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PORTFOLIO OF WORK

bliss parsons ❘ graphic design ❘ 2020

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I am a graphic designer living and working in Los Angeles. In 2019 I earned my MFA in Graphic Design from Boston University’s School of Visual Arts. Previously, I had worked as a marketing communications professional before transitioning over to design.

As a designer, my aim is to explore the intersection between graphic design and social impact and to create honest, fun, and inclusive work that pops. I enjoy visual problem solving, decolonizing grid systems, and lending my skills to meaningful causes. Having resided on the east coast my whole life, I have relocated to the west coast to broaden and expand my practice.

Hi! I’m Bliss

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WH

O IS

SHE?

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Skills Experience EducationMFA, Graphic Design, 2019 Boston University

BA, Environmental Policy, 2013 Mount Holyoke College Cum Laude

Graphic Designer Place & Page

Freelance Graphic Designer Providence Community Health Centers

Graduate Graphic DesignerInteraction Design FellowTeaching Assistant Boston University

Graphic Design Intern Design Studio for Social Intervention Graphic Design Contractor Harvard Graduate School of Education

Marketing Communications Specialist Penn Foster Education Group

Marketing Coordinator Penn Foster Education Group

Marketing Research Assistant Pure Branding, Inc.

Nonprofit Campaign Coordinator Represent.Us

Adobe Creative Suite HTML & CSSKeynoteGoogle Suite Microsoft Office SuitePrint & Digital Design Branding & Identities Publication Design Copy Writing & Editing Marketing Communications Presentation/Deck Design Illustration & Sketching Digital PhotographyUX/UI Research & Design WireframingStoryboarding Gallery Installation Large Format Printing Screen Printing

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WORKbliss parsons

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Publication design, editorial, branding, illustration, social graphics, mailers

Place & Page is a community-centered graphic design studio based in downtown Los Angeles that works with local organizations and public agencies on branding, events, signage, publications, illustrations, design interventions, community outreach, and more.

Since joining the team in September 2019, my role has been to assist in managing projects from end to end, handling client feedback, and creating myriad deliverables spanning both print and digital. Here, I’ve included samples of finalized assets from a variety of different projects I had a major hand in. These include publication design for city-wide initiatives, brand refresh for nonprofit digital campaigns, event branding, city planning project identities, nonprofit annual reports, event invitations, and stickers and icon sets.

Place & Page

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The City of Houston teamed up with Place & Page to designResilient Houston, a city-wide climate resilience strategy and illustrated planning document.

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Identity explorations for a streetscape plan for Wilshire and La Cienega Boulevards for the city of Beverly Hills.

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Print, logo, identity

Providence Community Health Centers (PCHC) is a non-profit health care organization in Rhode Island that provides quality primary health care services that are affordable, comprehensive and culturally sensitive to more than 50,000+ residents of Providence and its surrounding areas.

I have been working with the Diversity and Inclusion committee at PCHC to create internal and external designed communications and assets. It has been important to me to help elevate such a critical community organization by modernizing the look and feel of their collateral, while maintaining a sense of approachability and professionalism.

Projects have included: recruitment brochure, decal for clinic entryways, logo and identity for internal employee education initiative, event invitations, redesigned employee badges, handbook for new hires, newsletter and fliers.

Providence Community Health Centers

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Posters, graphics, workshop materials, event branding

Over the course of a summer, I worked as a design intern with the Design Studio for Social Intervention (ds4si), in Dorchester, MA. The studio is an artistic research and development outfit for the improvement of civil society and everyday life. The studio designs and tests social interventions with and on behalf of marginalized populations, controversies and ways of life.

Working alongside the creative director, I created social graphics, workshop materials, buttons, cards, signage, posters, and branding to promote a variety of events throughout the summer.

Design Studio for Social Intervention

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Website redesign, information design, marketing materials

The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE), a research team in Harvard Graduate School of Education was in need of a website redesign to generate more participation in their surveys and research on faculty retention. Working alongside the marketing manager, I redesigned the site from the bottom-up, including wireframing, copywriting, site structure, and graphics.

