Who I am

Hi, I'm Nicole Lopez, and I’m a marketing and interactive designer! I most recently worked at Playdots, a mobile game company under Zynga and Take-Two Interactive, as a marketing designer. Before that, I was graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2021 where I studied New Media Design and had minors in the Japanese language as well as Game Design. I'm searching for new employment in the field of graphic and/or marketing design, and am available to start at any time.

What I do

I have a strong passion for design, no matter the field. My primary goal is to create designs that make people happy! In other words, I want to design things that bring enjoyment to others by making things more usable, making things more fun, and of course, making things look more beautiful.

More about me

I am a total nerd: I love playing tabletop games, video games, reading online webcomics, and watching Japanese anime. I also enjoy singing both American and Japanese pop songs, so I'm always down for karaoke!

OBJECTIVE

I am an enthusiastic designer searching for new employment in the fields of graphic, motion, and marketing design, and I am available to start at any time.

WORK EXPERIENCE

Marketing Design Contractor | Junior Marketing Designer

Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. | New York, NY
May 2019 - Nov 2019 | Aug 02, 2021 - Jan 11, 2023

Collaborated with other members of the "Two Dots" mobile game marketing team during promotional content brainstorming sessions and executed the creative briefs that outlined our ideas by animating top-performing advertisements and other promotional materials that attracted new paid users to the game.

Graphic Design & Layout Moderator

Various Fanzines | Remote
Jan 2021 - Current

Assisting in the moderation and leading the content creation of promotional materials such as logos and announcement graphics/animations as well as formatting layout design for various fan-produced collaborative fandom magazines, among which include "Untamed" Volumes 1 and 2 which, combined, sold over 1000+ copies and also “Poison Apple”, a fully-funded project on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter.

EDUCATION

New Media Design BFA

Rochester Institute of Technology | Rochester, NY
Aug 16, 2016 - May 14, 2021

Graduated with a BFA in New Media Design and Minors in Modern Language Japanese and Game Design. Held a GPA of 3.79 / 4.0 and was on the Dean’s List for 7 semesters.

ACTIVITIES

Various Committees Member

Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. | New York, NY
Aug, 2021 - Jan, 2023

Contributed ideas towards celebrating and spreading awareness of various cultures at the Playdots office in alignment with cultural holidays and months including hosting multiple "Mahjong Game Nights" as part of the Culture Committee.

Provided input and helped to represent the marketing team in regards to return-to-office protocols during the migration back to the Playdots office as part of the Return to Office Committee.

Assisted with the planning and execution of various Playdots company events as part of various event-planning committees.

Public Relations Officer | Vice President

RIT Game Symphony Orchestra Club | Rochester, NY
Sep 2018 - May 2020 | Aug 2020 - May 2021

Managed club social media accounts, planned fundraising activities, and led a team of over 10 designers in creating merchandise, posters, videos, and concert programs for events. | Assisted the club President with their duties, reserved rehearsal and event spaces, and filled in for any absent E-Board members.

SKILLS & TOOLS

Design

Programming

Productivity

INTERESTS

LANGUAGES

RIT Game Symphony Orchestra Branding

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Design a logo and create brand guidelines for Rochester Institute of Technology’s student-run Game Symphony Orchestra club.

INTRODUCTION

RIT Game Symphony Orchestra is an active student-run orchestra club at Rochester Institute of Technology that plays music from video game soundtracks. They began recruiting members in 2017 and they needed a club brand to promote to both potential student members as well as the public.

MY ROLE & PURPOSE

As one of the founding members of the RIT Game Symphony Orchestra club, I volunteered to design a logo and create brand guidelines that future members could follow when creating graphics and promoting the club.

APPROACH & PROCESS

RESEARCH & PLANNING

First, I compiled a collage of other video game orchestra logos in order to understand what already exists and to determine what the design trends are.I noticed that many of them evoke feelings of retro game nostalgia due to their use of pixels, older game controllers, and references to specific classic video games.

DESIGN & ITERATIONS

I wanted to create a design with a different style for this new game symphony orchestra group, and I decided to opt towards designing a logo that was more modern and followed more current design trends.

I made my first iteration by modernizing the first logo that they had originally been using before playing around with the idea of a more modern controller set into a violin. However, these initial designs were met with mixed reception.

In the end, I completely scrapped my original ideas in pursuit of new inspiration, which I eventually found in the form of the power button on one of my video game consoles. With a new-found base for designing, I eventually found my way towards the final design of a violin integrated into the power button circle. And they loved it!

FINAL PRODUCT

LOGO

BRAND STYLE GUIDE DECK

Fanzine Graphics, Layout, & Marketing

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Design logos, announcement graphics and animations, and other promotional materials to market various fanzines in addition to formatting the pages for digital PDF distribution and physical book printing. Additionally, assist in the moderation of server communication on the social messaging platform Discord.

