Gum Gum Girl
For my final project for Design 1, I was assigned Deep Champagne (#FAD6A5) and researching its vintage/traditional origins. I was inspired to specify my research towards vintage promotional products such as vinyl records, postage stamps, and advertising posters.
Using Adobe Illustrator for the poster designs and creating an original illustration for the stamps, I wanted to make a callback to my first Design I project and create a series of vintage promotional goods for the Japanese artist Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and her single “Gum Gum Girl” set in an older-era Japan.
Why Gum Gum Girl?
The reason why I chose this particular song is that while the artist still maintains degrees of her well-known quirkiness throughout her music and the music video, Kyary expresses her desire to be seen from a more mature perspective by wearing tracksuits instead of the usual Harajuku fashion and adding intense action-packed scenes in her video. Realizing this, it felt wrong to continue depicting her in the typical cutesy manner.
Channeling Vintage Japanese Designs
Instead of using pink/purple color palette, I wanted to show her in a different light by using a limited two-color palette and bold typography reminiscent of old Japanese poster and stamp designs. I also got the chance to draw and showcase an original surreal and abstract illustration specifically for the stamp designs that calls back to classic fantastical Japanese illustrations.
