Hey there! My name is Jessie Edwards. I am a native Texan, however I spent seven years of my childhood living in the Middle Eastern country of Qatar. I’m currently a Senior at Texas Christian University working to obtain my BFA in graphic design. I'm an extremely hard worker and some would even say a perfectionist. I grew up surrounded by artists and was inspired at the young age of 13 to begin exploring the world of design. I enjoy working with both print and web design and hope to find a job that allows me to work in both fields after graduation.
Education
Texas Christian University Fort Worth, TX
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design Anticipated Graduation May 2016
Software Proficiency
Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, and Dreamweaver
Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel
Professional Experience
This summer I was a design intern at KH Studio, a branding and graphic design studio in Houston, Texas.
Resume
Download the PDF of my full resume to get all of the details on my professional experience, awards, and organizations that I am involved in.
Get in Touch
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Bon Voyage
Package design for the Bon Voyage travel bath essentials kit.
This assignment was considered a "backwards" assignment, in which it was required to take a blank white box and decide what would go in it, brand the items, and design the box. Bon Voyage Travel Bath Essentials is a small travel set of bath products that contains body butter, bath crystals, body wash, bubble bath, and bath oil. While there are other great bath products out there that come in miniature sizes, Bon Voyage provides an exciting travel experience for the consumer by packaging their small products into sets, which allow them to have a variety of different products in one purchase. The retro and illustrative packaging of Bon Voyage caters well to the female target market and the travel theme allows it to stand out in the checkout aisle, travel, and “on the go” sections of retail stores.
Date: October 2015
Course: Package Design
Category: Package Design
Sunset Boulevard
Poster for the movie Sunset Boulevard and the Film Noir Festival
*Recieved Merit Award in the 2015 Graphis New Talent Annual
This poster is promoting the 1950 film noir classic, Sunset Boulevard, as well as the Film Noir Festival that it would be a part of. The requirement for this project was to manually manipulate the type in some way, so as a result a famous quote from the film was chosen and written it in red lipstick. The spontaneous lipstick represents the madness, passion, and femme fatale of Norma Desmond, while the mirror represents her obsession with self and vanity.
Date: October 2014
Course: Typography III
Category: Poster Design
Film Noir Festival
Program & DVD Collectors Box design for the Film Noir Festival at the Hollywood Palladium
This program is for the Film Noir Festival that would be held at the Hollywood Palladium, featuring 5 of the greatest noir films. It is an extention of the film festival poster that I created for Sunset Boulevard; however, this program contains information on all of the films and would be given out to the the attendees as they enter the theater.
The main goal of this design was to capture the overall atmosphere of film noir such as dark shadows, cast lighting, texture. The cover design features a type-treatment that mimics the title cards of the film noir era using 3D effects and long cast shadows. The layout of the text loosley follows the cast light and provides the viewer with dates, times, and a brief synopsis of each film.
Date: November 2014
Course: Typography III
Category: Publication Design
After designing the poster and program for the Film Noir Festival, I extended the brand and designed a Collector's Edition DVD Box that could be sold at the festival or in retail stores. The box itself is a vintage film reel shipping box that was used in the 1950's, around the same time of the film noir era. It contains all five of the movies shown at the festival, a bottle of whiskey (apple juice), red lipstick, cat eye sunglasses, bubble gum cigarettes, and a collector's edition Colt detective special cap gun.With this overall design I wanted to cater to the major film noir fanatics, the people who would be attending the festival and would enjoy these special keepsakes. Each item is something that would be seen in almost every film noir. For example, you would never see a detective that wasn't smoking, drinking booze, or carrying a gun.
Date: December 2014
Course: Typography III
Category: Package Design
Kob Kabobs
Package design for a set of 8 corn handles.
This package design was the result of a "grab bag" assignment in which each student was given a random, quite unfavorable product and challenged to package it in an interesting way. The product is mostly targeted towards the primary shopper of the household and an entertainer who enjoys hosting guests for dinners and barbeques. While there are many other generic corn on the cob handles on the market, Kob Kabobs sets itself apart from the rest with it’s clever name, witty copy, high quality packaging materials, and interesting display of the product. The package also has a personality, enticing the consumer to choose Kob Kabobs with its humor and dialogue created by the headline and copy on the back.