INTRODUCTION

Fanzines are magazines produced by non-official and non-professional enthusiasts of a fandom (a community of fans of a particular person, subject, media, etc.) to be sold to other fans either for-profit or for non-profit organization donations.Project teams tend to consist of a head moderator who leads the project and the moderator team, various other moderators who are in charge of specific tasks and leading specific sub-teams, and contributors who create the main content of the zine and any merchandise sold alongside it.

MY ROLE & PURPOSE

Of the zines I’ve participated in, I have always been either a graphic design moderator, a layout moderator, or I’ve taken on both roles. As a graphic design moderator, it was my role to design marketing graphics ranging from assorted announcements to post on the project’s social media accounts to shop website graphics such as headers and bundle graphics promoting the products. As a layout moderator, it was my role to take all of the contributors’ works to format the digital and, potentially, print layouts of the zine.

APPROACH & PROCESS

GRAPHICS

There are certain graphics that almost every fanzine project produces, such as those for interest check results, countdown announcements, contributor spotlights, and product bundle showcases.In approaching each graphic, I take into account both the design style of the graphic as well as its functionality, which includes how well it grabs the viewer’s attention, its readability, and the file size for uploading it to social media websites.

In addition to being informative and legible, I try to make announcements for time-sensitive events such as contributor applications and preorder timeframe reminders to be eye-catching.

Contributor spotlight graphics highlight each contributor of the project, and they tend to feature a sample of work made by them as well as a short blurb. This means that element placement is very important in terms of creating hierarchy.

Overall, bundle graphics and merchandise spotlights display all of the products sold by the fanzine creators and highlight certain works. It’s always fun to arrange everyone’s pieces in a way where each item can shine, and it’s also interesting to brainstorm different ways to display certain information such as when there are multiples of an item or secret, unrevealed items.

Some fanzines request the creation of promotional videos to celebrate certain milestones the project passes, such as the launching of preorders. Making sure all of the necessary information comes across within a certain timeframe while also showing enough of the content to raise interest with supporters without giving too much content away is challenging, but I always enjoy promoting everyone’s beautiful works!

FORMATTING

In terms of formatting, I use Adobe Photoshop to put integrate the zine title logo with the cover illustrations and I use Adobe InDesign to layout each work into a singular PDF that we distribute digital or, potentially, send to printers for physical printing.

FINAL PRODUCT

PHYSICAL FANZINE

Overview Zine Layout & Interface Design

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Research the ethical issues regarding user data collection and and create a physical zine accompanied by mobile experience mockups on a team of six design students.

INTRODUCTION

The collection and selling of users’ personal data and information is a prevalent topic within design ethics, and it raises questions such as whether or not it is ethical to gather user data, how much data and through what methods is data ethical to collect, and what users should be doing, if anything, about it.We aimed to create a zine and mobile interactive prototype within the span of 14 weeks that would tackle the aforementioned questions.

MY ROLE & PURPOSE

Of the content we were to tackle, the topics that I chose to research and write about were active vs. passive data and common methods of data collection as well as what a digital footprint is and how you can protect your own.

APPROACH & PROCESS

RESEARCH & PLANNING

During the research phase, our group worked together to compile a list of data collection related topics and we organized the topics into groups. When setting up our initial table of contents, we chose to create a narrative flow of introducing the reader to what user data is, how that data is used, specific data collecting companies and methods, and we conclude with how to protect your privacy.

DESIGN & ITERATIONS

From the get-go, we were inspired by a 90’s pop aesthetic after reminiscing about nostalgic stranger danger advertisements. So, we each went about making our own mood boards and style boards to get an idea of the style each of us were thinking of.

As one might image, our six different 90’s themed styles were quite varied. So, we decided on two defined styles: a light theme and a dark theme. The poppy light theme would be used on spreads with content that had a lighter tone while the glitchy dark theme would be used on spreads that discussed more sinister information.

For the content of my first spread, I wanted to list different data collection methods and create icons for each of them. As for the second spread, I compare digital footprints to footprints on the sand at the beach, so I though of splitting the spread into water and sand sections.In terms of the interactive mobile interface, I wanted to show a couple of activities to show users what results from certain actions they take as well as what they can do to “hide” their data and protect their digital footprints.

In my final iteration, I edited the style of my spreads to fit the new light theme our group had agreed upon. This included adding shapes in the background as well as the patterned shadows of the textboxes. I also rearranged the placement of the paragraphs in order to streamline the line of sight for readability, and by reusing the squiggle pattern from previous spreads, I was able to create a design that more subtly looks like ocean waves.We chose to show our mobile interactions in a similar way as Instagram’s stories to cater towards our Gen Z target audience. My first interaction allows users to perform actions and inform them what data could have been collected on them while my second interaction allows users to protect their digital footprints by tapping on their footprint data to hide them.

