire Habanero chili. My design is a mix of hell, spicy, and western imagery. The paper stock I used was this BRIGHT florescent orange paper.. I wanted something that screamed HOT and that would work well with my design. Unfortunately this made the final printed piece very difficult to photograph since cameras and scanners don't register florescents or red/oranges very well. I did the best I could but it looks best in person! This piece was printed using 3 custom ordered polymer plates.

The last picture kind of shows how bright the paper really is.

2011-12-16T13:26:00.000-08:00

RED HOOD

My last project for my Studio Production class was a collaborative one.

The class was split into two groups. Each group became a fake creative Studio. We had to create a printed piece that would showcase our "studios" work yet look cohesive enough to represent the studio as one branded identity. Our group decided to call our "studio" Red Hood. We came to the conclusion that all of us were pretty strong in hand-done typography and illustration since Kent State University puts an emphasis on hand-done design skills. To showcase this we each illustrated a page in a summarized version of the story Little Red Riding Hood. We gave ourselves these limitaitons: Each spread had to have some hand-drawn elements and reflect our design esthetic as an individual and each spread must be grey-scale with red the only color being allowed.

2011-12-15T16:42:00.000-08:00

Graduation dinner Invites

I decided to design my own dinner invitations for my graduation dinner. Just a lil' somethin I whipped up to give my invitations a more personal touch. I went with a retro/italian ish look.

2011-12-02T12:24:00.000-08:00

Hey ya'll!

It's been a while since I've posted on here.. I've been so busy with school! But guess what? I'm DONE! FINISHED! OUTTA HERE! I graduated about a week ago. Yay!!!

Anyway, I took a class called Experimental Typography this past semester. It's a pretty sweet class that mainly uses letterpress (screen printing, stencils, digital printing, etc. may be used in combination with letterpress) to create and print designs.

One of our projects was to design an event poster. That's it. Any event, any size poster, any colors, any whatever. The event I came up with was a scary movie marathon titled "AHHHHS*!!" (or AHHHSHIP..AHHHSHOT...AHHHSH... you get it). The assignment was given to us around Halloween time, which happens to be my favorite holiday! I absolutely LOVE scary movies, so this was a fun project for me.

I ended up using silver ink and this speckled grey gravestoney paper. The image was digitally printed first then all the type was (painstakingly) handset by mwha.

2011-10-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

One Stop Prom Shop branding & Identity - Postcard

Here's the final postcard design!

Front

Back

2011-10-20T11:00:00.001-07:00

One Stop Prom Shop branding & Identity - Progress

SUP.

So I just finished designing the postcard for One Stop Prom Shop.

Here are some initial front concepts. Originally we were going to use stock photos for the printed promotional pieces but due to a tight budget and the expense of stock photography we had to stick with something illustrated and type dominant. I really like the outcome!

Back

2011-10-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

One Stop Prom Shop branding & Identity

Hey guys!

It's been a very long time since I've posted on here! I'm currently working on a very cool freelance project for Cuyahoga Falls High School (my alma mater). I'm creating a logo and various other pieces for a prom trade show called One Stop Prom Shop. I'm working with the high school's DECA class on the branding of the event. here's a link to learn more about what DECA is.

Here's some logos I've worked out. The students wanted something fun, bright, & fresh and they liked the colors teal, hot pink, and yellow.

Some initial sketching

two finalized logo concepts

They ended up going with the shopping bag logo.

The next step was to design T-shirts to be sold at the event and separate T-shirts to be worn by the staff running the event.

My next step will be to incorporate photographs of teens having fun at prom into printed pieces like postcards, posters, forms, etc. Stay tuned to see what's next!

2011-04-11T05:29:00.000-07:00

Senior show "take away" tote bags!

I designed and screen printed these promotional canvas bags to give away at my senior show at Kent State University. Young's Screen Printing and Embroidery graciously let me use their equipment and ink! They're awesome!

If you live in the Akron/Cleveland area you should try and make it to the reception this Friday at 6pm. There will be food, mingling, free giveaways, and of course top notch design work by this year's BFA students!

Click on any image to begin slideshow

2011-04-11T05:28:00.000-07:00

Everyone should check out my new website LAURAGUARD.COM!

