Overcup Press
Design Internship
Tools
Adobe Creative Suite
Google Workspace
Trello
Overcup Press is a small independent publisher that I was design intern for at the start of 2024. Some of my responsibilities included the following:
Marketing design projects including an author postcard, web banners, and pattern design for new merchandise.
Designing and presenting Cover Comps for a forthcoming cookbook.
Filmed and edited a new intro and outro video for social media platforms
Creating a social media style guide section for the existing Overcup Style Guide.
Marketing Design: Pattern
Overcup Press was looking for new designs for marketing assets, specifically for bookmarks and notebooks. I began by creating moodboards and sketching out ideas to create a pattern that could be used across merchandise. I kept coming back to late medieval tapestries and 19th century wallpaper designs as a visual reference point.
Since Overcup is a Portland-based publisher, I gathered images of Pacific Northwest natives plants. The design features ferns and blooming Oregon Grape, as well Overcup's logo leaf. I brought my sketches into Illustrator to create a vector pattern and experiment with color. The muted fall palette that I landed on was the best solution to reinforce the brand’s visual style. Finally, I chose some quotes from a diverse set of authors and set the type in Garamond for a traditional book feel.
Sketching stage, ready to be vectorized
Process of laying out the pattern onto bookmarks in Illustrator
Ideation done in Procreate on iPad
Burgundy version of the notebook design
Intro & Outro Video
I spent a day all over Portland getting footage for a new Intro and Outro for Overcup Press socials. The main focus was to capture Overcup books and the strong Portland bookstore scene. Some featured locations include Powell’s, Rose City Book Pub, and Broadway Books.
I used Premiere Pro to cut together the footage and create the graphics that align with the brand’s visual style guide.
Web Banner Design
Tools
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop
The creative brief was to design web banners to help market Drawing Breath by Gayle Brandeis for Valentine’s Day. I brought the art from the cover into Photoshop and used a series of blending modes and watercolor brushes to create the background of the web banner. The final visual effect is one of a veiled and romantic haze.
Next, I lifted quotes from the book to create intrigue with the viewer and make them curious to keep clicking through the banners. I selected a friendly sans-serif for readability and paired it with a brush pen script that would communicate the rekindling of the romance in the passage.
Screenshot of banner #1 on Overcup home page
Screenshot of banner #2 on Overcup home page
Screenshot of banner #3 on Overcup home page
Author Postcard Design
Tools
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
The brief was to design an author postcard to be used as a tool to market the book Across the Street and Around the Corner. I was given copy and and the mechanical for the cover in order to design the postcard.
I designed a ginkgo leaf in Illustrator to match the ones on the cover and created a repeating pattern. Them, I brought the isolated ginkgo vectors as well as the pattern into InDesign in order to lay out the postcard. Maintaining the the color palette of green, teal and yellow was an essential part of the design. The final design has echoes of Art Deco in its visual style while clearly laying out the information about the book.
The paperback cover I used as a style guide for my author postcard design
