Below is a collection of work I’ve created across my IMD coursework, including projects from Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Each piece reflects the skills and design thinking I’ve developed throughout my Advanced Desktop Publishing program.
Surrealistic Photoshop Composition #1 — Ocean at Night
Software Used: Adobe Photoshop
This surrealistic photo composite combines multiple stock images into a dreamlike nighttime ocean scene. I used layer masking and blending modes to seamlessly merge the leaping fish, jellyfish, and moonlit sky into a single cohesive composition. The electric blue color grading was achieved with Hue/Saturation and Color Lookup adjustment layers to unify the mood. The glowing neon-green fish was color-corrected using Selective Color to create contrast against the cool blue palette. My goal was to evoke a sense of otherworldly depth, as if the boundary between the ocean and the sky had dissolved entirely.
Surrealistic Photoshop Composition #2 — Alien Poppy Field
Software Used: Adobe Photoshop
This piece explores a surrealistic sci-fi world by layering a vivid red poppy field, alien mountains, floating planets, monarch butterflies, a lone astronaut, and a flying saucer into one fantastical scene. I used the Pen Tool for precise subject masking and applied a consistent purple-to-blue color grade across all elements to create visual cohesion. The varying scales of the elements, from enormous planets to a tiny astronaut, play with depth and perspective to create a sense of wonder. This project pushed my compositing and color-grading skills significantly.
Logo Design — Hex & Hallow
Software Used: Adobe Illustrator
This logo was created for a fictional gothic shop called Hex & Hallow that sells crystals, sage, books, and oddities. I designed the entire mark in Adobe Illustrator using vector shapes and custom paths. The circular badge format was inspired by vintage apothecary and occult aesthetic branding. The color palette: deep black, crimson red, and amethyst purple was chosen to reflect the dark, mystical theme of the brand. Every element was drawn as a scalable vector, making it suitable for everything from business cards to large-format signage.
Night Landscape — Forest & Moon
Software Used: Adobe Illustrator
This night landscape was built entirely from geometric vector shapes in Adobe Illustrator. The flat design style uses layered silhouettes, multiple triangular pine trees of varying heights, to create a convincing sense of depth without photographic realism. I used a gradient sky ranging from deep navy at the top to a lighter slate blue near the horizon, then added a soft radial glow behind the moon to simulate atmospheric light. This piece taught me the power of shape layering and how subtle value shifts can suggest spatial depth even in a purely flat aesthetic.
Cityscape — Sunset Reflection
Software Used: Adobe Illustrator
This cityscape illustration uses flat vector shapes to depict an urban skyline against a vivid sunset. The warm orange-to-yellow gradient sky was built with Illustrator’s gradient tool, and the city silhouette was constructed from carefully arranged rectangles and custom building shapes. The water reflection below was created using a vertical flip of the skyline with a distortion effect to simulate the rippling of light on water. The high contrast between the dark silhouettes and the glowing background creates a dramatic, cinematic feel. This project helped solidify my understanding of gradient construction and silhouette design in Illustrator.
Midnight Elixir — Graphic Advertisement
Software Used: Adobe Illustrator
This advertisement was created for a fictional dark beverage brand called Midnight Elixir. The design follows a gothic aesthetic with a near-black background, deep purples, and crimson red accents to evoke mystery and luxury. The central goblet glows with an inner radial gradient to suggest the elixir’s almost magical quality. I incorporated atmospheric details; bats, a crescent moon, candles, and ornamental cross symbols; to build a rich, immersive visual world around the product. This project challenged me to balance decorative complexity with legible layout design, ensuring the product name and key descriptors remained the clear focal hierarchy.
Business Card — Hex & Hallow
Software Used: Adobe Illustrator
This business card was designed as a companion piece to the Hex & Hallow logo. The standard horizontal card format uses the full logo as the dominant visual and pairs it with essential contact information: owner name, email, phone number, and social media handle. The dashed border gives it a print-ready bleed-safe appearance and adds a subtle design detail. The all-black background and crimson-red accent text keep the branding consistent across materials. Designing this card pushed me to think about typographic hierarchy in very constrained space. Every element had to earn its place while remaining legible at a small print size.