A not-so-small thing happened in January 2018, and I decided to make the invitations. The design was meant to evoke the traditional Spanish-colonial architecture of the venue while providing everyone with the necessary tidbits to get them to the right place and the right time.
Front of the Invitation
Back of the Invitation
Cafetales is a small coffee shop located in Lares Puerto Rico. The project brief had to reflect the big and elegant personalities driving the project. Inspired by the hummingbirds that visit the coffee fields, the Cafetales logo and branding efforts produced bold and instantly recognizable images.
Various options we made to address a number of print and web applications. We would see the logo on menus, social media posts, printed on the side of their cups, and plates, and even in building signage.
The 2015 Fairy Tales Architecture is an annual storytelling competition hosted by Blank Space Project. Competition parameters required a design and written narrative to work together in telling a story.
My entry for the competition, titled "The Boy and the Spire", told the story of a boy who becomes the first builder of the world. The central theme of the story revolved around the concept that your experiences become the framework for all design. The role of the designer, whether rebellious or compliant to those experiences, is shaped by this foundation of precedents.
The written narrative was to be a 750-1500 word document, and set the tone for the images that accompanied it.
Below is an image gallery of the five boards that accompanied the story. 11"x17"(tabloid) vertical/horizontal format. Design and rendering was done using 3D modeling software and Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator. The final "look-and-feel" of the story is a nod to french artist Jean "Moebius"Giraud's rendering style.
Early during the design process, the story featured heavy sci-fi elements, which were progressively discarded in favor of a more playful and simple theme. Elements like the spire and sphere, however, remained throughout the entire revision process. The spire's design, for example went from being an alien craft, to a landmark or monument of the sphere's city-building.The morphology of the spire was greatly influenced by the Clipper concept, also found in this portfolio.
With reviews like these, we found the resulting story carried the central theme in a more simple and straightforward manner, to better fit the "fairy tale" look and feel.
Colaborators: Dean Simons, copy editor and journalist, worked as editor for the text narrative.
Last year’s winners, as well as other entries can be found in BlankSpace's publication titled "Fairy Tales: When Architecture Tells a Story”.
Clipper Docking Procedure. 3D model
With the "Clipper" ship concept, I explored the idea of a colossal VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) craft that surveys planetary systems around the galaxy. This portfolio piece considered the hypothetical scenario of building a deep-space exploration vessel. While some of the "rules" of spaceship building were considered (i.e. Alcubierre Drive), the purpose of the project was to work on an attractive design and cohesive look-and-feel.
Clipper. Landing orientation test.
Sketch & preliminary layout.
Clipper, WarpDrive & human scale.
From very rough sketches, a 3D model (Gooogle SketchUp) was built considering the ship's two main components: The Lander and The WarpDrive. Both pieces of the ship were modeled in accordance with the desired scale. Later the model underwent certain detailing, in order to make the final render more credible.
The warp engine is based on Miguel Alcubierre's proposal for a method to achieve "faster-than-light" travel. The Warp Drive consists of a ringed structure that creates a bubble in the fabric of space-time. The bubble allows the ship to "slip" faster than conventional propulsion methods would allow.
Docking approach part 1.
Docking approach part 2.
Docking Procedures
Docked.
The Clipper Surveyor Vessel stands about as tall as the Eiffel Tower, and its interior mimics the multistory layout of skyscrapers. A gravity drive, held at the widest part of the ship, accounts for crew function while in deep space.
Clipper. Landed and secured to the ground.
To achieve the final look and feel, I extracted images from the 3D model and processed them using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Painting and correctly rendering the ascension protocols proved a challenge, as they had to include lighting and particle effects to account for the Clipper's thrust.
Lift off.
Performing gravity turn.
Ascension protocol. All of the Clipper's engines are used to escape the planet's gravity well.
While the ship itself was never used in any proyect, the shape of the Clipper served as a primary morphological inspiration for my 2015 Fairy Tales Architecture competition entry.
Medium: Google SketchUp, Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator.
This project was a quick-fire (2 hour) charrette in which a promotional poster had to be designed and exported in an short time span. The project is a promotional poster for a series of talks held by the Graduate School of Psychology, University of Puerto Rico.
The event's featured title, Entre lo Propio y lo Ajeno (very roughly translates to Between What is Ours and What is of Others) prompted the client to request a play on words and images for the poster. Without stretching the concept, the resulting poster included an image by M.C. Escher being altered using Adobe Photoshop, and placed as the background for the event's details, as well as supplemental contact information.
Medium: Adobe Illustrator
Primavera Brewing Co. is an upcoming puerto rican brewery that wanted their logo to portray a clean, and elegant product identity, while revealing to consumers their ideals about organic and natural ingredients for their product.
