Home page banner design for the awesome nonprofit charity I’m currently interning at, DonorsChoose.org (as seen on the Colbert Report).

The science behind the copy:

For the headline, I wanted something catchy, cheerful, and evocative of generosity. I went with alliteration to cover the catchiness, the word “celebrate” to add cheer, and “learning” as a way to activate a prosocial mindset without referencing money. I recently read a psychological study mentioning that when words dealing with money are referenced, people tend to weigh extrinsic rewards (like recognition or avoiding negative evaluation) for charitable donations. On the other hand, when faced with verbs like “share” and “volunteer” and “support” people donate for intrinsic reasons (i.e. empathy, resultant feeling of well-being, etc.). Thus, I tried to stay away from words like “donate” and “give,” which have more monetary connotations. (On the other hand, both “donate” and “give” might have been more direct.)

In the byline, I wanted to offer the donor a chance to become part of a category (“*become* a supporter”) rather than pushing a one-time action (“support”). Another study I read and a social psych lecture I recently heard talked about the power of rewarding a disposition, or someone’s character – as opposed to rewarding a single behavior. This encourages future giving, since the donor thinks to themselves, “I am a supporter of year-round schools,” instead of “I supported year-round schools.” Again, with the word “support,” I tried to stay away from associations with money.

Finally, I put “today” at the end to add a sense of immediacy, so users won’t simply look at the message and put their donation off until later.

Design-wise, I wanted a celebratory, summery, childlike aesthetic to match the message. After a few iterations, I included “summer projects” with a button to make the banner more clickable.

Key aspects of design:

• My dad’s favorite color is deep purple. Deep purple didn’t look good as a background color, so instead I made the background a light purple gradient.
• My dad’s favorite shape is the Mobius strip, so I added a mobius strip to the background too.
• My dad likes martinis, so I named the custom font I created in Illustrator “Martini” as per my mom’s suggestion.

I made this Mobius strip in Illustrator by outlining a picture of a Mobius strip with the Pen Tool, and then creating blends between the lines.

This is the original type I created using the Pen Tool and blending in Illustrator. After I put the letters together, I noticed that they formed a “T,” so I was thinking of using the group of letters to be the “T” in “Love, Tyler.” In the end, I thought that the other font I made was cleaner and nicer.

A monster face I made in Illustrator with the Pen Tool and blending. Never ended up using it. Maybe in the future.

Came out looking a lot more ominous than I’d intended. Luckly she loved it, but then again, if I gave her scribbles on a piece of paper, she would say she loves that too. Shapes and type made in Illustrator, textures and shading done in Photoshop.

Created by first desaturating and darkening pictures of ink in water and smoke. Then I rotated/distorted/masked the images and threw them together until they formed a humanoid figure.

Created by first desaturating and darkening pictures of ink in water and smoke. Then I rotated/distorted/masked the images and threw them together until they formed a humanoid figure. The type was created by blurring text, adding a wave filter, setting the blend mode to color burn, overlaying color-burning clouds, inversing the image, making it black and white, and finally using a smoke brush to give it a wispy look. Last but not least, I added a gradient to the whole thing.

Submission-garnering flyer for Macaulay Arts Night.

Promo vid I made in After Effects for the Macaulay Arts Night event I threw with my friend Mary Williams on March 6th. The vid helped both Septopus and our event page gain a pretty big following.