2019 got me many surprises! I have always wanted to design for events, festivals and places where many people would gather. Nothing Hill Carnival is a well known summer event in London and I was lucky to be given the brief to design a illustration for Instagram backdrop representing Shea Moisture Brand. 

How I started designing ? 

I always rely on brand research. Shea moisture wanted to show the history of the creation of their brand, so I thought it would be great  to create a map ( journey like). The brand strategy was to create a work that feels natural as part of the whole space. The interior for example, involved beauty stations, palm trees, coconut-shaped chair and huge shampoo bottle. The natural materials that we picked up for the space were with the concept “Shea village” which had many tropical ornaments. 

Then we saw Amber Rose from Love island! Standing right in front.

Before Creating an artwork/ Logo, I do a couple of things:

• brand research
• create a colour pallete
• make my mood board/ shown in images/
• design my first sketch concept
• Decide what is the story/message/ behind the artwork

In this example:

I Decided to work with the logo in vibrant colours, pink and brown as main colours /brown from the brand /

The images I collect for my moodboard will always be a mixture/ not just texture,materials,light/ I feel like when the mood board contains all of the above it delivers better the overall feel of the project.

Mood boards don’t need to be overcomplicated, I tend to pick images in the same colour scheme but with different sets.

More examples @christine_official_design on IG x

Did you know that With Photoshop you can turn a picture into an artwork?

Ariana Grande portrait was made in exactly this way. I used a picture of her /image on the right/

Then the trick is to know the right settings. There is no right and wrong when you do a personalised illustration. That is why I always try out and experiment with colours. Some of them look way too abstract, but for this one I decided to stay within the same tones | green | grey| plus pink makes a contrast and brings out the image.

If you go to photoshop image- filter thats the place where you can transform the picture completely.

For this one I chose canvas background, which gives me the artistic finished on the background. Then adding the right amount of contrast and brightness, some brushes to finish off and give it an artistic look… plus the numbers you see are png images overlay on the green.

Really quick, easy and high quality image;

DM me for any questions

@christine_official_design