Hi! I’m Andrés, a young Graphic, Editorial, & Illustrative Designer from Cincinnati, Ohio.
Skilled in a large variety of mediums, I like to combine my knowledge of fine art with digital art & design.
As a published author, I’m passionate about storytelling, whether that comes through the visual language of graphic design and illustration, or the lyrical imagery of poetry and prose. I’m certified in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and After Effects. I have years of experience with a large variety of projects and commissions, such as logos, posters & flyers, illustrations, branding, photo editing, product design, album cover artwork, and more!
I consider my versatility to be my biggest strength, when it comes to clients, I’m passionate about embodying whatever style and aesthetic choices best suit your vision, regardless of budget.
In the magical realism novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, Kafka stands at the shore of his psyche in an attempt to make sense of his fate. The author explains that Kafka's shore symbolizes a border between the conscious and the unconscious mind.
I attempted to recreate the classic cover that features a close-up of a man's face, specifically his glasses. For my own cover design, I wished to hone in on the title's significance and the imagery it elicits while still maintaining the iconography of Kafka's face. The final product was created in Adobe Photoshop through the process of editing, recoloring, and collaging purchased + free market photography.
In my other design attempts, I strayed further from the front-facing portrait iconography, though you can see a second attempt at a portrait design in the middle cover. For this one, I used the imagery of an inverted island, as seen in the center of Kafka's head, to represent the isolation of Kafka's own mind.
My other attempts took a more abstract direction. The left cover was created through repeatedly mirroring a seascape painting which I'd intended to mimic the waves and patterns of a brain scan. Surrounding the ocean on both sides is a "shore" made up of images of (very hidden) crows, which are symbolically significant in the novel as "Kafka" means "crow" in Czech.
I expanded further on the combined imagery of crows and the ocean on the right cover. Here I tried to illustrate the wing of a crow to look like an ocean crashing onto a shore at a birds-eye view (pun intended). You can see two spheres that represent an umbrella and Kafka, literally, on the shore.
In Toni Morrison's novel "Sula", two childhood friends navigate the complexities of friendship, betrayal, and identity in a small, Black community in Ohio. The novel explores themes of love, independence, and the tension between societal expectations and personal freedom, while also confronting the legacies of race and trauma. Fire plays a significant symbolic and literal role in the story, representing destruction, renewal, and the emotional intensity of the characters’ experiences.
For this design, I experimented with integrating physical media into digital by using antique photographs of Ohio which I burned, scanned, then digitally collaged in Adobe Photoshop.
In my other design attempts, I wanted to reiterate the motif of fire and its connection to the town. The middle design reuses the photography in which I physically burned and scanned. In this design, I wanted the burned photograph to reveal a silhouette in the shape of Ohio.
The left design features one of the photographs before I burned it, which I still scanned. Though, from here, I tried to create burns in the photograph digitally using digital masking, warping, and illustrating.
In the right design, I created a vector illustration of the town in flames using Adobe Illustrator. The artistic direction for this design was inspired by the classic hardbound "limited-edition" book covers often seen at bookstores such as Barnes & Nobles, as I believe "Sula" is a work that deserves this kind of treatment.
In "How to Be Invisible", renowned artist and musician Kate Bush explores the complexities of self-perception, identity, and the desire to remain unseen in a world that constantly demands attention.
Through evocative language and poetic imagery, Bush delves into the emotional and psychological experience of invisibility, both as a form of escape and as a struggle for autonomy. The official print cover is solely text-based. While simplistic and fitting, in my own execution I wanted to challenge myself to design a book cover that features a portrait of that Kate Bush that illustrates her as the musician and lyricist she truly is. At the same time, I still wanted to maintain the core thesis of the book title. This design uses crumbled paper in which I photographed.
In all of my designs for this book cover, I chose a portrait of Kate, then digitally edited, recolored, and collaged it with custom type to compliment. These discarded designs focus on Kate as a piano player. The color pallete for the left and right designs are inspired by the album cover for Kate's 1985 "Hound's of Love", though, in the middle and final designs, I ended up choosing color palletes that encampsulate Kate Bush as a whole rather than during one specific point in her career.
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