Catalog alchemist Alaina Colleen
Whether she’s antiquing, embroidering, or listening to Peggy Lee, Alaina Colleen (B.F.A., fashion, 2019) brings classic inspirations into the present. A freelance graphic designer based in Kansas City, Alaina created the vivid visual identity for the 2021–2022 SCAD course catalog. In the process, she supplied a set of symbols seen across an array of digital and physical materials — from SCAD admissions brochures and artist notebooks to the Volkswagen Bug “art car” often seen zipping precious cargo safely around Savannah.
Alaina Colleen:
SCAD has such a giant network of talented alumni, and I’m honored to be approached to create artwork for the catalog so early in my career. I was given creative freedom and asked to represent SCAD in a beautiful light, which is easy to do. I wanted to communicate the way SCAD felt to me with prospective students.
In previous years with the catalog, the alumni artist has always created a finished artwork for the front and back covers. I wanted to provide SCAD’s creative team with assets they could mix and match. I landed on developing different symbols that can be set to different backgrounds. The deliverables were patterns, textures, borders, a color palette, and a clutch of symbols they could use however they wanted.
Wings are uplifting, and a key represents knowledge, a way of unlocking and discovering yourself and your value. Even if you don’t contemplate the meaning of the symbols, you innately understand what they signify.
I’m drawn to warm, sun-kissed colors. There’s something that feels really right about primary colors, they’re strong and beautiful and in some way nostalgic, I like pairing them with jewel tones and pastels to balance things out. I love small accents of neon around edges of things. I favor metallic color in my work too, because of its talismanic resonance. All this went into what I created for the catalog.
At SCAD, I realized I was and am passionate about many things. I’m happy that I ended up in the fashion program because there are many skillsets folded into it — textiles, sculpture, graphic design, and learning to make gifs and videos too. Coming up with concepts, conducting research, and mood boarding — that all carries over into any medium, and I’ve been able to transition seamlessly into my work as a graphic designer.
As a fashion major, I took all my apparel classes with professor Sachiko Honda. She’s a hawk with an eagle eye. I drew a portrait of her in fashion illustration class. She emphasized attention to detail, and she zoomed in on technique and manipulating fabric and thread in a beautiful way. Her expectations were always very high, and when you get high expectations from a professor you respect, you come to have high expectations of yourself in a healthy way.
In the modern world with all these screens around us, we’re exposed to so much input, it’s amazing and overwhelming. Working as a graphic designer, I work digitally to get ideas out quickly. I crave working with my hands again, and want to make physical things that fill a space and can last longer. Creating embroidery feels meaningful and powerful. To focus on thread going in and out, to make a big picture with tiny threads, there’s really nothing like it. When you embroider a garment, it feels special.
I am a multi-disciplinary artist and designer. I struggle with titling myself. It changes. And that’s good, right? I mean, how do you apply your skills to the real world? I never want to close the door on different mediums.
Written by Peter Relic.
