SoFi is a student loan agency that connects accredited alumni investors with high-quality alumni borrowers. The model cuts out middle-men, which in turn provides higher returns to investors and greater savings to borrowers. My work with SoFi included a direct mail campaign that played on the idea of preventing student savings from "going up in smoke."
The visuals took a literal approach to this conceptual idea - talking a coin and overlaying it onto smoke.
Additionally, the campaign was aimed at dental and medical students which needed to be reflected in the imagery. To highlight these two specific audiences, I incorporated dental and medical icons that housed the coin element while acting as a base for the smoke effect.
Creative /Direction, Design:
Ian Transfiguracion
This project initially was conceived as a very different idea. About two weeks before filming, the vendor contracted for the project dropped out we found ourselves locked in an emergency meeting trying to figure out a new concept that needed to be delivered ASAP.
The video needed to highlight the holidays, resonate with the university audience and still remain relevant to the larger San Diego community. A week later, armed with some garden rakes and a borrowed drone (courtesy of a staff member's brother), we created something that remains one of my favorite projects to date.
This was an experience I could have never dreamed up alone; and it really stands an example that the greatest projects are made with a team.
Creative Direction
Kaitlyn Ziegenhorn
Ian Transfiguracion
Drone Footage
David Marshall
Editor
Ian Transfiguracion
Snowflake Artists
Lindsay Beacco, Bryndan Bedel, Diane Distefano, Jeff Grantham, Leo Kosuge, Ian Transfiguracion, Kaitlyn Ziegenhorn
Videographer
Bryndan Bedel
UC San Diego's Career Services Center (CSC) was looking to revitalize its job fairs with a new look & feel that gave the fairs a larger brand presence and tied them all together into a single series.
In total, CSC hosts eight annual fairs which include traditional job fairs, specialized graduate & professional school fairs, and fairs representing popular industries like Health and technology. Traditionally, each of the fairs had their own look and feel. These inconsistencies made it difficult for students to recognize that the fairs were longstanding flagship events produced by CSC. Furthermore, the varied identities were so vastly different; it appeared there was no relation between each event.
A unique challenge to this project was CSC's desire to unite the fairs without disrupting the distinction of “job” versus “graduate school” fairs. To address this issue, we adopted the name of one of the fairs, (the Triton Future Destinations Series) as the series' name. This move made sense - as graduate school and job opportunities were both possible destinations for students upon graduation. (It was also fitting because the Future Destinations Job Fair was the last event of the academic year and positioned as the culmination of the series).
An additional challenge was to find a uniform way to identify each fair, and to visually communicate the dense information included with some of them. Our solution applied a minimalist approach to design, adopting a unified design system for all creative that was clean, easy to read and identify. We also created an icon for each fair (lifted from their original visual identities) that related to its industry and utilized a distinct accent color for each event set against white and black tones to further enhance its own identity.
The minimalistic approach provided enough room to vary the layout for each fair’s collateral (name badges, welcome letter, table tents, motion graphics, etc.), while giving enough distinction for each without deviating too much from the reimagined brand. In the end, our approach gave us a unified identity, while the icon and color-coding elements allow each fair to stand on its own.
Creative Direction:
Ian Transfiguracion
Design:
Ian Transfiguracion
Jonathan Funes
Kaitlyn Zeigenhorn
Manny Pantoja
The idea for this holiday video was to create something light hearted and fun while still maintaining a connection to UC San Diego in a way that didn't feel forced. We also tied in a participatory aspect to the project, that would allow the audience to engage beyond just watching a video.
Initially envisioned as a tutorial, we opted instead to do a timelapse video to avoid a lengthy run time. Students and alumni would immediately recognize the Trident and King Triton (both popular UC San Diego icons) and the inclusion of a snowman was our nod toward the holiday season.
At the end of the video we invited viewers to make their own fancakes, encouraging them to post their creations with the hashtag #tritonfancakes.
Youtube was looking to create some awareness for the Youtube Music Awards on university campuses. Working alongside their social media vendor, Anchor Media, we came up with a few posters to include as part of a viewing party press kit. While I would love to take credit for the lozenge designs, all art was provided by Youtube's creative team. Together we crafted promotional print pieces that were fun and functional while staying within the brand of the awards show.
Creative Direction:
Client
Art Direction and Design:
Ian Transfiguracion
California Citrus Mutual needed to create collateral to raise awareness for a citrus tree removal program in response to the citrus disease Huanglongbing. The objective was to create a suite of digital and print assets that focused on the call to action rather than on citrus itself.
We took a minimalist approach, using a deep orange color to mirror a "red alert." We also utilized desaturated images to downplay the citrus fruit (except in cases that featured imagery of the disease symptoms). Additionally, this helped to add to the direness of the disease (of which has no cure).
Finally, the collateral needed to have both English and Chinese text co-existing in the same space. Our approach was to make each block of text integral to the design so that we could achieve balance between the languages and to prevent on from feeling like it was more important than the other.
Copy:
Tracy Moehnke
Creative Direction and Design:
Ian Transfiguracion
Web Development:
Aaron Blomberg
So at one point in my life, I dedicated myself to one of those instagrams that documented a poster a day series. Spoiler alert: I didn't make it to 365 days. However, I did find it to be a wonderful exercise in creativity. It gave me the opportunity to explore design in a way I may not otherwise get to do with client work. Here's a sampling of posters that came out of that experiment.
