BFA in Art and Design

In this exhibition, I was inspired by my dog Guinness (named after the Irish stout) to create a brand that sells hard seltzers. Although I am not a drinker myself; I wanted to play on the idea that he was named after the famous brewery in Ireland. In addition, I have always enjoyed the vibrant colors that seltzer cans often have, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. 

I created Berners & Brews, a company that sells fruit seltzers. The main intention is to show the importance of Guinness not only within my brand but in my life as well. The name Berners & Brews comes from the breed of dog Guinness is, Bernese Mountain Dog. 

When I began creating this brand I started with a simple vector-based logo and eventually ended up gravitating toward illustrating both Guinness and the mountains. This then led me to create monochromatic cans, for every flavor. In my final logo, Guinness is the focal point of everything, which, if you know me, you know is true outside of this project. 

I am so glad that after a year of creating this brand from the ground up, you can enjoy what we have created. It feels like yesterday I was a freshman hearing about this project for the first time. 

The first time I heard about this project my mind brainstormed countless ideas, but this was always the one that most excited me. 

Cole Baker was born in Portsmouth, Virginia on May 2nd, 2000. On the road for much of his life, Cole grew up in a military family, and has moved across the country six times, and lived in all four corners of the continental U.S. Cole also grew up a fan of NASCAR and visiting local racetracks. The bright colors and sharp designs of the paint schemes on the cars turned into a lifelong passion and pursuit to become a designer in the field of motorsport. Since 2016, Cole has practiced and painted over 200 documented schemes for personal use. He also has experience in Video Editing, 3D Modeling, and Web Design. In July 2021, Cole started his own online design company, in which he completes race car paint scheme commissions for customers. When Cole is not designing, he enjoys long roadtrips, photography, working on his car, his computer, and spending time with his Labrador Retriever, Sunny. He currently resides in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire. 

The broad theme of my work is an exploration of mental illness and the way it can negatively impact people’s lives. Taking my personal struggles and transferring them to canvas with paint allows me to not only process what I am dealing with but gives me the opportunity to represent those going through the same. It is important to me that mental health continues to be discussed and de-stigmatized.  

These works are specifically focusing on intrusive thoughts and are influenced by my own struggles with them. The moths serve as a direct representation of these types of thoughts, with close-ups of them as well repetition being used to make the viewer feel crowded and overwhelmed. The snake and deer symbolize how anyone may be affected, as the line between strong and weak is nonexistent when it comes to mental illness. 

While the intended theme is narrowed to a specific aspect of mental illness, ultimately any viewer may see themselves reflected in the work.  

For this project, I created a Cricut Vinyl design company. I thought of this because I have a Cricut Explore Air 2 and a Cricut Joy at my house. The Explore Air 2 is bigger and can-do bigger projects than the Joy. The Cricut is an electronic cutting machine that can cut many designs from materials like paper, vinyl, cardstock, and iron-on transfers. For the project that I have completed, I did both vinyl and cardstock. When I was picking to do this for a class, I wanted to do something that I love to do on my own time outside of school. I did this because I love to make Cricut Vinyl Projects. With this design company I have been working on, I was thinking about selling my vinyl work on Etsy or something like that. But I was getting busy with schoolwork. 

For Thesis, I have begun to explore the social binds and constructs that I experience in my everyday life. My work explores themes such as consent, sexual violence, diet culture, and gender roles.  

As a Multimedia Major, I work across subjects instead of picking one focus. This allows me to form the media I use to my ideas. One of my goals this semester has been to push myself out of my comfort zone by using forms of media I feel the least confident in. Such as text-based art, graphically designed pieces, and sewing. Which has led to me making a combination of hand-sculpted and digitally art.  

As I have been creating pieces I’ve also been researching artists. These artists directly influence my work. Some of the main artists I take inspiration from are Trenton Doyle Hancock, Emma Sulkowicz, and art groups such as  Meow Wolf and Womenhouse.  

As I think about the work I have been creating lately, resulting in the compositions you see now, it is clear to me that my art has taken a different turn than in the past. My artwork has evolved to include a wider array of materials, connecting to a variety of meanings and metaphors. My goal with these more recent works has been to express a darker understanding of existence; an insight to universal and infinite suffering. Through my methods of creation I am able to pay homage to the early inspirations of my creative process: western urbanism, eastern spirituality, and psychedelia. With the turns taken as of late, I maintain those methods, while building upon them to communicate a deeper, more openly interpretable message for the viewer. I want the viewer to still feel like they have an individually intimate experience with the artwork, but at the same time to be connected to my own meanings and intentions behind the work, through associatable and universal themes… such as SUFFERING.  

