REBECCA PRISTAVOK
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Welcome! My name is Rebecca Pristavok, and I am a Design student at Freestyle Academy. Throughout my life, I have been intrigued by visual aesthetics and the elements of design. Over the last two years at Freestyle, my passion for design has flourished and led me to see potential career paths. Outside of my education, I am the manager of Papillon Boutique in downtown Los Altos, and I recently built their website.
For my Senior Showcase, I am eager to present my Senior Movie Poster and Senior Zenith projects, representing two styles of design that I have experimented with my Senior year. As an artist, I am drawn to minimalist design due to the structure and simplicity it creates. Through the movie poster assignment, I was able to explore the boundaries of minimalism and create final products that were to my taste. I then decided to challenge myself and test a potential career through the Zenith project. Choosing to base this project on being a graphic designer for a local musician, I was challenged to bring a client’s vision to life with the skills that I have acquired throughout my Freestyle career. These two projects allowed me to explore and play around with various styles of design, and I am proud of the outcome of these final projects.
I would appreciate some feedback based on how these products made you feel as a viewer. What emotions did the color choices in the movie poster evoke in you? Did the principles of design take away from the simplicity and minimalism, or enhance these qualities? Did the album artwork unify the project under an obvious theme, or did it deviate? In short, did all of the final products convey the message I intended, or would you suggest I did something differently?
After graduation, I will attend West Valley College to study Business Marketing. In four years, I plan to join a voyage with The Ocean Cleanup on their mission to absorb The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I hope to continue gaining experience in both design and networking throughout the next four years!
Please feel free to reach me at rebeccapristavok@gmail.com
MINIMALIST MOVIE PACKAGE
What the film is about
My film is about myself after my 8th concussion. I’m surfing in my mid-20s and wipe out. The wave throws me and my board lands on top of me, hitting my head and giving me my 8th concussion. This puts me in a coma. I’m rushed to the hospital and spend about a month in this state. (Storyline takes place over the course of about 3 months) The doctor and I had never met before, but over the course of the month, he slowly learned more about me through my friends sitting in the room talking about stories of me. He knew the story of what gave me the concussion and coma. Eventually, after hearing so many stories about me, the doctor slowly realizes how many similarities we have. When my friends are not in the room, the doctor is talking to me trying to wake me up and trying to guide me. While in the coma, I’m in a dreamlike state. I’m stuck in limbo in the water. There are continuous waves coming towards me and knocking me over. I get back up and it happens again. Eventually, I hear an unfamiliar voice. I see another surfer out on the water, but he’s too far away for me to see clearly. I see a wave off in the distance and the surfer is shouting. After a few moments, I finally hear him clearly and he tells me to ditch my board and swim through the wave. Too late, the wave flips me one last time. After getting back up, I see another wave off in the distance. This wave is far bigger than all of the other ones, so I paddle towards it and as soon as it’s about to break in front of me, I ditch my board and swim through. Once I make it to the other side of the wave, everything fades to a bright white. I wake up. I see the doctor and recognize his voice. After recovery, the doctor and I talk and get along and discuss our similar passions in life and the things we enjoy. Because we both love surfing, one month after recovery, I ask him to go surfing with me. We go and there’s a big wave and we both ditch our boards and swim through it.
Production Process
For the poster production, I chose to keep it extremely minimalist with the repetition of 3 waves. Repetition may cause a sense of structure and stability, but I used the repetition of the waves to create the repetitive feeling of trying to make it through the wave while in the coma. I chose to put the surfboard sticking out of the wave to simply represent the crash, but I added the heartbeat design on the board as a slight hint of what comes in the second act while the subject is in the hospital. The font was created to have a very drawn out and sinking look. Rather than a sharp bold font, I chose to elongate my font to make it appear to be sinking down to the bottom of the ocean. I then made the background a gradient of white to blue to create the depth of the ocean, where my font is sinking to the bottom. My color scheme is a dark blue and dark purple to create a dreamlike state in tired hues.
ZENITH : GRAPHIC DESIGNER
What the project is about
As a senior at Freestyle Academy, there is a final project called the Zenith Project. Through this project assignment, we are given the freedom to create any project that exemplifies the skills that we have acquired in our media classes, as well as challenges us to further our skillset. The definition of zenith is “the time at which something is most powerful or successful”. Being our final opportunity to create something with the tools and equipment provided at Freestyle, it is our most powerful moment to create something successful. All graphic design that I have done up until this point has only been for myself and for assignments. I have never worked with someone else’s ideas or visions. This risk factor challenges me to open my mind and see other’s ideas and create them for their enjoyment. In a graphic design profession, I would be able to have my style preference, but I would have to put myself in my client’s position and create artwork specifically to their likings as well as the likings of their intended audience. This is going to be putting strict time limits on my process, forcing me to come up to sketches in a short time period, allowing time for my client to give me feedback.
Production Process
When I was first scheduling out my timeline for production, I strived to produce a variety of merchandise, but I then got sick for two months in the middle of production. Luckily, I was ahead of my schedule and producing sketches faster than I had planned to, so my production was only slightly set back by my illness. Rather than producing every item of merchandise that I had originally planned on, I chose to narrow it down and focus on making the items that I did produce of higher quality. Given that this was my first time collaborating with someone to create art that was to their artistic preferences, I made sure to give myself enough time to produce several sketches of each product to ensure that we came to one that he liked. Thankfully, he was an excellent client and frequently gave his input on how he wanted certain things to be, giving me constructive advice. I produced multiple sketches of the album cover, record center label, crew gear, stickers, and posters. But in the end, I focused on producing the album artwork as well as stickers and a poster.
Tel: 650-279-4518