I have had the pleasure and opportunity of creating and designing so many fun projects at Ghirardelli! Most of my work can be seen behind-the-scenes in the restaurant business with foodservice products (for example, the sauce bottles containing the chocolate, caramel, and white chocolate sauces you get on those famous Ghirardelli sundaes!), online in the form of digital banners and ads, in foodservice publications, and on the company website. You may have also seen my motion graphics work on the Times Square building in New York city for the then-new Ghirardelli minis! These are just some of the many exciting things I have been fortunate enough to create for one of the best chocolate companies in America!
One of my favorite projects from Ghirardelli was designing this catalog. I loved working with teams from several different departments to create a cohesive gift guide that would be mailed out to thousands of people across the country.
Photography by Annabelle Breakey Photography
Another one of my favorite projects from Ghirardelli was this 68-page catalog with soft binding. I loved being a part of every step of the process from the incredible photoshoots to taste-testing the recipes (I know, what a hard job, right?), to redesigning the products, to finally showcasing them in a sleek portfolio book. There is so much that goes into creating something like this, it still amazes me every time. I am so grateful for the opportunity to work on such a fun and important project for this company.
Photography by Annabelle Breaker Photography
This was a bit of an abstract project to outline Ghirardelli’s brand persona, voice, and story. The mini square soft-bound book was used to help explain how Ghirardelli’s brand wanted to come across to consumers. It was used as a guide and compass for our Marketing department to refer to when developing new ideas.
Photography by Annabelle Breaker Photography
The Professional Products Division at Ghirardelli participated in many trade shows. I was asked to design these banners to showcase the products and delectable recipes that could be created with their high quality ingredients.
Photography by Annabelle Breakey Photography
Redesigning one of Ghirardelli’s signature Professional Products lines was such an honor. Along with developing new recipes, they wanted their packaging to reflect a sleek, clean, and simple feel that also felt elegant and sophisticated sitting atop restaurant kitchen shelves. I removed existing imagery and replaced the original foil material with a luxurious matte finish, elevating these premium products to the next level.
This redesign not only included a brand new innovative less-waste pump system design, but also the new sleek and sophisticated design from the frappé collection. This simple, yet elegant look needed to be reflected across all the new PPD product line to create products that looked nice enough to be left out on restaurant kitchen shelves instead of tucked away or covered up.
This project needed to reflect the new design for PPD as well, for Ghirardelli’s new water-soluble hot cocoa recipe and updated branding.
Photography by Annabelle Breakey Photography
My team and I worked to develop the new design for these baking bars from their original foil packaging to a matte cardstock. The Baking Team wanted to showcase their new recipes too, by incorporating new photography brand fonts and colors.
The Ghirardelli “Impressions” line needed a facelift to create a fun, yet romantic look that could be gifted to people of all ages. I took on this challenge by working with my team and creating a design that not only looked beautiful, but printed well on foil (a bit of a tricky task!). After many attempts to get the colors and blended effects correct, we successfully launched this loved product in brand new packaging!
Sometimes the Marketing Department needed renderings of pallets to show their customers how it would appear in their stores. I was able to learn a new 3D software to create the shell of the rendering from dielines provided by Packaging Engineers, then placed the artwork over it to create a life-like to-scale model of the pallets. This is just one of hundred I created during my time at Ghirardelli.
One of the largest-scale projects I ever worked on at Ghirardelli were the motion graphics to be shown around New Year’s at Times Square. We were given this incredible opportunity on short notice, and I was able to create some simple graphics to showcase the new “minis” to thousands of people as the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve :)
Objective: Design a Bay Area (Redwood City Wharf) tide prediction diagram for each 24-hour day in the Month of June 2013.
Final size: 34"x22"
Objective: Develop, design, and produce an exhibition campaign for World Food Expo Jan 6–8, 2013, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The attendees will celebrate the world’s speciality foods and beverages, and discover their connection with their geological origin.
I chose to focus on traditional tea from Turkey. The name "Dostluk" means friendship in Turkish, and refers to the relationship and amiable atmosphere that surrounds the Turkish tea-drinking experience. I wanted to use customized Turkish patterns and architectural elements in my product and trade show booth design to stay true to traditional Turkish art, but with a modern twist. All patterns are hand-drawn or painted.
Final sizes:
Model 1:20 scale
Product 4.75" tall
This project focused on reinventing the identity for California State Parks and Recreation. In this study, we were to rebuild the identity from scratch, starting with the logo, look and feel, color palette, image style, and typography, then implementing the new identity design onto various materials including a visitors' map, website, business system, and promotional materials. The entire project was then compiled into unifying style guide.
The logo reflects the overall diverse, lively, and refreshingly free essence of California’s state parks. The organic, twig-like lines interspersed with clean, straight lines help indicate breaking free from life and intermingling with nature. The overall organic quality of the logo loosely references tree bark, twigs, and mountains.