Through grotesque abstraction and unorthodox composition I am able to conceptualize a painfulness present in the creator’s process. Ultimately, as we create, we find ourselves in an ongoing dilemma of suffocation and sacrifice. Suffocation from the stimuli, and sacrifice from the self. This is where I come from in my current state of creation.  

Earthly Tea Company is about the appreciation for the Earth and how we can find nourishment in nature and herbs. The mission of the brand is to encourage individuals to incorporate a tea ritual into their day as a way of connecting with nature and themselves. The company offers tea blends where customers can easily reflect on what they need support with and choose from our line of products.  

With the company’s branding, I wanted to form an overall warm and exciting experience for viewers and customers. Being able to create movement with the products, illustrations, ingredients, and text was a key element to reflect the liveliness of nature. Taking inspiration from the 1970s, the use of bright saturated colors and rounded typefaces creates a welcoming familiarity, but I wanted the designs to still contain a clean contemporary design style.  

Hello! My name is Julie Miller and I’m a senior here at PSU. My major is interdisciplinary studieswith a degree in Fashion and Visual Design. I have a photography minor a swell as theTransformative Innovation & Design Entrepreneurship Certificate. I’m from Woburn, Ma which isabout 10 miles from Boston. I’m planning to go into Photography after I graduate. For this exhibitI chose to do a wine company called Styled Wine. While looking through my company I hopeyou enjoy the tie between fashion and wine. I am hoping to bring you through all the fashioncapitals and how these two industries connect through my graphics.

Extinction rates of animals are currently accelerating due to human actions.  My work sheds light on the issues animals are facing due to climate change, specifically focusing on the challenges they encounter due to habitat loss, fragmentation, and destruction.  This displacement is represented by a lack of a formal “scene”, as in many of my pieces the animals could be existing anywhere.  This symbolizes the animals being removed from their native habitats and forced into unfamiliar ones.  Man-made elements, such as rope, jewelry, daggers, and arrows are used as symbols to make viewers aware of their lack of empathy for animals.  These elements interact with the endangered or extinct animals in negative ways, impaling, constricting, or encumbering them.  

I paint the animals with empty, white eyes to allude to the animals being viewed by people as objects instead of living things.  The illustrations of animal parts being used as tools and decorations represent humans valuing what they can make from an animal more than the animal itself.  My color palette, usually consisting of neutrals and muted blues and oranges, along with the flat planes of color, are influenced by art movements like Art Nouveau and Ukiyo-e.  One of my biggest influences, tattoo art, along with my graphic design background, inspires me to create art that combines classical mediums like painting with modern styles like those used in digital art.  This style shows the consequences of human actions on the animals depicted in hopes that people will care more and as a result do more for them. 

The theme for my work this year experiments with the contrast of color and the representation of light. The subjects for each of the paintings focus on things that the viewer can see everyday. I hope that the viewer will be able to immerse themselves in the pieces as if they were looking through a window. I chose different sized canvases as another way to interact with the viewer. I feel that when there are different sized canvases a viewer might be more inclined to look at specific sizes first as they draw the viewers interest over another. I focused on depicting light with stronger colors and higher contrast as a way to cause an emotional response that interacts with the viewer. There is no public meaning for these pieces due to the fact that I want the viewers to be able to interact with the pieces, without my own understanding affecting their personal experience. 

With my project I created a paintball company. I choose paintball because it is something that I love and I’ve worked at two different paintball fields and one of them I helped to build. Paintball has been a huge part of my life for the past 4 years and I wouldn’t be the man I am now without the experience and people I met along the way. So from all that I’ve learned I decided to create my own paintball field. I brought some of the paintball history into the logo since paintball was invented in new hampshire so I put an old man of the mountain into the logo.

My name is Lillian Starkey, a Graphic Design major here at PSU. I was born and raised in Marlborough, New Hampshire, which is located in the southwest area of New Hampshire. I chose PSU because of the Meterology program, which clearly didn’t pan out. An advisor of my suggested Graphic Design and I haven’t looked back. While my interests wax and wane, I do have a strong appreciation for Psychedelic, Art Deco, and Art Nouveau design, which has influenced my designs. These styles have influenced many works I have done, both in Graphic Design and other mediums. 