:)

2011-03-05T16:06:00.001-08:00

Nontraditional Book

I finally got around to photographing my nontraditional book! The prompt was to take a trip, ANY kind of trip and tell the story of that trip in a nontraditional form. My trip was to West Point Market's gourmet chocolate department in Akron. I LOVE chocolate, especially dark and fine chocolate so this trip was definitely fun for me. I got to meet the employees, taste test some fine chocolate, and experience the atmosphere of West Point Market in a more in depth manner.

My book took the form of pirouette wafers. A Pirouette is not just a ballet move but also a delicious rolled cookie/wafer treat! They're kind of like up-scale cookies which is why I chose to model my book off of them since West Point Market is an upscale grocery store. Conceptually I liked how the wafers were crunchy on the outside and filled with chocolate on the inside. That became the theme of my story, "Sweeter on the Inside". I found that West Point Market doesn't seem like much from the outside but once I went in and got to know some of the employees my experience became more personal and in a cheesy way "sweeter". Also a lot of the chocolate that I tried came in individual packages. The chocolate was literally sweeter on the inside of the package.

The book is chocolate scented and inside the gold foil bag in the center is 15 pirouettes for the reader to munch on while they read my story. I figured I had to include something sweet since I describe lots of delicious treats throughout the story!

Click on any image to begin slideshow

2011-02-13T16:31:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day Red Velvet Cupcake Recipe and Decor Giveaway!
Here's a very tasty (and cute!) treat for those love birds out there or just for those birds who love cupcakes!

Dark Red Velvet Cupcakes:

Ingredients:

DRY
2 1/2 cups unbleached whole wheat flour
1 cup sugar & 1/2 cup raw cane sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips

WET
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk (room temp)
2 large eggs (room temp)
2 tablespoons red food coloring
1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS
• preheat oven to °350
• in a medium mixing bowl sift: flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, & cocoa powder
• in a large bowl gently beat: vegetable oil, buttermilk, eggs, food coloring, vinegar, & vanialla.
• pour chocolate chips into a small bowl with a 1/2 cup flour
• stir chocolate chips in flour until all the chips are covered in a thin layer of flour
• then sift the chips from the flour and pour chocolate chips into wet ingredient bowl (the flour will ensure that the chocolate chips do not all sink to the bottom of your batter)
• Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, mix until smooth
• fill 2 12-cup muffin pans about 2/3 of the way full
• sprinkle a few chocolate chips on top of each cupcake
• bake for 20 - 22 minutes

This is what they should look like when done

Fresh Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

1/2 lb cream cheese
1 stick of butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups confectioner's sugar
1 box fresh raspberries
• Mix all these ingredients together and garnish with fresh raspberries!

Frosted and garnished!

Decorate

To decorate I illustrated these cute little hearts that you can glue on to toothpicks and stick in the cupcakes!

Tools you will need:

x-acto knife, thin twine string, glue stick, tooth picks, heart PDF

• First print out the PDF of hearts attached to this post
• then take your x-acto knife and cut out as many hearts as you would like (remember you must cut out 2 of each type so that the heart sticks can be double sided, there are 3 different types of hearts on the sheet)
• take 2 cut-outs of the same type of heart and glue them together with a toothpick in the middle

• finally tie a piece of twine string to the base of the heart to make it extra cute :3

I stuck one in each cupcake at varying heights and angles.

The final platter!

(not all cupcakes are included on this plate, the recipe makes about 2 dozen cupcakes)

Hope you all enjoyed and have a Happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-08T08:38:00.001-08:00

Final Star Trek poster

If you haven't read my earlier post of this here's a synopses of the project:
I was prompted to create a poster that describes an unfamiliar process in a strong visual way. The process I chose was how to achieve top rank (fleet admiral) in the Star Trek universe. I chose this topic because I have been a big fan of the series for a long time and I also wanted to diversify my portfolio even more by including a piece that speaks to the sci-fi geek aesthetic. I started out with two very different concepts; one was a modern, "grungy", technological space look and the other was an art deco inspired 1950's era sci-fi throw-back look. I ended up going with the 1950's era concept and focusing on the original Star Trek series because this would be appealing to a larger audience (through my research I found that majority of Star Trek fans are fans of the original series while only some are fans of later series and there is much debate over which later series is better than others). This poster would be sold at Trekkie conventions as well as the official Star Trek website.

