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M E L I S S A A N N E TO L E N T I N O

A G R A P H I C D ES I G N P O R T FO L I O

Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s
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A bo ut Me P ro f e ssi o nal A m bitions Typo graphy Po st e r Se ri e s I nf o graphi c V i sual I de nt i t y C o nt ac t Me T he End

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About Me
Regardless of whether or not its appropriate to welcome someone to a portfoliowelcome to my portfolio. My name is Melissa Tolentino and I am an undergrad at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I have two majors: Journalism and Mass Communication (with a concentration in editing and graphic design) and Japanese. I used to be a creative writing minor, but study abroad threw me off course so I had to drop it. Im still studying two things I love, though, so its not so bad. Five words that describe me best (and I had a hard time with this!) are minimalistic, romantic, colorful, empathetic and spontaneous. I love to laugh, and having a good time is always a priority, but more often that not I enjoy being alone just as much as I enjoy being around people I love. I feel a lot; I am super emotional on the inside but on the outside but I dont show it. I also writemostly prose, though sometimes poetry. It makes me nervous to call myself a writer, because that sounds like Im a real writerand maybe I am, but Im not so sure if I meet the criteria. If I could do two things for the rest of my life, I would write and I would travel. In fact, Id rather be traveling now. I am a child of wanderlust, and I owe this to my parents. My dad was in the Navy for 25+ years, so I was able to live in Japan for seven years. While we were living overseas I was able to visit almost 80% of the rest of Asia. Unfortunately Ive never been to Europe, but thats definitely on my to-do listas is pretty much everywhere in the world. Some people may say that they enjoy traveling, but for me its a lot more significant than just a hobby. I identify very strongly with being a third culture kid, which is someone who has spent the majority of their lives outside of their parents home cultureusually military brats or missionary kids. Its not usually the best thing when you compartmentalize people into boxes, but you could honestly read a book about TCKs and youd be reading about me. Also: I love the color pink. I tried to lie about it when I was younger because it wasnt cool, but I couldnt run away from it. I love pigs and pugs; the fatter the better. I LOVE FOOD (see above photo.) And I made this entire portfolio while listening to the solo piano radio station on Pandora.

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Professional Ambitions

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A Statement of Intent
I have three major professional interests: - Foreign Affairs (government) - Graphic Design/Multimedia - Editing/Publishing So far, I have experience in all three aspects, and lately Ive come to combine them: my current job is a Global Relations at the UNC Global Education Center, and I am part of the team that manages the Global Centers website, so I deal with content management systems as well as multimedia and foreign affairs. I also get to edit and sometimes write the articles that are published on the website. My true passions lie, however, in foreign affairs work. Most of my family have government jobs, so its something Ive grown up around. I would love to work in the Washington, D.C. areaI used to live there; I have no rose-colored misconceptions!in the U.S. Department of State, or as a Foreign Service Officer. Working at the State Department has honestly been my dream job since Ive been in high school, and Ill finally be able to have an internship there this summer (2012) as part of the Digital Outreach Team of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Typography

ERICGILL

Designed by Eric Gill and issued by Monotype in 1927. Gill Sans is a distinctly British but highly readable san-serif, composed of latently humanist and overtly geometric forms. The aperture varies (it is large in c, moderate in roman a and s, small in roman e). The italic, like Fournier's, cut two centuries before, was a revolutionary achievement in its time. Books have been set successfully in Gill

G
figures - very useful when the face is used for setting text - have been privately produced but never issued by Monotype itself. English engraver and stonecutter, working in England and Wales. His serifed faces include Joanna, Perpetua and Pilgrim. His one unserifed face is Gill Sans. Perpetua Greek is also his, but Gill Sans Greek is by other hands. Gill's type drawings are now in the St Bride Li- brary, London. Some of his matrices and punches are at the University Library, Cambridge; others are in the Clark Library, Los Angeles - but none of these punches were cut by Gill himself.

0491
illsans

Sans, though it requires a sure sense of color and measure. Text

1882

For the TYPOGRAPHY COMPOSITION, I chose to focus on the Gill Sans font, which is also the font used for all the body text in this por tfolio. The reason I chose Gill Sans is because I really like clean sans serif fonts like Arial or Calibrithey are ver y minimalistic and you can accessorize them easily.

For the composition itself I used a purpleyellow complementar y color scheme and highlighted the G of Gill Sans to create emphasis. I knew that I wanted to focus the name of the font in a ver y obvious way, but I also didnt want to overdo it. Instead of making the entire title large like you can see in some of my sketches, I chose to emphasize only the G.

Typography is my favorite design element and, had I the oppor tunity, I probably would have done all my projects that way.

