Week 5.3

Recently, I came across the blog of a graphic designer named Rebecca Agra. It's in Portuguese, so I had to use a translator, but as I looked over it, I found, more often than not, designs that where linked from elsewhere and are probably not hers. A couple of the posts I found did belong to her, but most of her designs were left in the portfolio section.

In looking over them, I think her skills show best in the logos she's created. She has very nice color choices, and while some of the logos are very simple, others are a little more involved. They all work well on a logo sheet, but I have to wonder how some of the more complicated ones would fare when scaled down. The simple designs Agra shows off don't have that problem, however - particularly the Eureka Comunicacao logo.

It also looks like she isn't bad with print design, either. The good sense of color found in the logos continues in this area, ranging from package design to fliers to book covers. Her style comes across clearly here: simplistic, but easily functional, and extremely colorful.

One thing I do think Agra needs to work on is her illustration skills. That is the first section on the portfolio page of her blog, and it isn't all that impressive to me. Her color choice is still aesthetically pleasing overall. The illustrations themselves, however, look a bit plain in comparison to her logo and print designs, as well as some of her photomanipulations. It looks like she's still getting used to illustration, but I think if she does more in that area, she'll get better in time.

Overall, I like her blog. One thing I would like to see more of is her own work in the blog section, rather than a slew of other designers' work. But as it is, it shows that she's keeping an eye on the graphic design community at large, and that's always a good thing to do. And because Agra does that, I learned something new: April 27 is World Graphic Design Day. I hadn't known there was such an observance, and I thought that was an interesting tidbit to find.