Final sizes:
Style Guide: 11"x7" closed, 22"x7" open
Visitors' Map Booklet: 3"x5" closed, various lengths when open (roll fold)
Visitors' Map: 10.5"x15" (unfolded)
This pocket-sized booklet serves as a "passport" to all of California's state parks and the available activities within each. It also includes a complete fold-out map with a list and location of every CA State Park.
Objective: Capture the essence of our personality into a food product brand.
I love to bake and make foods that are delicious, cute, and fun to eat, so I chose to package cake balls.
I also love bright colors and adding handmade touches to packaging and products to offer a more personalized experience.
Objective: Design an original typeface based on research, analyses, and experimentations about fundamental lettering principles. The typeface should emphasize symbolic and meaningful representations of a person, or his/her work's characteristics.
For this project, I chose to design a typeface after Sacagawea. I wanted to capture the essence of Sacagawea’s Native American culture by incorporating geometric shapes and motifs in my letters. Each character uses or is based off of a perfect circle, an important shape in Native American symbols, meaning life. The vertical motif with the three circles above a diamond is not only supposed to represent common shapes present in Native American designs, but also an abstract representation of Sacagawea’s braids. The tiny arrows represent Sacagawea’s navigational importance as well as arrowheads for the feather-like motif in the letters.
Final Typeface Specimen Book Size: 8"x8"
This was a class project to practice learning motion graphics software (in this case, I only used Adobe After Effects and a tiny bit of Adobe Audition—both my first time using!) to create a movie title sequence.
Objective: Find an essay, novel, or any story which might become a movie script. Design a time-based work that uses type, basic graphics, sound, and motion. Project can be based off a literal, conceptual, and/or metaphorical interpretation of the story.
Storyline: It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .
Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.
This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul. (Summary by Amazon.com)
Original Title Design and concept by Tani Mitsch 2013
Music: "Healing Katniss" by James Newton Howard
Objective: The primary goal of the Exhibit Program is to enrich the community and the SJSU campus by creating exhibits with broad appeal for a diverse and multigenerational audience while continuing to support the Library's primary mission, as a preeminent educational resource.
Because San José in located in the heart of Silicon Valley, a major technology center in America, I thought it would be appropriate to design an exhibition around Nikola Tesla, who is responsible for pioneering almost every modern technological invention, including AC current, radio-control technology, robotics, radar, etc.
Final sizes:
Model 1:50 scale
Tesla Process Book 11"x17" closed
Although I consider photography as more of an enjoyable hobby, it is also a crucial skill to support my design work. The following are a few examples of various photography including manmade landscapes, portraiture, and my personal favorite, food photography!
I have been playing the clarinet since I was 9 years old. Music has always been a passion of mine, so I consider this not only a study in reflective objects, but a portrait of myself. The music reflected in the keys is one of my favorite Rose Etudes :)
This study in glassware photography was inspired by raindrops falling into puddles.
This exercise in high speed photography captures the unique splash formations single drops of water make upon impact.
Another homemade creation of mine :)
Another food photography study.
My very own recipe for homemade avocado eggrolls. There was also a honey cilantro dipping sauce, but it's not pictured here (sorry!).
Yes, these are homemade :) I absolutely love to cook and bake, so focusing on food photography for my final portfolio in my lighting class was a perfect (and delicious) choice!
This portrait study was so much fun! We were to recreate an old photograph and incorporate a modern object into it. I chose to recreate Yousef Karsh's portrait of Audrey Hepburn and incorporate Apple iPod headphones. When the two photos are overlaid, the lighting and body position are near identical :)
This is another study in portrait photography, commissioned by my good friend and amazing flutist, pictured here.
In this portrait study, I experimented with dramatic, harsh lighting to create an eerie, evil mood. It was especially interesting to shoot this considering my models are such funny, happy, and kind people!
This environmental portrait was entirely created in the studio. I wanted the lighting and mood to feel as authentic as possible, portraying candlelight prayer sessions.
Although none of the photography in this image collage is mine, this was an exercise in combining multiple images into one as seamlessly as possible. I explored the idea of time, from summer to winter, day to night, and birth to death, passing faster than we think.
As a study in landscape photography, I decided to create my own. Astronomy is another one of my interests, so I decided to create a moonscape out of simple objects: water droplets sprayed onto a mirror.
This assignment was to experiment with nighttime photography. I tried out different effect by zooming my lens in and out to create this matrix-like composition out of Christmas lights on palm trees.
This foodscape doesn't really mimic any landscape we are familiar with. I tried to create an alien landscape with forest-like features and a purple river. Materials included enoki mushrooms, kale, various greens, and purple cabbage.
This foodscape mimics a beach around noontime. Materials included corn meal, blue frosting, sugar, and rainbow fruit strips.
In this series of foodscapes, I spent about 4 hours per setup creating otherworldly landscapes comprised entirely of food. In this photo, I used coffee grounds, sugar, greens, dried beans, bread, and potatoes to mimic mountains, dirt, and foliage at sunset.
This image is a compilation of various baking ingredients and products as a study in food photography.