To showcase new research findings on faculty retention and departure, I also worked with the team to write and design a compelling infographic as well as a brochure to use as lead gen marketing collateral.

Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Branding, social

Speculative Futures is an international community of meetups focused on Speculative & Critical Design, Design Fiction, Futurism, and Strategy & Foresight.

Joining the Los Angeles chapter of Speculative Futures, I have been working with chapter organizers to reinvision the branding for the local chapter. This has included exploring new type, color, and graphic systems to promote upcoming talks and events. On the left are some of my explorations and iterations over the past few months.

The Design Futures Initiative is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, CA dedicated to the development and education of Futures Thinking. The Design Futures Initiative has community of Speculative Futures chapters & meetups around the world.

Speculative Futures Los Angeles

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MFA

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MAS

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RTS, GRAPHIC DESIGN

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Speculative design, design fiction, installation, book, large-scale design, visual systems

Nominated Finalist and Exhibitioner at PRIMER19, The New School, June 2019 It is my firm belief that design should contribute to solving today’s social, environmental, and political instabilities through engaging in critical analysis of the present and posing tough questions for the future. I’m interested in moments where design critically engages viewers by challenging them to question their experiences and realities, and helps viewers access their humanity through the vehicle of empathy.

For my thesis, I chose to play the role of design futurist. Instead of envisioning future products or technologies, I focused on the future of social structures. Through the use of speculative design, I situated my audience in a post-apocalyptic future 300 years in the future where a survivalist colony is thriving. This new society takes the opportunity to reinvent humanity through a code of conduct based on empathy and scientific reason. Through this exercise, I encouraged viewers to contemplate their own role and impact in society, and how we might begin to shift paradigms and structures in order to build a more just and sustainable future.

2019 MFA Thesis Project

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Master's coursework,Boston University

For a rebrand project, I chose to create a new identity for the Museum of Science in Boston. The Museum of Science is one of world’s largest centers for dynamic, interactive science and technology exhibits and programming and is Boston’s most attended cultural institution.

For this rebrand, I wanted to breathe fresh life into a stale and dated identity in order to reflect the institution’s extensive breadth of programming and to attract younger audiences through an approachable, playful, and iconic mark.

The new mark, read ‘Sci’ is an abbreviation for ‘Science’ or ‘Scifi.’ The Saturn icon in the exclamation point is active and interchangeable, translating for usage in programs, swag, and advertising.

The color palette is inspired by one of the museum’s center attractions, ‘Lighting’, a live presentation on electricity. Any combination of the four colors can be paired together for a flexible identity. The existing red, blue, and green wings of the museum can be transitioned to this new palette.

Rebrand: Boston Museum of Science

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Interactive Design Fellowship, Boston University

As an interactive design fellow through Boston University’s student innovation center BU Spark!, I worked on a team with undergraduate and graduate computer science students to develop a product for an external client, the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency based in Cambodia. We were tasked to design and develop a working prototype of an app concept called Gobiz.

Gobiz is a fun and practical training app for young entrepreneurs in Asia. The team at ILO wanted to transform a successful on-the-ground program called

“Ready for Business” into an Android app to increase educational accessibility and economic mobility. Through the app, users can develop an understanding of the steps to business startup by using the simple, competency-based coursework to help them develop their own concrete business strategy.

In charge of UX/UI on our team, I worked on content flow, wireframes, and graphic components. We were provided very rough wireframes, content flow, a rough logo, and an 80+ page “Ready for Business” course PDF to use to transform into a prototype. From there I built out the wireframe in Adobe Xd, streamlined the flow and experience of the app, and worked on parsing out the course content for the first lesson into a digestible, interactive, and fun learning sequence. After several iterations of the wireframe, I was able to develop a new look&feel for the app with new iconography and logo.

Case Study:Gobiz App

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