Designer Bio
Nikolai Walsh is a graduate of St. Lawrence College with an Advanced Diploma in Graphic Design and years of experience in both freelance and inhouse design. Originally working freelance for companies such as Women Mean Business Network & Travel with Kids 101, Nikolai had a large amount of exposure to branding and web design through working with these companies and helping them develop. From this experience he found these to be his greatest passions in design. Nikolai worked with the internal St. Lawrence College Marketing & Design department as a juniour designer during a time when the college was in the midst of a new brand campaign design. During his time with the design team he was given large responsibilities early on, tasked with developing the front end for a college website along with the branding for multiple college sub-brands while also actively supporting the marketing department with social media campaigns and poster design. Nikolai has a love for branding and integrating that love with modern interaction design to create enhanced brand experiences. With Nikolai Walsh you can expect active communication, professionalism and quality design work.
email: designbynikolai@gmail.com
web: designbynikolai.com/wp
Environmental Conference
Objective
The objective of this project was to develop a comprehensive brand campaign for an environmental conference. For this particular conference the focus was fresh water conservation.
Description
While the subject matter of the conference was on the preservation of water, the campaigns design used colours in stark contrast of normal cool blue tones, using a strong orange to grab attention and evoke a sense of urgency to the campaign. The logo was developed from a collection of concepts the final being a play on the ripple effect, referencing water and cascading global impacts of the issue being discussed at the conference.
Ad Design and Photoshoot
Objective
The objective of this project was to produce high quality product photography and then pair that photography within an ad designed for the product shot.
Description
The subject used for the advertising and product photography set was a cosmetic face polish from the company Tatcha, a Japanese inspired beauty range. Due to the companies aesthetic connection to Japan the product photos were decorated with a collection of peach and cherry blossoms on a minimalist blush pink background reminiscent of sakura petals. These elements in combination evoke a sense of softness and femininity while the vibrancy of the colours and typography are meant to give a sense of youthfulness to the product. Otherwise the layout is meant to be as minimalist as possible with the type necessary, relying on one strong vertical axis for text.
Grad Show Exhibition Poster
Objective
The objective of this project was to create a working slogan and poster for the second year design exhibition.
Description
The slogan of the poster, "Design Clarity From Noise" was a slogan I created and pushed to have selected as one of the top three candidates that were chosen for the project. The play on words being a reference to designers acting as the translators to the world, taking complex ideas and information and repackaging and presenting them in ways digestible for wider audiences. The poster itself focused on typographic visual elements as the center piece, using a distorted photo scan of the word noise to evoke that sense of messiness that the world can have without the aid of graphic design.
E-Commerce Design
Objective
The objective of this project was to create a mobile first webpage design. Working from what was once considered backwards, from the mobile design first and working up to the web layout last.
Description
For this project, we were tasked with redesigning an existing site or creating our own. I opted to create a fictional Danish B&B rental service under the name Velkommen. The webpage worked on a modular grid and used a clean minimalist design with plenty of space for imagery and type to give the brand a feeling of modern sophistication and high value.