I made a lot of changes along the way. I made the box shapes have arrow tips on them to give the user a better sense of direction while going through the process. These arrows also bring in the 1950's Art deco angles present in the title at the bottom of the poster and in the finish line at the top. I reorganized the process to make it one long process. The line no longer stops as it did in the first version of this poster. There are a few different versions of the Star Trek rank structure, this version is closest to the original series structure. I incorporated subtle a grungy space-like/paint splatter texture in the background (this was actually from a different design option of my poster found here). I also simplified the sub-steps on the poster by having the grey line go straight through them rather than in and out, this made it easier to follow the line.

I'm pretty please with the final piece. Let me know what you think!

2011-02-01T20:35:00.000-08:00

My brother's story

This was an assignment for my Visual Storytelling class. I captured my brother living life as a single father with his 3 year old son Devin as well as his life in a heavy metal band called Dimaura. I wanted to show a contrast between his quiet life as a dad and the loud heavy metal scene he lives in at night.

Click on first image to begin slideshow

2011-01-28T18:53:00.001-08:00

Candy girl!

I just did this gal for fun. When I find time I want to make an accompanying boy one!

2011-01-27T15:40:00.000-08:00

Identity campaign for Hat museum
This is a project from my junior year. I finally added my narrative piece (a children's book) to this post! I feel that it's important for you guys to see the project in it's entirety so I'm re-posting the whole project, this time with my children's book included! Hope you enjoy :)

Prompt: take a single random artifact and created a long-term identity campaign around it in the context of a museum and/or exhibit. Pieces include: Three magazine advertisements, 3D interactive kiosks, and a narrative book. The exhibit I created is dedicated to conveying the history, etymology, and technology of the most iconic hats with which Americans are familiar. It coveys these facts by means of humor, engaging activities, and odd juxtapositions. Think odd and quirky.

Throughout the museum campaign I create a juxtaposition of new vs. old. This is because hats are such antiquated accessories yet they are still worn today and many styles have withstood the test of time.

These ads are meant to draw the viewer in. The images are a simple play on words. At first glance it may seem like an absurd combination of seemingly unrelated images (an intended initial shock), but after a short while the viewer should be able to answer the simple visual riddle and go on to read the secondary information about the exhibit.

MAGAZINE ADS

3D PIECE

This is my 3D piece. I designed interactive holographic kiosks for the kids. Each kiosk goes in a different section of the exhibit based on the hat category. When the button is pressed a holographic famous character that is associated with that particular hat will appear. The character gives a brief history of the hat and some interesting facts, then describes how the hat relates to them. I carried the bold color scheme from the ads through to these pieces and continue my juxtaposition of old vs. new with the placement of the old ornate gold picture frames around the holographic image. The picture frames poke fun at traditional museums where paintings are never to be touched, hypothetically the viewer could stick their entire arm through this piece!

NARRATIVE PIECE

This is the narrative piece. It's a children's book with a story that relates to hats. I wrote, illustrated, and built the book.

The basic summary is that there's a little boy named Art and he's sad because he thinks he's not artistic at all, he can't paint, draw, or sing. His mom takes him to his grandpa's house so Art can help him clean out his basement. While cleaning the basement they find grandpa's old costume trunk from acting school. The trunk is full of all kinds of hats. Art's grandpa teaches him about the art of acting. They try on all the hats and have fun acting all day. By the end of the day Art realizes that he really IS artistic and decides that he wants to be an actor when he grows up.

Once again, I continued my juxtaposition of old vs. new. I used an old paper texture (that gradually gets darker as you read through the book), bold typography and colors, and I worked in quirky modern illustrations. I scanned in a white paint roller texture to place behind the illustrations to make them pop and bring in the theme of "art". The black top hat on the cover has a felt texture to it.

Click on any image to begin slideshow.

2011-01-25T08:29:00.000-08:00

Process poster - In Progress

The object of this piece is to show an unfamiliar process using clear, typographic structuring of information in a poster format.

My process is how to achieve top rank in the Star Trek universe, Fleet Admiral (very nerdy I know!) I'm having a lot of fun with it so far!

This was one of my initial ideas for the layout that ended up getting weeded out. The concept behind this look was modern, technological, grungy, space-timeline esque.

This is the other idea that I decided to pursue. I went for a retro, Art Deco, computer chip, subtlety "kitsch" look for this one. I've included fun trivia questions as the users eyes move through the maze-like process. I kept my color palette very close to that of the uniforms worn in Star Trek.