FINAL PRODUCT

PAGE SPREADS

MOBILE INTERACTION MOCKUPS

Two Dots Marketing Animations

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Brainstorm marketing content and transform creative briefs into fully-animated advertisements for the mobile game “Two Dots” with the goal of attracting new players.

INTRODUCTION

Dots was the mobile game studio who created the freemium puzzle game “Two Dots” for mobile smart devices. As with any game, Two Dots needed to be advertised to a larger audience in order to convert new players to support the game.

MY ROLE & PURPOSE

As a Junior Marketing Designer, I was tasked with helping to brainstorm new video content ideas and to design and animate the advertisements for “Two Dots” with the hopes that the creatives would cost-effectively reach new users who would spend money in-game.

APPROACH & PROCESS

THE CREATIVE SPRINT SCHEDULE

The creative process for animating Two Dots creatives ran on a weekly cycle of the following:

CONTENT BRAINSTORMING & STORYBOARDING

Creatives tend to follow a similar storyboard: introduction (optional), main content, and end card. Thanks to our team's testing throughout the years, we found elements that tended to work better in advertisements. So, when designing and animating creatives, I was able to take our team's best practices into account and speed up the output process.During the creative ideation phase, I tried to brainstorm new ideas that had not yet been attempted in the same way in addition to ideas that iterated off of previous concepts that performed well in the past.We usually prepared creatives in varying aspect ratios to accommodate for various platforms (eg. Meta, Unity, etc.).

PERSONAL FAVORITE CREATIVES

Some of my favorite creatives that I've animated explore character-focused ideas and themes of relaxation.

TOP PERFORMING CREATIVES

Some of the creatives that performed well included mixing and matching various concepts to create new iterations of top-performers.

FINAL PRODUCT

CREATIVE COMPILATIONS

Mandala Motion Graphic

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Design and animate a mandala themed around who I am.

INTRODUCTION

A mandala is a layered geometric configuration of symbols that generally represents the spiritual journey. I was tasked with designing and animating a mandala inspired by myself.

MY ROLE & PURPOSE

As both the designer and the subject of the theme, I looked inwards and thought about who I am, and I took what represents and feels like me and formed them into colors and shapes.

APPROACH & PROCESS

RESEARCH & PLANNING

To start my process, I tried to think of keywords I would use to describe myself and I laid them out onto a mind map. From there, I chose words that stood out to me and thought about how I could encapsulate their meanings through use of shape, color, and movement.

DESIGN & ITERATIONS

I sketched out shapes that I liked and felt like me, some of which included a rising/setting sun, a minimalistic key, various dots, and a semblance of a lotus flower, which is the English translation of my middle name.

To encapsulate the vibes I wanted the animation to emanate, I created mood and style boards that felt cute and clean with a soft typeface style and warm colors. I chose to use rounded shapes and circles, and I eventually put together what would become a semblance of the base of my final mandala.Finally, when it came to animating the mandala, I moved, rotated, and resized the shapes in repeating patterns and rhythms so that they would bloom outwards to reveal the full mandala before shrinking back in.

FINAL PRODUCT

ANIMATION

Jubeat Spectra Motion Graphic

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Design a motion graphic animation celebrating the 9 previous versions of the Japanese rhythm arcade game “Jubeat” and create an original version 10 brand.

INTRODUCTION

Jubeat is a Japanese rhythm arcade game that, as of the original making of this project, has released nine different versions. I tasked myself with designing and animating an introduction video for Jubeat with a fake announcement for a personal imagining of version 10.

MY ROLE & PURPOSE

I wanted to design an eye-catching fake version 10 for Jubeat's brand and deliver it in such a way that it looks like it could be real.

APPROACH & PROCESS

RESEARCH & PLANNING

In designing a new brand for what Jubeat version 10 could look like, I took inspiration from past versions of the game. Previous Jubeat logos always took the iconic wordmark logo and added the version subtitle name with a theme applied to it.

DESIGN & ITERATIONS

I aimed to design my imaginary version of Jubeat Spectra, which is themed around prisms and the spectrum of color and light, to be modern and eye-catching. Originally, I thought to use dark backgrounds with small pops of rainbow colors and a triangle icon to represent a glass prism, but the overall designs looked quite subdued and not very visually interesting.In the end, I opted for all-around very bright and colorful visuals with a background effect as though the viewer is inside the glass prism itself.

I knew I wanted the animation to be presented in a way that looks like an official introduction video. To accomplish this, I referenced one of the official Jubeat start-up videos and emulated the warning and credit screens by using similar typefaces and hand-tracing shapes. I also took existing phrasing from previous advertisements and created minimalistic graphics and animations.

The second half of my animation consists of showcasing previous versions' logos before "announcing" my imaginary tenth version. It was fun watching how each version was animated and then re-animating each logo on my own. I also took what I learned from animating the previous logos and implemented similar ideas in my own logo animation.

FINAL PRODUCT

ANIMATION