Orla King
Orla King | Design
Hi, my name is Orla. I’m a recent Graphic Design graduate from NCAD. For the last two years I’ve worked as a poster designer for various Dublin based club nights, and at present I co-run a design collective called No Bad News with three other designers. Experimentation, texture and use of colour are key aspects in my design process and I enjoy incorporating lighthearted and engaging subject matters into my work. My graduate projects focused on the past, present and the uncertain future of Irish club culture as a direct result of the current pandemic. Also, I created a book all about chippers.
Project 1 | Curiosity Cards
Over the past year, many people have been confined to their bedrooms as they work from home. Excessive amounts of screen time can lead to poor mental wellbeing and increased feelings of stress and anxiety. Curiosity Cards are a series of cue cards designed to get people away from their screens and help them reimagine their daily lockdown walk. Each card has a prompt that plays on each of your senses and allows you to explore your local area and see your surroundings in a new light.
The arts in Ireland have suffered during the last year as a direct result of the pandemic. With galleries and venues now inaccessible, many artists are restricted when it comes to showcasing their work. We were tasked with creating a platform for the arts and provide Irish artists with engagement during lockdown times.
Treehouse is an online digital platform that not only showcases the vast spectrum of Irish art, but also gives people the opportunity to upload their own artistic responses. The platform consists of an app, website and a virtual gallery. The idea of the virtual gallery is that once a month, there would be a different music genre broadcast and people could respond to the music in whatever art form they see fit; be it paint, dance or sculpture. These responses would then be archived and made into an exhibition of sorts. The idea behind the Treehouse identity was to echo a safe, tranquil space one can lose themselves in. Treehouse is a space where people gather, so the name links back to the community element of the platform.
Project 3 | Left on the Shelf
If you step into someone’s bedroom, you can pick up clues about the kind of person they are. You could probably find out a lot more about a person from their bedroom than you would from a conversation. The brief asked us to create a self portrait using objects. I decided to look into my own bedroom and picked objects or ‘clues’ about the kind of person I am. The print is a nod to my art. The suspended earrings and banana jewellery bowl are a nod to my rather weird jewellery collection. The silk scarf and upturned nail polish represents my love for dressing up and my inability to keep my dresser tidy. The mirror is a symbol of self reflection and the bedazzled skull vase captures my obsession with accessorising and not being able to leave anything alone. The caption “Left on the Shelf” is a nod to those clues I’ve left behind in my space.
Project 4 | QANON Rebrand
For this brief, we were tasked with rebranding QAnon. The challenge was to renew America’s revolutionary spirit and make the violent overthrow of the US government appear genuinely patriotic, wholesome and trendy.
The idea was to detach from extreme Nationalism and reclaim Patriotism. As there’s been a decline in Patriotism among younger Americans, my response was aimed at this particular demographic.
I created a typographic Mascot, “Q”, who appeared on each of the deliverables. The idea behind the mascot was to attach a friendly face to the brand in hopes of building trust with the American public. QRadio is another aspect of the rebrand. QRadio gives a platform to “fake news” journalists who have been driven offline. With QRadio, these journalists can share their pure uninterrupted ideology with the public.
Frontline workers have been through so much during the past year and are dealing with excessive amounts of stress on a daily basis. The objective was to design something that would ease stress of our frontline workers while also showing our appreciation for their selfless work. I interviewed a number of frontline staff to find out what kind of assistance would benefit them the most.
Due to their intense shift patterns, many frontline workers struggle with meal preparation and are often too tired to cook anything when they finish work. With Mind Bites, frontline workers can fill out how they’ve been feeling on the app and a specially catered meal prep plan will be delivered to their door the following day. Each plan contains foods proven to combat fatigue, anxiety, stress and boost concentration. Each plan is colour coded according to mood and a food pun is included in hopes it will put a smile on the worker’s face.
Project 6 | Social Sanitation
In this brief, the challenge was to avoid the internet and use household items for inspiration and present a concept. Inspired by a Nuclear War survival guide dating from the 1960’s, I created my own survival guide of sorts. Social Sanitation is a series of lighthearted (but functional) solutions to serious questions about our pre-Covid hygiene habits. The idea was to rethink certain situations that we wouldn’t have thought twice about pre-Covid.
