Jessica Tower

A Tall Tale ( a short typography animation)

2011-03-12T16:33:00.001-08:00

Senior Show Theme Ideas

2011-03-03T00:26:00.000-08:00

Rain Water Revival Poster

2011-01-05T21:35:00.000-08:00

Here are some photos of a poster I created for the Rain Water Revival Festival in Dripping Springs. Though the event is real, the poster is just a concept I developed for class. :)

Here is the sketch:

Concrete Utopias Poster

2011-01-05T21:19:00.001-08:00

Poster concept for the School of Architecture's lecture series. Digital type and collage made from vintage architecture books and random junk found in my dad's study.

Banksy book

2011-01-05T20:55:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of photos I took of my Banksy catalog before my camera's battery died. I'll post more pages later on!

*Coincidentally my nail polish kind of matches the book! Just bought it today at Kroger's along with a bottle of wine. Did the self-checkout so I look like less of a girly loser. It's Opi's Shrek line in "Fiercely Fiona"; if you were wondering.

Reinventing the Wheel

2010-12-16T15:03:00.000-08:00

Here is a game wheel I made for an upcoming Christmas party with friends. I'm excited to print it out, but I don't know how I'm going to execute the actual wheel making part. Will update when I succeed or fail.

...and here's a picture of it with a makeshift spinner.

Rainbows

2010-10-04T10:06:00.000-07:00

The Women's Studies Department just added a GLBT minor to the program so they needed to redesign their logo. Of course, they wanted rainbows. I'm not giving them a rainbow, so here's what happened:

Birdie

2010-09-15T23:50:00.000-07:00

This booklet was done last semester but I never got around to posting pictures of it. The picture quality stinks, so I will find time to re-shoot and re-post later.

BP Posters

2010-08-25T17:53:00.000-07:00

School's back, ya'll. Collaborative poster project on the effects of the BP disaster. We came up with a handful of ideas but ended up just presenting the first three posters as a series.

Confort Lounge Business Card & Logo

2010-08-09T23:32:00.000-07:00

Tea Bar Logos

2010-07-22T16:17:00.001-07:00

Villagio

2010-07-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

Those are a couple of logo ideas for a wedding banquet hall in Houston.

Peace, Love and Traffic

2010-07-15T11:20:00.000-07:00

When it's raining really hard in Houston (which it has been all last week) and I'm stuck in traffic on 59 between Shepherd and the downtown spur, I always have one recurring thought: I imagine someone standing on the overpass bridge holding a sign that says "Tell them you love them." For some reason I think that any message about love seen by people sitting in their lonely cars in traffic and in rain, could have the power to mend so many things gone wrong in a person's day.

Naive? Perhaps. But I bet it would change something for the better.

Then the other night I came across this and it made me so happy. Too bad this isn't in Houston. It's actually painted by Stephen Powers along a Philly transit line. But don't you think we need stuff like this here? It would turn all the asshole drivers into something lovely.

Typo Toby Funke (Fyoon-Kay)

2010-05-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

Here's a fun poster that I made during first semester Junior year. I dug it up out of a pile of old posters that I never photographed and decided to stick it in the blog completely out of order. I was in my super collage-y phase, as you can see. Typo Toby was the name of the paper toy critter I made as part of the project. He's based off of the New York typographer Tobias Frere-Jones. The real guy is a cool cat. When you say Tobias Frere-Jones in your head, does it remind you of Tobias Funke (David Cross) from Arrested Development? It does for me, and his face always pops into my head.

S*itting on the Dock of the Bay

2010-05-11T00:48:00.000-07:00

I couldn't get this song out of my head during this project. I just kept repeating the hook over and over. Just sing the title and you'll see. Try it. Told you.

I got a lot of crap (I guess this pun is intended) for this opening page. I meant for title to look like it was waist deep in water, but instead the blue strike-through plays a trick on your eyes.

Poo.

Faint Mistakes (Otis Stage set)

2010-05-11T00:43:00.000-07:00

You know how you're never completely satisfied with a certain project? This was one of them. I kept wanting to tweak it a just a little more, no matter how tedious it was. At some point you just have to stop though. I guess that point is called a deadline. The materials and tools I used for this stage were tweezers, toothpicks, superglue, a million Xacto blades and a crap-ton of shaky-hand syndrome. While I was finalizing the stage in studio I felt myself go numb and weak. It was the strangest feeling because I couldn't even smile even if I tried. I was about to faint. It was a combination of 24 hours of no rest, 5 hour energy drinks, super glue huffing and lack of food. I had Alyson run to the vending machine and she came back with salty nuts. Felt better, drove home (felt like my car was floating; I was definitely a road hazard.) and slept for a couple hours before heading back to finish up.