Date: November 2015
Course: Package Design
Category: Package Design
Amazón Grill & Cordúa
Gift Card designs for restaurants within the Cordúa Restaurant Group based in Houston, Texas.
These two gift cards were designed during my internship this past summer at KH Studio and will be available Houston/Dallas Kroger store locations. Amazón Grill had been having issues with people mistaking their giftcards for Amazon.com cards and their goal was to make sure everyone knew it was for a restaurant. The goal for the Cordúa card was to embody the upscale and Latin vibes that all of the Cordúa restaurants have as a whole.
Front end design for the smart phone application Roomease
Roomease is a smartphone application that allows roommates to keep organized and sync up their calendars, schedules, locations, lists, and reminders with each other. A group of roommates would set up a Roomease group, assigning a color to each individual roommate. Throughout the app, the colors would be used to signify each roommates activity such as a scheduled event, their location, and even who has checked of a particular item on a list.
Date: March 2015
Course: Advanced Computer Applications
Category: App Design
Adventure Outfitters
Full branding and identity for the large outdoor retail store, Adventure Outfitters.
This corporate identity system was designed for Adventure Outfitters, a large retail store that sells gear for a wide variety of outdoor recreational activities such as hunting, fishing, camping, and more. The store mainly targets families who want to enjoy the outdoors together, a wide variety of ages (children & adults) both male and female. After establishing an outdoorsy but friendly logo, the rest of the brand needed to be established. First, the brand was given a web presence before developing other collateral items such as shopping bags, tags, employee uniforms, and signs. Lastly a stationary package was designed to represent the brand on a more corporate level.
Date: April 2015
Course: Corporate Identity
Category: Branding & Identity
Climb
Branding & App Design for Climb, a social networking app for traveling business professionals.
Climb is a real world smartphone app project that my colleague, Brooke Davis, and I worked on with TCU MBA Student Nick Fender. Nick developed the idea for an app that would allow traveling business professionals to connect via LinkedIn and flight information to make connections they might otherwise miss when on business trips. He then approached the TCU Graphic Design department looking for students to assist him in branding his company and designing the front end of the app. Over this past semester Brooke and I have worked on bringing Nick's vision to life and the app, featuring the new designs, should be available on the app store within the next few months.
Visit the website here and download the prototype app today!
Date: December 2015
Course: Directed Study
Category: Branding & App Design
Personal Mantra
Poster Design for my personal mantra, "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."
This poster part of a class called Visting Designers, in which we have well-known designers from the Dallas/Fort Worth area come and give us their own assignment. In this case, Angela Mondragon George assigned us the task of picking a personal mantra quote and creating a poster for it. I chose the quote "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone." because as a designer I think it's extremely important to venture outside your comfort zone and push yourself creatively.
With this particular design I wanted to create a large contrast between a safe comfort zone and a dreamlike, metaphorical representation of what it would look like to venture outside of it. There were three words that were key to creating this space that I thought represented what being outside your comfort zone would look like visually; beautiful, scary, and unknown. I took vintage 1960's magazines and collaged them together to make this space that was both visually enthralling and full of possibilites. The text begins in the safe space but as it ventures outside of the comfort zone it becomes alive and fully a part of the dreamlike space.
The outer space imagery is so prominent because I personally find it incredibily beautiful yet extremely terrifying because no one truly knows everything that is out there. However, as a human race we have made it a mission to explore the universe and discover its possibilites. The little girl is also a prominent image in the piece because it reads as a self portrait of sorts. The serene and confident way she is gazing at the colorful space in front of her is how I wish to view the outside of my comfort zone, with no fear.
Date: Janurary 2015
Course: Visiting Designers
Category: Poster Design
W Hotel New York Downtown
Promotional publication piece for the W Hotel in Downtown New York.