In the past few years, I have discovered a love for graphic design. For this final BFA exhibit I decided to use my love of fun, bright colors and dogs to create a mock mobile dog grooming company dubbed, Wheels Of Furry. Firstly, the name came to mind off of a play on “Wheels of Fury”, which immediately brought together  my idea of a fast, fun, energetic grooming company. Next, the logo came to life with flames and the brand colors throughout. During the months of creating materials, a style and brand began to form through posters, stationery, uniforms and more. The result being a fun, bright company that represents my personal approach to design.  

My name is Kullen Stone, I’m a senior at Plymouth State coming from Chelmsford Massachusetts. Ever since I was born I had always had an obsession with drawing and creating anything. When I got to around 8th grade, I knew It had to become a job and life’s passion for me. My favorite aspect of graphic design is the amount of outlets there are these days for designers. Through these outlets we are able to find our own styles, being able to have a unique body of work. Being able to express myself in my work is my favorite aspect of being a designer. I loved doing my capstone projects because I was able to display my ability to do every facet of design for a company. Being able to build something from the ground up with my own style is truly what I love to do and I hope that I’m able to pursue this in my career.  With this exhibit I wanted to show the viewer what I can do in this world of design and how I can put a mark in the creative world. I hope the viewer has as much fun seeing my exhibit as I did creating it and inspire them to go out and do something that they love just as I have been doing in my 4 years at Plymouth State. 

For my final project, I created Moonlit Pines. It’s a small business/art shop that sells handmade pyrography art and more. I wanted my exhibit to have the same ambience as a mysterious, little art shop in a small town. The products are usually made using wood slices from pine trees and the designs are mostly celestial, hence the name “Moonlit Pines”. I hope that when people see my art, they are taken somewhere else, somewhere magical. I want the viewer to think about the mystical and supernatural things that are out there. I love being able to change how someone views the world with my art.  

When you think of craft beer, automatically you think of an intricate design that captures the eye. That is what I wanted to create when I thought of my capstone project, Boylston Brewery. My solution for this project was to create a new brewery located in Boston, MA. I wanted this to be an eye-catching design, and with inspiration from other craft beer companies, this design came to life.I researchedandstarted lookedat manycraft beer cans, takingnotes on what I liked, and what I didn’t like. I knew I wanted to havecharacters on mycandesigns,but I wasn’t sure if I wanted it tobe taking up the entire can, or just be in the middle of it. That is when I started exploring the option of having one main character be in the middle andhave a smaller secondary character on the top left. I chose to do this, so that all the cans connect. The smaller secondary character becomes the main character on the can to follow. This way each can design intertwines with the other cans into one consistent flowing pattern. There are some elements that are the same throughout the cans, such as the vibrant colors of the swirls, the shape of the foreground,and the font t. I wanted the colors to differentiateon each can on the foreground and characters.

Brand design concentrates on the development of a corporate identity. I explored that element by creating logos, designing collateral, making 3D renderings, and printing and installing this exhibit. This class has taught me the importance of developing a production timeline, a professional presentation,and the in-depth process of creating a corporate identityprogram. Being at this installation today, I hope that you’re able to see all the in-depth elements that were applied throughout these past two semesters and enjoy this installation of Boston’snewest brewery, Boylston Brewery!

The Henniker Hummingbirds is a soccer team brand identity that is clean, sporty, and modern. To achieve this, I use inspirations from Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea FC, and Tottenham Hotspur FC. These clubs have wonderful color palettes, convey motion through their designs, and great font choices. I began with my font choice to base the rest of the project off of. “The Bold Font” created by Sven Pels and made free to use provides just that inspiration. It is grounded and BIG. How square the letterforms are allows me to create text BLOCKS. These immediately become the center of attention in any design. To act as a foil to this, I chose “Acumin Variable Concept Condensed” and “Acumin Variable Concept Condensed Italic”. The lithe letterforms of  “Acumin Variable Concept Condensed Italic” contrast the bold, wide, and anchored “The Bold Font”. The italics provide a key motion element to the designs that are integral to a sports team.

Next, the mascot, the hummingbird, is the basis for the rest of the project. Hummingbirds are badasses, they are fast, incredibly territorial, and they lower their heart and body temperature to a potentially dangerous low each night. This is the root of “We’re beautiful, we’re quick, we’ll never die,” the team slogan. In this showcase, I have included the brand guidelines so viewers can see the bones of the decisions that were made for the identity and how they might be implemented. The posters are examples of this identity brought into real life. There are two distinct series: the character series, and the type series. The player series focuses on the character interacting with the type, having a shadow cast over, and having it interact in “real space”. The second type series are more surreal, unreal scenes where the type is dominant and provides both motion and substance to the poster. Both of them interact with the type in a meaningful way.