Feed the Birds

2010-05-11T00:41:00.000-07:00

Feed the homeless. Feed the children. Feed the needy. Feed the birds, is what I say. And what better way to feed a poor bird than to let them feast in a modern, minimalistic, ranch-style feeder? It's laid back enough for a native Texan and trendy enough for bourgeois Northeners.

Program Cover Idea

2010-04-15T19:53:00.000-07:00

Marks & Music. Otis Redding.

2010-04-06T01:55:00.000-07:00

Working on an idea for the Otis Redding project. Here's the first draft.

Watercolor + digital type.

For the Birds

2010-03-30T00:41:00.001-07:00

I'm making a bird kit for the Painted Bunting, a bird which resides in Texas. I'm going to make a booklet which has information about the bird along with a birdhouse and a packet of seeds. So far I've got a mock-up cover of the book and a couple of introductory pages. Don't know if this idea is going to stick. We'll see.

Dice Vase

2010-03-25T00:47:00.000-07:00

I'm returning the SLR to school tomorrow, so I won't be able to photograph my stuff with a nice camera anymore. It really makes a difference.

Here's a project I did a couple of years ago. It was one of my favorites from back then. We were supposed to go to the dollar store and pick out things to turn into a product. I used balsa wood to make the box. Soooo easy to cut through that stuff! Love it mang.

Lecture Series Tickets

2010-03-25T00:39:00.001-07:00

These are tickets I made to go along with a lecture series poster. Front and back.

Amateur sites.

2010-03-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

I have just started working with Dreamweaver a couple of weeks ago. So far it is kicking my butt. I'm trying to finish up the You Orleans website by tomorrow morning and I only have two pages done. It's going to be a long night.

Tusk & Tail

2010-03-10T13:05:00.000-08:00

This project was designed for Tusk & Tail, a menswear label specializing in vintage inspired suit jackets. The label was the brainchild of three friends who all possess impeccable taste and style.

The logo I created for Tusk & Tail is based off of a painting by a local artist. The design concept represents the modern traveling man, international culture and vintage style. I developed a variety of hang tags for the jacket as well as a patch to be printed and sewn onto the inside of the breast pocket.

Typographical Hierarchies

2010-03-04T21:59:00.000-08:00

Created 50 postcard/invitations as a project for The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The invitations were also a study in informational hierarchy. Each invitation pushed for different solutions - from abstract to structured. The invitations were printed and hand bound into a book. More images to come!

Glass Mountain

2010-03-04T14:24:00.000-08:00

These spreads were designed for Glass Mountain, a literary journal for the creative writing department at the University of Houston. The journal's name is inspired by a line from Donald Barthelme's short story "Glass Mountain". The Glass Mountain, a skyscraper like the many we have here in Houston, represents the achievement of what seemed impossible when the writing students first began laying plans for their journal. Glass Mountain gives new voices a place to be heard, on the printed page and at readings and gatherings.

In this project, we were asked to develop a graphic essay that considers flow and narrative from spread to spread. I based my theme on the word "construction" and combined collaged images I found in architectural magazines and my dad's undergrad architecture portfolio (handmade and xeroxed from the 80's!) I chose minimal language in order to tell a story while still holding onto some mystery. The viewer is left to form their own judgments based on the pictorial narrative.

Back to the Futura

2010-03-04T13:55:00.000-08:00

A poster designed to highlight the typeface FUTURA, which was designed by Paul Renner in 1928. I love this typeface and I often find myself choosing it as a starting point for different projects.

Experimental Typography

2010-03-04T13:38:00.000-08:00

This project was based on experimental typography and shows how graphic design & type design can be organic and expressive. Looking for things around the house to use as type proved harder than I thought. But... in the end I really liked how they turned out. I think I'll revisit doing some more of these for future posters.

Masters Thesis Exhibition

2010-03-04T13:17:00.000-08:00

Our class was asked to design a museum catalogue, poster, postcard and gallery wall for the annual Masters Thesis Exhibition held at the Blaffer Gallery. Surprisingly, my design was chosen to be printed and will be published at the end of March, 2010. I'm super excited and currently working on this project.

Lecture Series

2010-03-04T13:06:00.000-08:00

These are posters designed for a fictional lecture series covering the subject of designing through the use of ethnography. The selected speakers are all well-known designers and anthropologists. The focus of the lecture is to help designers understand the importance of branching into different cultures and getting to know your audience on a deeper level than market research and interviews.

I am also currently working on this project and will update the finalized version soon!