Color information, preliminary font diagram and bottle cap logo alternative.
Early versions of the fern worked using Adobe Illustrator
My role with the Primavera Brewing Co. was to design a logo that would serve as the main image for the company, which could later be adapted into stationary, vehicle & packaging labeling, and the diverse products the brewery produces. As the logo evolved with client revisions, the "stamp" look-and-feel changed in order to include wood detailing and the appearance of a barrel.
Primavera Logo. Final Version done with Adobe Illustrator.
Preliminary version of the logo for client review. Color alternatives and size comparison for readability in bottle, bottle caps and stationary.
Medium: Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Illustrator.
This is a collection of skylines of different cities and urban concepts from fiction works, both original and from popular sources. The silhouettes are simplifications, of course, but they convey the shapes that are familiar and unmistakable to those who've seen the original pieces.
Clockwise from Above: City 17 (Half-Life 2), City for 3 Million (Le Corbusier), Plug-In City (Archigram), Scaentis (Original), Syrthan (Original), Minas Tirith (Lord of the Rings), King's Landing (Game of Thrones), Metropolis (Metropolis), Lorelei (Original), Kzeira (Original), Winterfell (Game of Thrones), Zion (The Matrix Trilogy).
Inverted & Detailed Version.
The City Catalogue begins with the search for an architectural constant between an urban reading of city and its individual architectural components. Fictional cities were chosen for being recognizable and iconic in their own sense. Each city plays prominently in its perscribed media, like a character in a story. They append, discard, integrate and hide in a plethora of ways that prompts several questions on the subject of ‘the city’.
How does the single object affect a skyline? How does the skyline identify a city? and What of its shape reveals its inner workings?
Medium: Paper, writing implements and Adobe Photoshop.
Jerry's journal was a project for a Dungeon's and Dragons campaign set in future science fiction. Realized in collaboration with José Juan Colón Colón & Darrelle Villarini Córdova, the journal exercise posed a challenge to create an aged piece of documentation that hid the scars and marks of years of use and wear. The character journal creation is intended to depict the life and development of a soldier that survives a third world war and is left, like most other humans, to survive in the chaotic evacuation of Earth.
The character (nicknamed Jerry) enters the war as the last of the conflicts came to a close.
Ravaged by nuclear consequence and an ecosystem deemed unfit for human habitation, governments scramble in search of new real estate to call home. Initially relying on satellites and makeshift space stations, The Endless Dark Project (also called: Project E.D.) organized the systematic relocation of human refugees from planet Earth into orbit and the other (now terraformed) planets.
The soldier, (turned nomad, turned mercenary) carried a small journal for the therapeutic benefits writing his experiences achieved. In the story, Jerry’s book has survived wars, space travel, bar fights, love affairs and other happenings that give it a worn look and feel. To achieve this, the book was first filled with the story material: coffee stains, cigarette butts and smells, drops of blood, ink splatters, photographs, drawings and most importantly, writing. Several character letters and notes are displayed in the journal as to show the importance it had in the character’s life.
After the core material was set, the book underwent a battery of abuse that consisted of: impact damage, minor burn marks, loose binding, height and speed drops, as well as miscellaneous character mannerisms that slowly ate away at the pristine finish of the black book. The finished look and feel of the journal achieved an effective representation of the gritty world being designed.
Medium: Charcoal and paper.
These are a selection from the final project of a sketching class which prompted the students to compare and draw different types of joints as they occur in the bone structure of the body, and how they compare to every day objects.
Medium: Adobe Illustrator.
This work was done in collaboration with Orlando Cruz for the graphic and web design company Phantom Studio. The cards had to reflect the playfulness of the company, as well as a basic knowledge of the graphic design capacities of the group.
Principal references for the card's look and feel included video game and cartoon characters in order to achieve this sort of accessibility with the customer.
Medium: Adobe Photoshop.
Two friends of mine decided to buy a certain brand of headphone designed for gaming experiences. The product customization allowed the buyer to place original artwork on two removable caps that adorned the outside of the headphones. I designed small graphic pieces to fit the headphone specs, and the client's wishes for the equipment.
Jose's left ear protector.
Jose's right ear protector.
Jorge's left ear protector.
Jorge's right ear protector.
Left. Jose's design called wolf themed design with modern style and a touch of street art. Right. Jorge's design reflected a grittier, more violent scene from selected fantasy settings.
The final project for the wood shop class challenged the students to design and build a sample artisanal wood joint. These images record the carving process for an extension joint used in columns or other vertical support wooden structures.
Artisanal wood joint process.
