Crystal Chiu

GRAPHIC DESIGNER & ILLUSTRATOR

Projects

PEEKAPAK: Middle School

2021-Present | Peekapak

Creating visual styling and illustration assets for Peekapak's Middle School Product.Peekapak is an education resource that incorporates Social-Emotional Learning into English Language Arts education. In 2021, they were developing new Middle School content where I create the visual styling and illustrations.

WORLD WILDLIFE DAY

2019 | Peel Multicultural Council

Created an awareness poster to bring attention for World Wildlife Day.Sometimes the best way to get adults to care about something, is to make their kids care about it first.The main project consisted of a single, full-paged, print poster.

MACHINE HARMONY

2020 | Assignment

Motion graphics and animation of illustrative typography to express how I view "Harmony".

BOAR TUSK

2021 | Assignment

Designing a logo and animated logo reveal.Based on my Dungeons & Dragon campaign, Boar Tusk is a rendez-vous point for criminals in the fictional city of Stonefel. The store is fronted as a butcher's shop to not draw suspicions to the activities that take place behind closed doors. However, the exterior purposefully unkept and dirty to give off the impression of an abandoned storefront. I wanted the logo to represent this off-putting and intimidating atmosphere to further drive people away from the Boar Tusk butchery.

How's it going?

Hi, I'm Crystal. I’m a Chinese-Canadian designer and illustrator based in the Greater Toronto Area.My past work with Peekapak and Peel Multicultural Council have been focused on print and web graphics and design that help with education and awareness. Here, I've worked on projects ranging from book layouts to corporate brand templates to poster design and advertising to and web-illustration.To me, curiosity, wonder, and learning are key themes that relate back to all my artwork. I’m always looking somethings new to learn and a new project to dive into and to make life a little prettier.Get in touch! Send me an email at crystalchiuart(at)gmail.com!

Send me a message ♥

Peekapak: Middle School

All content and intellectual property belongs to Peekpak.

Working with Peekapak to create the visual styling for their new Middle School Product: Peekapak is an online education resource that incorporates Social-Emotional Learning into English Language Arts education. In 2021, they were developing new Middle School content where I create the visual styling and illustrations for the project.Early on, an important element that the education team at Peekapak wanted to include was a way to depict people and characters. It was important to them to have students feel represented, and to have a set of characters that had a variety of physical traits. I worked with them to create a style of character illustration that felt distinct, yet would also resonate with the middle-school-aged students. These characters also had to be expressive, as they would be used through lessons in representing Social-Emotional Learning principles.

ILLUSTRATION & SKETCHES

Illustration assets were used for student-facing content in-class (ie. lesson slide decks), as well as online (ie. online activities done at home).

World Wildlife Day

While working with Peel Multicultural Council, created an awareness poster for 2020's World Wildlife Day. Peel Multicultural Council are a support system for new-comers to Canada, so I approached this project with the intentions to appeal to families to bring awareness to the day. Sometimes the best way to get adults to care about something, is to make it something that their kids care about. The simplified, geometrical stylization of the animals fitted together helped show how the world's wildlife is all dependant on each other, while also making for a balanced and aesthetically pleasing image that will appeal to children.The main project consisted of a single, full-paged, print poster.

ADDITIONAL ASSETS

While this project began as a single, print poster, I also created additional assets, used for social media, or as individual small-form prints (such as postcards), as a means to expand the reach of the message of the awareness poster. These featured the animals on the original poster

Boar Tusk

Designing a logo and animated logo reveal.The assignment was to create a fictional company to design a logo/logo reveal for. I wanted to create something based on my Dungeons & Dragon campaign. In game, Boar Tusk is a rendez-vous point for criminals in the city of Stonefel. The store is fronted as a butcher's shop to not draw suspicions to the activities that take place behind closed doors. The exterior is purposefully unkept and dirty to give off the impression of an abandoned storefront. I wanted the logo to represent this off-putting and intimidating atmosphere to further drive people away from the Boar Tusk butchery.Click for sound design. Link to video here.See full design process book here.

Machine Harmony

Animated GIF school assignment: Create an animated GIF that expresses the word "Harmony" with illustrated typography.

I illustrated the word "Harmony" as moving machine parts to portray the harmony in complex machinery that consists of lots of little parts all working together to complete a task.Created using a combination of Photoshop and After Effects to animate this GIF:
After Effects was useful for animating the mechanical parts, such as the gears or the pulleys - since I can do that with extreme accurate using numbers. However, I hand animated the steam and the physics writing in the background using Photoshop - since both of those things are more natural and spontaneous, and benefiting from the irregular, natural, hand-drawn look.