Data Application Prototype
Inspired by my infographic, the objective of this app is to collect and organize an individual’s specific data regarding elevation, steps taken, frequently visited locations, distances travelled, etc, and display it in a simple, accessible way.
Adobe Illustrator, InVision Studio
RoosRoast Coffee
RoosRoast Coffee
My Cute Friend
Tired of unattainable standards? You aren't alone. My Cute Friend is designed to be a companion you can love for its odd, imperfect quirks. Too often we are sold toys and products that are cookie-cutter and unrealistically beautiful. But we recognize that life is far from perfect, and we should celebrate all the things that make us boldly unique.
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator
Direction: Omar Sosa-Tzec Delightful Design
The packaging follows traditional kawaii principles and proportions. However, the companion inside is strikingly different, and as a way to invoke surprise and irony, intentionally strays away from the these fixed principles. My Cute Friend is a companion for anyone that needs a reminder that cuteness is subjective, including much more than what fits in a rigid dictionary definition.
The keychain encourages the user to bring their friend with them wherever they may go, serving as a reminder to alter the current narrative surrounding cuteness culture.
The Process
For this project, we were given the task of making a rock as cute as possible, as well as creating packaging and a website for it.
Initially, I explored kawaii aesthetics and heavily researched the "yamikawaii" phenomena, or "sick" cute, where traditional kawaii imagery is combined with images of death, guns, needles, and blood as a way to highlight a dark truth of the stigmatization of mental health in Japanese culture.
My preliminary sketches explored the duality of identity that some Japanese teens and young adults feel: an identity composed of both a desire to conform and fit in but also a need to bring awareness to taboo topics.
However, my ideas felt unoriginal and I felt heavily unqualified to be addressing this topic from my outside perspective. So I went in a slightly different direction. In these sketches, I still explore duality but in a way that relates more to cuteness aesthetic. The packaging would have a traditional kawaii face, but the rock inside would have abnormal proportions. The bear's proportions didn't seem extreme enough and were not effective.
I went back to see how extreme I could make the proportions and decided that a face more closely related to a human would be more effective. These were my final sketches.
Clay Iterations
Final iteration! :)