Poster Series

FEMINIST STUDENTS UNITED PRESENTS

LOVE POTIONS 2012

On February 16, 2012, Ebony Readers Onyx Theatre (EROT) held their annual Valentines Day show, Love Potions: What is Love in the Multipurpose Room of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center. This is a show that EROT has put on for the past twenty years or so, and 2012 marks the rst time it was held not in the auditorium but the multipurpose room of the Stone Center. About 50 people attended the show, despite the rainy weather. While the writing branch of EROT, E-Write, wrote the poems for the fall show, members from EROT also contributed to the Love Potions repetoire. Among the poems performed, there were a few group poems to even out the large number of individual pieces. While some poems such as De Nile, Fidelity and How to Mend your Bones are a few years old, EROT decided to bring them back for a new, fresh audience to enjoy.

ANDREA GIBSON

featuring EBONY READERS ONYX THEATRE (EROT)

MARCH 21 / 730 - 9 PM / STONE CENTER

TICKETS FREE FOR STUDENTS / $5 FOR NON-STUDENTS / UNION BOX OFFICE

The poster series was slightly more difficult for me than the typography composition since I had to discern how to incorporate images into the design. For my poster, I focused on the Love Potions Valentines Day show that my spoken word group, EROT, put on in Februar y. I used photos from the show in chronological order to visually explain the contents. For my flier, I highlighted an event put on by Feminist Students United that EROT was featured in: the Andrea Gibson show. This is one of my favorite designs, especially the backgroundit is composed of one of Andrea Gibsons poems, Maybe I Need You.

Infographic

The infographic project was the hardest one for me, mainly because I have an incurable and pathological fear of graphs and numbers. Working on it from a design perspective, however, was a little more bearable. Since my second major is Japanese and I grew up in Japan, I wanted to focus on an issue in that countr y, so I picked the declining bir th rate. It was a pretty depressing topic, so I didnt want to go with the usual theme of babies and pacifiers. Going with a gray, black and red color scheme fit the morbidity of the topic well without going overboard. The red also lends to the fer tility aspect of bir th rates. Overall I decided to keep the graphic simple with a major focus on the data, as was the point of the project.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE BABIES GONE? ?

WOMEN IN THE WORK FORCE VS. NUMBER OF LIVE BIRTHS PER YEAR

FEWER BABIES, MORE FEAR

The number of live births and the fertility rate in Japan hit an all-time low in 2005 and, while the numbers are now rising, the number is still very low compared to a decade ago. The Japanese government has tried to implement nationwide plans such as the Angel Plan to encourage more births, but it has garnered little support. Perhaps what the country should focus on instead is take into consideration the existence of the non-Japanese when thinking of ways to increase the dwindling birth rate.

A LOOK INTO JAPANS DECREASING BIRTHRATE

1995

2000

2005

2008

2009

2010

WOMEN IN THE WORK FORCE

LIVE BIRTHS PER YEAR

Japan has experienced a steady decline in the birth rate for the past few decades and even became one of the countries with the lowest birth rate in the world. While the numbers have increased slightly from their all-time lows, the population of Japans future is shaky.

number of babies per year in 1000s

1 POTENTIAL REASON
150000 120000 90000 60000 30000

One of the reasons for Japans low birth rate is the significant increase of women who have joined the labor force since 1995. The trend among women in Japan, especially lately, is to have a career instead of a family. Even those who wish to have children are hesitant due to lack of support given to working mothers.

1970: 1934 1980: 1577 1990: 1222 2000: 1191 2005: 1063 2008: 1091 2009: 1070

A NARROWING NATION
The Japanese word for a trend in population decline is shoshika. While decades ago it was simply a word that was seldom used, today it is the dark cloud that reigns over Japanese society. In the coming years, Japans eldery population will increaseand its newborn count will decrease. Unless thetrend is reversed, Japans labor force will suffer, and its population count will take a turn for the worst. While in the past there were 5.5 workers to support one elderly person, by the year 2020 there will only be 2.3 workers, and from there the number may continue to decrease even more.

in 1000s 0

2000 2005 2010

2015

2020 2025 2035 2050

Visual

Identity
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While I enjoyed designing the other projects in this course, the most impor tant one to me is probably the visual identity set, as I do plan to utilize my letterhead, business card and logo in the professional future.

to look at, and I wanted a font that would display my personality without being too in-your-face. Im not usually a fan of cursive fonts since they tend to get really fancy and over-the-top, but I thought this was expressive enough, especially when you add the a to the M.

I used a pink-and-red color scheme for each aspect of the visual identity series since my favorite color is pink. I tried to stay away from the inevitable black hole of ever ything is pink and so ever ything is girly route by utilizing geometrical shapes in the background, especially the graph paper-esque style of the letterhead. Overall I wanted the design to be clean and easy Ive received some comments from people inquiring about the decision behind the letters in my logoi.e., why is it Ma and not Mt? The answer is simple, but not easily understood: my middle name is Anne, and my full name is actually Melissa Anne. (Nobody actually calls me Melissa Anne, though.)

CONTACT ME
f ac e bo ok.com /lissatol t wi t t e r. com/lissasaurus mt o l e nti@live.unc.edu

ht t p: / / melissatolentino.com

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T H E EN D

w h a t m a ke s t h e d e s e r t b e a u t i f u l , s a i d t h e l i t t l e p r i n c e , i s t h a t s o m e w h e re it hides a well. - antoine de saint exupery