This publication was designed as a collateral piece for the W Hotel New York, Downtown location. The booklet is meant to act as a guide for the guests to learn about all of the fabulous amenities that the hotel has to offer and what they can explore during their stay at the W. The outside cover is a black touche paper with a simple spot varnish W logo on the front. A metallic flysheet covers an image of the hotel's exterior before diving into the amenities. The publication is quite image heavy to visually show the guests the beautiful features of the hotel, with minimal but informative copy about each separate feature or highlight of the W New York Downtown.
Date: April 2014
Course: Publication Design
Category: Publication Design
Haute Air
Logo and stationery design for the upscale hairstyle salon located in Houston, TX
This is both the logo and stationery package for Haute Air, a hypothetical blow dry bar that would be located in Houston, TX. The target market is primarily young, professional women who can afford to have their hair styled for any sort of event or occasion. The logo design is both modern and trendy but with a feminine touch. As an extension of the brand I designed a stationery package that visually represents the atmosphere of the blow dry bar; open and clean with bright white counters, relaxing grey metal accents, and a pop of coral. The bright coral color represents warmth while the round corners mimic the organic curves of the blow dryer.
Date: February 2014
Course: Typography II
Category: Logo & Stationery
Comedy of Errors
Poster design for Shakespeare's play, The Comedy of Errors
This poster is an advertisement for a showing of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors at the Carnival Studio Theater in Downtown Miami. This particular production of the play is targeted towards children and families as one of Shakespeare's only plays that is appropriate for kids. The bright colors, big arrows, off-kilter typography, and backwards letters are attractive to children while also representing the vibrant humor and mistaken identity that occurs within the play.
Date: April 2014
Course: Typography II
Category: Poster Design
Snack A'Peel Package
Package design for the crisp, healthy, and on-the-go banana chips, Snack A'Peel.
Snack A’Peel sunbaked banana chips are your light, crisp and healthy alternative to snacking. These on-the-go slices offer a convenient, organic sweet treat without the mess, or the guilt of calories. The primary target market is middle to upper-class men and women, ages 21-45, who frequently shop at places like Central Market, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's.
This package design for Snack A'Peel was part of a group project for which I was the Art Director. The main goal was maintain the freshness of the product while still attracting the target market. To keep the banana chips fresh there is a resealable zip-loc at the top of the pouch. The design is clean, modern, and trendy with an artisan twist so that it pops off the shelf and "apeels" to those health-concious foodies looking for a sweet and organic snack.
Date: October 2014
Course: Art Direction
Category: Package Design
Mash
Print Advertisement for the low calorie, sparkling fruit drink, Mash
*Recieved Merit Award in the 2015 Graphis New Talent Annual
This assignment involved choosing a specialty drink, with very little advertising, and creating a successful and interesting print ad for it. I chose the drink Mash, a low calorie, sparkling fruit drink that is not a water, soda, or juice, but a combination of all three. It is targeted mainly towards young professionals looking for something quick, low calorie, and sweet to drink in place of other generic diet drinks. Mash prides themselves on taking two distinct flavors and "mashing" them together to form each of their four drink flavors, often combinations you would not expect. The goal of this print ad was to visually represent a "sweet combination," a phrase that could be used to describe the drink. By combining this dog and elephant into a friendship, the viewer is automatically captured by this sweet combination that rivals the taste of Grapefruit & Citrus Mash.
Date: September 2014
Course: Ad Design
Category: Advertising
Biehl
Logo redesign for Biehl, a tramp shipping agency based in Houston, Texas.
This logo redesign was a project that I was given during my internship this past summer at KH Studio. Biehl is a tramp shipping agency specializing in meeting the requirements of international liner services, tanker and dry cargo charterers, operators, owners and managers. The previous logo uses the font Calibri, a sans serif with rounded corners, which doesn't make much sense for the traditional and well established company. The logo mark attempts to show a water line but falls flat with the lack of motion. For the new logo, the goal was to use a new typeface that represents the traditional side of Biehl while still emodying the friendly nature of the company. The logo mark was improved by creating more motion, a wave, and allowing it to read more as a B rather than an R.