The poster is still very much in progress but I'm loving this start!

2011-01-21T14:10:00.000-08:00

Logo and "look" for fashion show

Hello all! So I've been working with my friend Bethany Clark on her senior fashion show called Delineation. I created their logo and a sketchy textural element to use throughout the advertising campaign and the show. For more information check out their blog HERE. I strongly recommend that anyone in the Kent/Akron area come to this amazing and inspirational fashion show!

2011-01-20T15:43:00.000-08:00

Visual Storytelling - Sigler Animal Hospital

This photo series was taken for my Visual Storytelling class, the assignment was to tell a story of a not so well known place, event, person, or happening using photography. The idea was to successfully convey the emotion and "feel" of that place and to give the viewer a glimpse into what it's like to be there. In this series I captured both the behind the scenes side of the animal hospital as well as the public side of being a patient there.

2011-01-19T17:43:00.000-08:00

Hey guys! Check out my new Etsy shop, Art by Laura.

2011-01-19T17:22:00.000-08:00

Promotional give-away magnets!

I made these cute lil' guys to give away at my senior BFA show that will be held at the end of this semester. I'm also selling some here, The Vault (for $3 a piece). The Vault (located in the Kent State University main campus student center) is a new student-run store that sells art and fashion items created by KSU students!

2010-11-22T12:29:00.000-08:00

T-shirt design for Design Solutions (my current employer). We do printing, photography, logo design, anything design, galleries, vinyl graphics, engraving, and lots more.

If you go to Kent State or live in the area you should BUY ONE!
Design Solutions is located on the 3rd floor of KSU's main campus library.

They're only $5!

Design

printed T-shirt

Display sign

Display I created!

2010-11-07T19:35:00.000-08:00

Prompt: I interviewed a class mate and created a dust-jacket for a made-up book about their life based on what I discovered about them during the interview process.

Lisa was the person I interviewed and I found out she was obsessed with skiing. My dust-jacket concept was all about "revealing" since Lisa doesn't seem like a dare devil skier from the outside. The first layer only allows you to see the words THINK SNOW and a silhouette of someone on top of a mountain. When the cover is lifted it's discovered that LISA is the dare devil skier hidden behind the silhouette and the full title of the book "Think Lisa THINK SNOW" is able to be read more clearly.

2010-11-01T10:36:00.001-07:00

My bunneh

2010-10-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

Prompt: Redesign logos for 6 different companies. Must create at least three logos of each type: Monogram, logotype (signature), symbol, glyph, and alphaglyph.

These are a select few

Color exploration

2010-08-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

Oval-Cakes: This is a portrait of my little brown bunny named Oval-cakes, Oval for short. He also goes by Bunsen-Burner, Ovaltine, Oval-Bovine sometimes. I think I'll probably print and frame this and hang it over his cage :3

Did one of my dog Susie also C:

And my dog Gigi.. These are too cute and addicting, I'm think I'm gonna make a series of them and start doing some friend's pets!

2010-07-31T13:58:00.000-07:00

Freelance: Rubber City Rollergirl bout program design: My friend Annie and I have taken on a summer freelance project of re-designing the programs for the Akron Rubber City Rollergirls. I designed the inside of the programs and Annie and I switch who gets to design the cover every other bout. This season, the covers are Movie inspired. This specific bout cover I designed (my favorite so far) is based off of the Grindhouse poster . The client wanted it to look as close to the poster as possible so the final product is very referential. I'm pretty happy with it!

Also here's a link to the official Rubber City Rollergirl website. Go check 'em out!! If you live in the Akron area I highly suggest you go to a bout, they're so exciting and fun to watch!

Final Program

A taste of what the inside spreads look like.

2010-07-28T07:57:00.000-07:00

Yes: I know I haven't updated this in a while. I'm in the process of taking photos of some NEW work! So keep checking, there should be new goodies up soon :)

2010-06-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

TGIF YO! Decided to spruce up the office today... I hung these all over the place.

2010-06-09T18:44:00.000-07:00

Prompt: To illustrate a wine label inspired by music. I chose a name from a list of fake musically themed wine varieties. My wine: Rhumba Chardonnay. I was inspired by a welcome to Cuba poster since Rhumba music originated in Cuba. I used a fresh Latin American color palette and took a geometrical approach to the figure.
Size 3.5 x 4.25

2010-06-08T17:25:00.000-07:00

Prompt: I was given a city and an event at random. My city: Charlotte NC. Event: Film Festival. I narrowed my focus down and customized the event to create something unique. POP FLICKS is what I created, a 3D film festival hosted at Carowinds, a theme park in North and South Carolina. We were to create a mailing piece to promote the event that included a poster. A 3 page website was also designed to work with the event.

