Danielle Pasco

This design has won a Silver ADDY award at the local level of the American Advertising Awards, and won a Gold ADDY award in the Regional part of the awards. It is currently being sent to Nationals to be judged.

There's a surprising amount of illiterate people living their day to day lives in Lansing. Without basic literacy, many of the things we take for granted become impossible for them. Not only do simple tasks become a chore to do, but an illiterate person can easily be taken advantage of through the use of contracts. If they can't read, they don't know what they're signing away.

With this kind of promotional branding for the group in Lansing, I wanted to use shocking simplicity to get across the message that not everyone can read, and that it's a real and pressing issue that still needs to be addressed today. The text, to literate people, can still be read because the first and last letters of the words are in the right place, so your mind fills in the wrong letters and already knows what it's supposed to be. You know what you're signing away, but for those who can't read, they could be signing over their most precious belongings and never know until it was too late. You can see this by the signature line already being signed.

I created the brand with the idea of getting volunteers to help teach children and adults how to read and write with the help of this non-profit. The simplicity draws the reader in, but the subtle shock gets people to think about it later on, and to go to their website and learn more.

The current CALC website can be found here: www.thereadingpeople.org

This is an infographic that I created after asking 101 people to define me using only one word. I asked all different kinds of people, and got all kinds of different words. I had to keep an excel sheet to keep track of all the information. Some words were simple, some were well thought-out, some were shocking, and some were ridiculous, but I put every word on here. It gave me a general idea of how other people perceive me. This poster is massive, and when printed, it must be at least 3 feet tall by 2 feet wide.

Note: I am not Ben's sister-in-law. I just look like her, I guess.

Using my own images from when I went on a trip to New York City, I collaged them together onto paper, then digitized them on the screen. I used type as image and fused both together, and used the white space as an introduction to some of the type to create this collage.

Since 2017, I have been the Graphic Designer for the MSU Law College galleries. These galleries are showcased in the halls of the upper floors of the building, and highlight or give information about a wide range of topics.

Some galleries are created for a specific event, such as a talk about older teens still searching for an adoptive family of their own in the Art & Soul gallery; or it could promote something, such as a book that discusses all the women U.S. History that were almost appointed to the Supreme Court, but weren’t, in the gallery titled “Shortlisted” named after the book itself.

I continue to work with the curator for these galleries to create minimalist posters that aim to inspire as well as inform.

Some images are gifs that loop through the entire gallery of posters for that specific gallery.

Although I don’t know much about my ancestry, my older relatives do. I am part of what my great uncle calls the “Hamilton Clan”, as my late grandfather was a Hamilton.

Every year in August, the Hamilton family meets at a campground for a weekend and catches up with how everyone is doing. This tradition has been happening for 100 years, and we wanted to have a special celebration for it. One part of it was recreating the crest that was once used to signify our family name and use it on T-Shirts for everyone to wear during the weekend. I volunteered my skills and knowledge to digitize the crest, using a published book on the background of the Hamilton crest as my source.

There were many iterations of the crest; different colors and ways of folding the belt were the most changed. I kept the main elements that were similar throughout all the different crests, and recreated them using vector art in Illustrator. My family decided as a group which elements they wanted in the updated one, and which colors they wanted to use.

The crests shown in my source book are over hundreds of years old, and so all were hand-drawn or stamped, and showed imperfections in the works. Using such clean vector art didn’t do the crest justice I thought, so I imported it into Photoshop and used a tablet to draw shadows and lines where they would have been if it were hand-drawn entirely. This created a new depth to the crest that wouldn’t have otherwise existed.

My family absolutely loved the crest I have made, and we will all be wearing it on T-shirts during the upcoming 100th Hamilton Family reunion.

A very tedious project that involved mapping out most of the main constellations that you can see from Earth. It was a very long process to try to get all the stars and constellations into this one small poster. The distances are not to scale, but it shows all of the zodiac constellation signs, even including the ones you can’t see in the Northern Hemisphere.

I highlighted the Big Dipper to show where in the night sky the other stars are compared to it, since most people can find it in the sky without any help from a map.

Logo chosen by The Catholic Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee for their upcoming event of Celebrating Faith.

I wanted to create something modern but not too simple, so I stuck with a sans serif typeface for the outer words and a script for the word Faith. The client wanted to incorporate the image of the Holy Spirit into the logo, so I kept it simple by integrating the flame into the text, using the flame as the tittle of the I.

See my work in action here: https://ptdiocese.org/celebratefaith2019

Catholic TV wanted a unique logo to place on a tote bag to give away to people at the events. They wanted a catchphrase that encapsulates what their mission is. I stuck with a more modern look, with solid colors to flatten the image but also use a subtle gradient for the image of the USA.

A book cover design based on the short story by Hans Christian Andersen. The design was submitted to the 2017 ADDY Awards and won the Silver award.

Every year, the MSU Graphic Novels Club creates an anthology of all their member's comics. In 2016, I created the cover for the anthology for that year. The covers are based on the design of the popular fighting game Super Smash Brothers, but the characters are all characters seen inside of the anthology. Every character was used on the front cover.

This is a very conceptual idea for a brand that sells exotic bird meat like a cow, pig or chicken. The question was, why is it okay for us to eat certain types of animals, but not others? Why did we develop to eat only “farm” animals, and why cows, pigs and chicken in particular? If these had a picture of a chicken on the front, nobody would bat an eye. I wanted to bring your attention to the bias we humans have when it comes to our prey, and which animals it is okay for us to eat and which it isn’t okay.

I in no way endorse eating the African Grey Parrot!

The political climate of today is different from what it used to be. The Presidential contenders of previous elections would debate fiercely on their own position, but then go out for a drink after their time was up. Respect was expected, and deserved, and given. America’s issues were shared by all citizens. Whoever spoke against integrity, honesty, empathy, and good moral values like these were looked down upon, and thought to be the outliers of American Society. But now, people who don’t hold these values are looked up to, are tolerated, and are gaining support everyday. Discrimination based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, mental handicap, and other attributes are now more public than ever, and aren’t questioned. We are divided based on the differences we see in other people. It’s not much different from America’s deadly past that most people think we’ve moved on from. But the truth is, we haven’t moved on at all. Things have only gotten worse.

To read the book in its entirety for free, please visit slideshare: https://www.slideshare.net/DaniellePasco2/dont-lose-sight-of-what-is-right

This image was created entirely using HTML and CSS editing and coding. I used my own photographs and basic knowledge with how coding works and created an image that remind me of the time I spent studying abroad in Europe. 

“Hippo Milk is Pink” won a Bronze ADDY at the local 2018 ADDYs in March.

“Hippo Milk is Pink” is a letterpressed exhibition that was displayed in SCENE Metrospace in East Lansing for a day in May. It is a piece consisting of 30 separate posters with interactive flaps on them. The colors on the paper and the words “Did You Know?” were made from a letterpress machine, and the text on and under the flaps were printed from a laser printer.

The text on top of the flap tells a simple fun fact. When lifted, underneath the flap is a fact or statistic about sexual assault and rape in America and particularly on MSU campus. The purpose of “Hippo Milk is Pink” is to bring awareness about the grave realities of sexual assault and rape to people who may try to shy away from learning about it. The fun fact is there to pique the interest of the person to learn more, and the flap invites them to lift it and discover a fact they may not have read if the fact on top was about such topics.

An abstracted image of the popular parrot, the African Grey.