GhostyTheBlogger

This project is the experience of a restaurant, the smells, the color, the sounds etc. The prompt is as follows: “In this course, branding begins with experience. For this assignment, you will imagine and describe a unique fusion restaurant built from strong, identifiable tastes and aromas. You will translate sensory information—taste, smell, sound, space, and cultural influence—into a clear, immersive dining experience. This experience will become the creative and strategic foundation for your brand throughout the course. Your goal is not to write a menu or invent clever dish names. Your goal is to build a believable, emotionally grounded environment that later design decisions must support. This should read as if you are guiding someone through their first visit to the restaurant”

As you open the door, spices strong enough to taste flood your senses. The air is thick with garlic and sage, slow-simmered tomato, roasted chiles, and the citrusy heat of epis. The aroma alone tells a story of fusion — Haitian spice, Italian comfort, and Mexican fire blending into something bold and unfamiliar. Each breath feels layered, savory and sweet at once.

Inside, voices rise in patois and Spanish, their tones animated and expressive, reflecting the cultural influence woven into every corner of the restaurant. The sound of shoes striking the tiled floor creates a steady percussion beneath the chatter. From the open kitchen comes the clinking of pots and pans, oil snapping against hot metal, flames flaring as cooks move with practiced urgency.

A plate rushes past; plantain ravioli bathed in a tomato-based sauce infused with scotch bonnet and oregano. Steam curls into the air, carrying notes of basil, thyme, and roasted peppers. The food is a visual celebration: deep reds, bright greens, golden fried edges, and rich earthy browns arranged carefully against white ceramic plates.

The walls glow a muted crimson, warm and intimate, accented with hand-painted tiles and textured metal art. Across the walls are woven fabrics, symbolic folk ornaments, and rustic wood paint the space without overwhelming it. The slightly tinted brown floors and low amber lighting create an atmosphere that feels both vibrant and grounded. Every step feels likes it’s pulling against bottom of your shoe, like something is keeping you there.

Music swells trumpets and maracas weaving through accordion and guitar forming a rhythmic pulse that mirrors the staff’s swift, choreographed movement. The energy is chaotic yet harmonious.

Standing there, you feel enveloped, not just by flavor and sound, but by history and identity. The restaurant is more than a place to eat; it is an experience of shared heritage, warmth, and bold creativity.

The creative exercise I’m doing is one about making something from nothing. A word that doesn’t exist. First you make up the word, like ‘shworm’ then give it a definition in this case Shworm can be defined as extreme discomfort, to the point of wanting to leave immediately. Then use that word in a sentence that doesn’t feel out of place. Example: “Tammy seemed pretty shwormed out when she had to speak on stage, she might need a bit of help with that.” Pretty simple in nature, although it is a bit unconventional. I did realize that my method to these creative workouts are always how direct can I be. I am a lot more straight forward when going about these projects because of the ease it is to go along with the process.

Today we were tasked with making a self-portrait in illustrator. The start of any project is always the hardest for me, the idea of what I see myself as. I never thought about it but in the design world, what you can do is attached to your image. The things you pick up a bit faster then most people or what you can see that others don’t has a large impact on how you’re seen. I don’t have a lot of pictures of myself but the ones that I do have make me think about how I want to be seen in this space. What things am I known for that others might not be seeing or what view could I give on topics. Even better how can I use that to have people see me in a different light. What am I known for?

This week is another creative exercise about breaking old habits. Namely we take an item in our house hold and find something it isn’t suited to do, as in impossible to do, a paper cup shouldn’t be used to hold boiling water but it won’t be destroyed if it does, maybe. The idea as previously stated is to think about thins the wrong way, which isn’t really the easiest for me. The worst thing about this is one you pick the item you have to attempt those incorrect functions to make sure, it’s not possible. Trying to lift a milk carton with a spoon is ill-advised. This does lead me into thinking about if people create things with one function and never think about if it could be suited for two? Someone created the spoon with the purpose of scooping things but a butter knife is only used for butter. It confuses me in a way I’m not sure how to think.

So this was pretty hard for me in particular because I am a little darker, so the shading was a chore, especially with the gradients. But looking at it now I do love what it looks like. What I started with was a pretty easy blend, most of the time was me messing with the colors, limiting the colors I used made the image really pop, and I just personally like the black and gold combination. The outcome is more or less the same, it looks straight out of a movie and I personally am really proud of how it turned out. I assumed it would look at lot worse due to my naturally darker tone so the lighting would be horrid but I am glad I was wrong.

Pride defined in definition is a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements, however the sin is the belief of thinking those achievements as beyond the realm of satisfaction. The sin of pride is that of self-glorification, arrogance, thinking oneself as perfect. I thought about what would be the best representation of this self-glorification and ideal of perfection and the first thing I thought of was Lord Shen the peacock from the movie Kung-fu Panda. A pretty wild thought process but the idea is that in the movie Shen sees himself as perfection, so much so that he’d rather die then admit that he isn’t so I thought why not make the most prideful of birds for this project. The idea is that the peacock doesn’t need to show it’s feathers because it already sees itself as perfect, even if people attempt to sway it from this idea, it doesn’t hear listen, as if it’s worlds apart, a god in the form of a bird.

Something I’ve been finding myself get more interested in is funnily enough sound design. Our 5 senses allow us to absorb information, sight and sound being the main way media is absorbed. The best example is video games, mainly the impact of those games. How a game ‘feels’. Fighting games come to mind as the sound and how a hit or impact looks plays a big part in the game feel. You can have the impact of a punch but what that punch sounds like will make or break that game. One of the biggest ones that come to mind is a port of Mortal Kombat 1 for the Nintendo switch. The game was so horribly optimized for the console that sound clipping and visual glitches causing the game to stutter with the heavier hits were used. I just think it’s a very interesting thought process on how we determine good sound design.

Words have a very powerful impact on things. So for this creative assignment I found an exercise called “Say it without saying it.” The basic plan of this is to make an ‘honest’ statement without directly naming an emotion. Which isn’t the easiest with how much importance emotion takes in the English language especially when claiming a statement. The statement I did choose was ‘I tried to remember, even if I don’t, it’d be foolish to tell you.’ The statement was pretty hard to convey emotion without directly saying it, I figured the statement could be a memory. I was attempting to convey a somber emotion, the empty feeling of knowing something but not being able to tell anyone. The perils of being alone with the thoughts of friends.

The assignment was to create an illustrative poster, playing around with the type face and shapes in general in illustrator. While the hard part for me was to be able to find an open event I remembered about an album tour the artist Asap Rocky was doing for his new project ‘Don’t Be Dumb’ a pretty simple title but with the way the album is strung like a warning for people to not judge a book by it’s cover, I hope I did it justice to show the very, matter of fact nature of the album with this piece.