INSPIRED by*a portfolio by Christopher Ryan

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INSPIRED by* Hello there, I’m Chris. I am a designer, an artist and an amateur photog with a love for cooking. I am a friend, a brother, and a son.

Everything I do doesn’t correlate directly to design, but I know that every experience I have and every thing I am exposed to has an effect on my aesthetic. Whether it’s a place I have visited, a piece of art I love, or just something I saw on the way to class, my surroundings bring inspiration everyday.

All of the pieces in this portfolio have been inspired by my experiences and my surroundings. Each with their own unique story to be told.

IDENTITY workWork within the College of Design’s existing identity to create a poster that speaks to your personal experience with the college.

I used origami to show the transformation and growth we go through, until we are ready to fly the coop.

ProcessLook up how to make an origami crane. Make about 30 of them. Photograph everything.

Growing up, my siblings and I had slight craft obsessions. Origami was always something I loved to do. Origami boxes, frogs, and, of course, cranes. My past love of crafts inspired me to take paper folding to another level: representing the life of a design student.

POSTER designCreate a poster that represents the coming together of cultures (a.k.a. Rapprochement) for UNESCO’s 2010 competition.

I created a world made with things from all over the world to blur the lines between our representations, and allow our things to become one world.

ProcessCollect anything and everything from house, friends, grocery store. Arrange as a world map. Take a million photos. Buy a new memory card. Take more photos. Then make another world with rice during clean up.

My room is a mess, but I like to call it organized chaos. Thanks to some recent traveling and the travels of friends and family, I have countless objects from around the world, and they are displayed all over my messy room. When brainstorming ideas for this poster, all I needed to do was look around me. The blend of cultures represented on my shelf inspired me to use objects to show one world, united.

BOOK designCreate a book based on a piece of chosen text.

I chose a text that focused on the effects of a monotonous life and how we often escape into our dreams.

ProcessUse self-timer to photograph self sleeping. Go through several critiques. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

I am one of those people who can remember just about every dream, and I have had some strange ones. Dreams have always fascinated me and the text I used in my book fits my ideas about dreaming perfectly. I was able to take my own experiences of dreams and apply them to the text to create a story of one man’s boring life and his amazing dreams.

FACE bookCreate a book with a friendly, or not-so-friendly, face on each page.

I took my pen, grabbed a moleskin, and started rendering my little buddies all for the fun of it.

It all started thanks to a boring lecture. I started doodling faces and just couldn’t stop. I was con-stantly inspired everytime I looked up from my notebook. I wanted to give the faces a bit more presence, and a moleskin sketchbook provided a most elegant way to do so. I like to think that the final product is a perfect reflection of myself; polished, but fun.

So what will inspire me next? Contact me and find out.

Chris Ryanchris.el.ryan@gmail.comchrisryanchrisryan.com608 449 4793