Size: 10 x 4.5”

Case (hypothetically would be wrapped in plastic like a magazine for delivery) This is made out of flagtex, a see through material that I used to create an illusionistic quality as the user pulls out the information booklet.

For a nice bold first impact I made the first spread literally 3D with pop out text.

I rendered all the images to actually be 3D throughout the mailing piece.

At the end the user is given 2 sets of 3D glasses. This encourages the user to go BACK and look through the entire piece again, this time with the ability to see the cool 3D effects.

The entire package includes The POP FLICKS informational booklet (info on location, times, schedule of movies, food, tickets, etc.), 3D glasses with case, a promotional poster (10 x 22.5") and stickers for the kiddies. I also designed website for people who are interested to visit and buy tickets or look up more information. (not included in this post)

2010-04-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

Prompt: To choose one city out of six options then illustrate a map of that city. The map must include six main attractions of that city.
Size: 15 x 9”

2010-04-06T21:07:00.000-07:00

Prompt: To design a poster expressing the feelings junior level students go through before the junior portfolio review. My inspiration came from the old western “Notice!” and “Wanted” posters. I freshened the look up by using a more modern color palette, font, and graphic style.

Requirements: Must include sign-up time slots for both Visual Communication Design majors and Photo Illustration majors.
Size: 15 x 30”

2010-04-06T20:49:00.001-07:00

Prompt: To Design a book about a person chosen off of the Time 100 list of most influential people. We were encouraged to find a not so well known aspect about the person and focus the book around that. I chose Charlie Chaplin and concentrated on his promiscuous love life. It was a very fun and informative project!
Size: 8.5 x 5.5”

This is the case for the book. I printed on it using an ink-jet printer and canvas material so it has a fabric feel to it. I chose this material to give it and almost personal diary-like feel while also referencing the "old-time" Screenplay scripts that would come in worn envelopes. My halftone elements were derived from the use of halftones in early photography printing (a technique that is still used today in newspapers and screenprinting). I designed the case and book to have an old-time feel without being too kitchy or obvious. I feel I reached a nice balance between modern and vintage graphic design.

Front

Back

Spine

Detail

2010-03-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

The book is 24 pages in all. We had to write, design, and build/engineer the book ourselves. Although we were allowed to copy chunks of body copy from other sources, as long as we cited the sources somewhere in the book. The class mainly focuses on the design, navigation, and usability of the book, not the actually copy. This isn't a writing class! I feel extremely pleased with my results on this project!

Cover

Pages 8 – 9

Pages 10 – 11

Pages 6 – 9

I tabbed the book so one can navigate by the date the relationship took place.

I turned the information graphic requirement into an interactive guessing game for the user.

2010-02-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

Prompt: To illustrate a recipe of our choosing for RealSimple magazine. I chose the recipe, Strawberry and Avocado Spinach Salad, found here

2010-02-21T11:54:00.001-08:00

Prompt: To illustrate an interesting yet obscure fact for a children's magazine (Cricket). Fact: A slug has four noses.

2010-01-06T10:21:00.000-08:00

Prompt: Choose a world/cultural issue (I choose women's issues) and focus your view (I focused on giving loans to women in 3rd world countries) Requirements: 3 layouts (2 spreads, 1 single) one must be Image dominant, another diagrammatic, and another typographic.

Image dominant

Diagrammatic, illustrations hand-done, color rendered on computer

Type dominant

Dog Dayz

2010-01-04T13:41:00.000-08:00

prompt: To illustrate the intending meaning of the phrase "Dog days of summer"
Requirements: only one hue plus white & black allowed. 8x8

Cuyahoga Falls Riverfront

2010-01-04T13:26:00.000-08:00

Prompt: long format collage illustration for a hypothetical article about a local (Northeast Ohio) place of interest.

Hello Everyone!

2009-12-22T20:26:00.000-08:00

This blog will serve as a temporary site to post my work until get a custom website up and running. Most of my posts will be of school work and some freelance. Enjoy!