
Victorious Performing Arts Company
Victorious Performing Arts Company is a youth K-pop dance and performing arts school based in the Puget Sound. They are an exclusive school that accepts students by audition only. They host quarterly dance shows, most recently at the 2022 Puyallup Fair and Shoreline Community College.
Their largest event to date was held at the IKEA Renton Performing Arts Center in February 2023. They initially approached me for designing an event poster, ticket, and event-related materials. Over the course of these projects, I discovered additional design needs, which included a new company logo and a website.
With the client's permission to share my work, I've described my design process for these projects below. The projects showcase my skills in illustration, graphic design (for digital and print work), web design, photography, and video editing work.
Update 06/2024: The Victorious Performing Arts Company website has not been updated since the project concluded in December 2022. The website displays out-of-date information and has removed/edited parts of the website that were mentioned in this project summary. As I understand from the owners, the company has experienced a lot of changes, including opening a second studio and moving operations. I am hopeful that we can collaborate in the future for another website update.
After creating the event poster, I was requested by the client to create a new company logo. The process took about 1 week, and these were the steps I took in designing it:
Meeting the Client
I met with the client to talk about their needs and what they wanted to see in the new logo.
Being a young company and in a niche section of the dance/youth education industry, the client wanted a logo that would elevate their company's branding. They had just undergone a name change from Seattle Youth Kpop to Victorious Performing Arts. They wanted the logo to reflect this change, emphasizing the need for a more professional look.






Click on any of the images to enlarge them in gallery mode.

Dark pink and dark magenta were chosen, because they represent love, hope, beauty, and imagination. Off-white and near-black will be used for text and backgrounds to let other colors shine.
The focus of this creative direction is to convey a sense of professionalism and creativity that would appeal to adults (e.g. parents of students).

The colors were strategically selected for the following reasons:
Pink: sweetness, youth, imagination
Warm yellow: creativity, warmth, friendliness
Purple blue: trust, calm
Pure white: purity, cleanliness, to be used for backgrounds to let other colors shine
This design direction focuses primarily on illustrations, which can be used for a variety of applications and contexts. The overall feeling is cute, whimsical, and delightful, intended for youthful audiences.

The heading/display font is art nouveau-inspired, conveying a sense of whimsy and fantasy. This is balanced by a quadratic sans serif for body text. The initially chosen are as follows:
Soft green: calm, nurturing
Periwinkle light blue: A variation of Pantone's 2022 color — symbolizes happiness, hope, and optimism
Cornflower blue: depth, imagination, insight
If I were to pursue this design direction, I would also add touches of yellow and pink to add energy and vibrance.
In summary, this mood board represents a dreamy, contemporary design direction.
Click on any of the images to enlarge them in gallery mode.
As part of the design process, I met with the client and asked questions about their design needs. Afterwards,
I spent 2 hours for research and mood boarding. I used Canva to create the moodboards so they could be shared with the client easily.
I presented 3 mood boards (shown at right) to the client, each representing possible creative directions.

The typography is lifted directly from the mood board inspiration. The hand-lettered event logo "Dance with Me" imitates the elegant ligatures of the Kaoly font.
I did make a major departure from the original mood board inspiration by not including the color yellow. Instead, I focused primarily on pinks and purples, which reflect youth, love, and creativity.

To play up the youthful energy of this event, I used a rainbow backdrop.

The logo "Dance with Me" is a combination of modern block letter and a bright script.
I decided to place the event logo off-center to create visual interest. The addition of torn music sheets in the corner balances the composition and directs attention to the event logo.
In the center of the poster, I created a K-Pop girl group. They are drawn in a cartoonish style, which is intended to be friendly and approachable for viewers. The characters wear white, black, and dark purple, whose colors closely reflect the color scheme from the Shapes mood board. I admit that this was a significant departure from what the client chose (a bright and youthful color palette). In retrospect, I should have paid closer attention to this and would have changed the colors for the client presentation.
Another change I would have changed to this poster would be to place the event information higher on the poster.

The cascade of flowers continue down the poster, placed around the boy and girl characters. The circle in the background was intended to serve as a container for some of these elements.
Of all the poster concepts, this one was the furthest from finishing. There are some elements that are confusing and others that I would have changed. Even though this poster concept was not selected by the client, they did select the characters to use in the final poster design.

The client selected the "Illustrative" mood board as a starting point for poster design. I used this board as inspiration for creating several concepts, which are seen at the gallery on the right.
Illustration, hand-lettering, and graphic design for 4 poster concepts took 1 full week. At the end of the week, I presented these concepts to the client. After selecting their favorite design and characters, I made changes based on the clients' selections, which took an additional few days.
Click on any of the images to enlarge them in gallery mode.
Here are the final designs for the poster and ticket designs.
I prepared the files for client hand-off by preparing the design files for print (creating printer marks, converting colors to CMYK) and digital use (RGB). I ensured that the individual projects were organized and easy to identify.