Smitha Prasadh
INFORMATION + INTERACTION + INTERCULTURAL DESIGNER
Portfolio of Work
The Latest
I am developing a resource to aid North American JET Programme returnees as they go through reverse culture shock upon returning from 1-5 years of living/working in suburban or rural Japan.
A macro-to-micro information design self-portrait poster built around the framework of western classical music notation.
Several (non-NDA-violating) selections from the visual work I developed as the designer on an interdisciplinary product design team.
Families Learning to Eat: my group's product design solution to the provided prompt of "service meets social" in our spring 2010 studio/competition class.
A typographic/type-as-image idea for a t-shirt design for the Carnegie Mellon All University Orchestra.
A poster visualizing the information space of the prominent design commentary website DesignObserver.com.
Magazine spread layout of an article about type designer Matthew Carter, an image-based type poster, and an informational poster on type designer Hermann Zapf and his Palatino typeface.
A motion graphics project focusing on the experience of being essentially illiterate when traveling in a foreign country.
Personal holiday cards I designed in winter 2007, incorporating influences from several cultures.
2012 January 4 - Happy New Year! Resume has been updated. I have a few more things I'd like to add to the portfolio in the next few weeks, including writing samples and work from last year's Firenze competition (now that the NDA has expired). Stay tuned...
2011 July 7 - made some minor updates (and changed my resume to reflect that I have graduated!), and added my fall Imprint article link below.
2011 April 21 - updated the thesis section extensively.
It's mostly up-to-date, minus a few images. Possibly more updates in the next day or so...
2011 February 15 - the redesigned site is live!
2011 February 4-6 - I spent an intense but amazing weekend at the Microsoft Firenze BXT finals at Microsoft's HQ in Redmond, Washington.
2011 February 4 - today marks exactly 100 days until graduation...
Other noteworthy projects
Imprint Blog: A Call for Intercultural Design
In fall 2010, Imprint (part of PrintMag.com) approached the CMU Design grads to write a weekly column that reflected our studies and interests. I was finally beginning my thesis work in earnest, and combined that with my interest in intercultural design and various class discussions to examine current and desired industry practices. "Cross-cultural" is what's generally known and embraced, but it seems to be tied more to visual language than inherent meaning. I feel that we should go deeper, to use our design skills to examine other cultures and conventions and to apply that knowledge and awareness in our work.
(Side note: my classmates articulated some really fantastic ideas in this column. Check it out!)
Book for Ron Mendola
A group of Georgia Tech Symphony Orchestra alumni threw a surprise retirement/send-off party for Ron Mendola, our conductor, friend, and mentor figure. I designed a photographic "memory book," which had 80 full-color/full-bleed pages, and published it via Blurb. We only have one photo of the final product (photo credit: Ethan Trewhitt), but it was a labor of love and Blurb did an amazing production job.
Global Emergency Relief
In the summer of 2010, I volunteered to build a website to aid a Haitian relief organization, in anticipation of the founder getting publicity via an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN.
I worked remotely with two other volunteers/CMU alumni, Ron Conescu and Jing Jin (both in California) to implement Global ER. Within 48 hours, we developed wireframes and a sitemap and built a complete site on WordPress (and using Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and PHP).
It was an amazing lesson in working remotely under an extremely tight deadline, and it felt good to provide our skills in this small way to help relief workers on the ground in a humanitarian crisis.
NOTE: the site has since been redesigned by another group.