Payge Mackenzie
Designer | UX UI
Curious | Expressive | Thoughtful
Every design is a story, I create with clarity, empathy, and purpose.
Independent Branding Project
Communications | Branding
Objective: Design a brand identity, graphic standards and applications by completing a self-initiated design project to meet professional development goals.
Process: Morta features a muted pastel, duotone aesthetic paired with hand-illustrated floral packaging. A large floral element varies across each piece while the overall layout remains clean and minimal, creating a cohesive and refined brand identity. The brand was developed as a clean, elevated approach to alternative makeup, balancing soft colour with bold visual elements. Hand illustration allowed for a more personal and distinctive feel, while consistent typography and spacing helped maintain a polished, modern aesthetic across the packaging.
Magazine Design
Communications | Typography
Objective: Design a 4-page magazine considering how text and design conveys meaning; employing text hierarchies as a way to navigate; selecting appropriate typeface pairings; creating effective image and text combinations; and creating visual continuity from page to page.
Process: I chose to do a Viagra Boys magazine spread that was designed with a clean and sophisticated aesthetic, using a black and white palette with hints of neon green for contrast and emphasis. Photography was selected to showcase the band’s personality in a more refined and professional way, while still maintaining their distinct identity. Strong typography and minimal layouts helped create clear hierarchy and visual continuity, allowing the imagery and colour accents to guide the reader through the spread.
Menu
Layout | Typography
Objective: Create cohesive restaurant brand collateral through two interconnected design pieces that demonstrate consistent visual language, typography, and layout principles across different formats and functions. Then, Transform the restaurant menu from a previous course into a responsive web-friendly design using Figma. This project focuses on user experience, information hierarchy, and responsive design principles without requiring any coding.
Process: The Charlatan menu was first redesigned for print to create a cleaner and more organized layout. Typography and spacing were refined to improve hierarchy, making it easier for customers to quickly navigate sections and find items. A simplified layout and consistent styling helped improve readability while maintaining a casual pub feel, resulting in a more functional and visually cohesive design.
Cookbook
Communications | Typography
Objective: Design a cookbook, ensuring its recipes, graphics, and the other ancillary information, work together as part of a coherent concept, that brings the story, the foods, and the dishes to life, while considering the hierarchy of the typography, professional typesetting of the main text, the connection between text and images, and the continuity of all pages.
Process: This baking book features iconic horror characters like Ghostface, Chucky, Jason, and Michael Myers. l generated each image using Adobe Firefly, to create a cute and hilarious take on these well-known figures. The images are paired with clear recipe layouts, using consistent typography and page structure to keep the book readable while letting the visuals add personality and humour throughout.
Parklet
Interiors & Architecture
Objective: Design a small Architectural Public Space: a Parklet. Review, apply, and strengthen skills with 3D modelling and 2D drawing tools, both in the design development and communication processes, while exploring design principles and spatial awareness concepts.
Narrative: Tucked between the city streets and the surrounding mountains, The Luminous View Parklet offers a moment of pause. Sunlight dances across its surfaces, blending nature and human creativity, while ever-changing colours invite reflection and connection. Here, light is not just seen, it is felt, a reminder of the delicate interplay between time, nature, and design, offering a serene escape amid the city’s vibrant energy.
