Abundant Life on Leeway Ideas

Transformed

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Originally, when I was asked about chapel theme for 2024, I was pitched a butterfly as the symbol of transformation. I wanted to see more of that actual transformation, but also what it means in a spiritual journey.

With color, I could have gone anywhere, but I decided on the more pastel pink and origami shapes for each of the icons: the caterpillar, the chrysalis, and the butterfly.

The title Bible verse referred to the mind itself and my mind floated to the more literal image, but not from real life.

The inspiration for this was actually from an anime I watched years ago, Katekyo Hitman Reborn! (家庭教師ヒットマンREBORN). The image had nothing to do with the mind or a brain, but it was the fourth ending credits sequence.

This ended up informing a lot of the color choices as well as the transition from something from an older design and icons contrasting it. Kyoko’s sequence with the pink accent was what had me more interested.

I really wanted the pink and that came from the video game series Psychonauts. I didn’t want to fully commit to the salmon, fleshy literal brains from the game. The green is also a contrasting color, which plays well into the “transformation” of a caterpillar and a butterfly.

In my mind, I imagine thoughts all “bubbling” in the head, so what better to do the literal bubbles?

The font is Josefin Sans from Google Fonts, lending well to each of the geometric stages of the butterfly.

Each butterfly piece represents a particular portion of the spiritual journey and plays into the behavior of that particular metamorphosis stage.

Caterpillar
Chrysalis
Butterfly

What the Irish and Arts Taught Me

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This August, our chapel coordinator Sam got speak about his seminary’s trip to Ireland. Using what he mentioned about his trip, I tried to make something that would be a quick art piece for him.

One of the big parts of the trip was a visit to the Giant’s Causeway, which became the focus of the image.

With color, I chose the colors of the Irish Coat of Arms. Since the harp was emblazoned on the Irish Coat of Arms, it worked out well into Sam’s message because the king David playing a harp as a shepherd.

Artsfest 2024

Mon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This year for Artsfest, I wanted to do something more simple. The last 2 years, Artfest was very much oriented towards traditional, painted artwork. To balance this, I also wanted a sort of color language but also showcase the variety of color.

Originally, I decided to draw cubes. It was difficult to work the color in without the cubes being hard to identify, especially if each cube was a different color. Considering these were going to be pretty small to not be distracting, back to the drawing board.

Eventually, I settled on transforming the cubes in hexagons. They retain the same shape, but the look in much simpler and easier to recolor in bulk. Since I originally created 10 cubes, I duplicated the multi-colored hexagons to fill the space.

Finally, I started deleting squares to make space for the main text. To retain a bit of the feel of previous years, instead doing a paint brush, I used Queen Smoothie, a font closer to a felt-tip pen. The subheading uses the Google font Delius to keep the sense of playfulness, but not to discriminate against students who can’t read cursive yet.

There’s a hidden bit of symmetry in the original image, but removing the dots breaks that symmetry and also makes the original pattern harder to notice.

The simplicity of the dots also allowed for a lot of great adaptability. The dots became a decorative piece for slides with title slides, making the title slides and also helped serve a part on the front cover.

At the Well

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

How do you show somebody something about a Bible story? We were tasked with designing something for the Bible story Jesus and the woman at the well.

When I was first approached, the ideas I first thought about is the scene from the show The Chosen:

The scene isn’t particularly bad, but it aims to be more realistic. How do you show people the value of water, more importantly, the water of life Jesus offers?

That’s where our image comes from and links some of the more literal elements to some more abstract ones:

The background represents the properties of water. The words show are right side up, but also reflected, just like water. The color yellow invokes thirst, calling back to the original passage.

The Pasdenom font also contains a more subtle meaning, hearkening back the 1960s and 70s and the Sexual Revolution of America. The woman in passage is revealed to have relationships with multiple men and felt like a perfect fit.

The main font is the font Bungee, representing the “story-telling” that women has and the story the passage tells. It’s like a typewriter!

Another variant of the same background was made for presentations. One problematic part of the white makes text hard to read.

While the text could have been made black, small white text would have been harder to read, so it was easier to change the background.

The purple also represents the fullness of Jesus, which creates the contrast between the yellow background and still retains a hint of blue in its three-dimensional shape, representing the fullness of the Spirit.

Together, the graphics are flexible enough to be used as a YouTube thumbnail.

For Unto Us - Christmas 2024

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

One of my favorite books was Ezra Jacques Keats’ The Snowy Day, featuring collage art. Instead of buldings, I took the same approach towards the “Snowy Day” spin on the Christmas story and various school Christmas activites.

The motion the baby hand reaching upwards towards the heart also is similar to Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” with a tie-in to the Gospel of Luke with Jesus as the second Adam.

The font used is Risque from Google Fonts.