GradX

Theo
Murphy

Hello! Theo is an Irish/Italian Illustrator and designer looking to expand his skills and grow his creative legacy. He loves applying his unique style and outlook on any project he comes across. He’s excited to explore boundless creativity through illustration and design in many more projects to come. 

Behance

Vegefables

Combining Augmented Reality technology with design to form a unique learning experience was the main goal of this project. Vegefables is an app to help children grow and learn about vegetables and plants. It was important to me to make self-sufficiency fun and interactive. Although there are many projects and campaigns already focusing on home gardening, I’ve noticed that the raw information gets jumbled and is a bit difficult to navigate for first-time growers. Users could use the cameras on their phones to grow plant friends as their plants grow in real life as well. Customise and unlock achievements as you water your plants and learn about growing plants at home. I saw an opportunity to use my illustration skills to give character and emotion to these ideas. As well as this, a design identity had to be made that was friendly towards children of a younger age too. Drawing from initial sketches gave me a new idea as well. The app could also use the tracking capabilities of AR to paint plants and scenes around a room. This would build an interactive space with the plants you grow in the app. 

This project was a good way of exercising my expertise in building a coherent brand. Separate from the core idea a strong visual identity can push a project very far. The relationship between colour, layout and style was quite important here. How illustration interacts with other design elements is very important. I attempted to develop an identity that was consistent with the message and idea I was trying to show. I’m glad I had the opportunity to explore these themes in this project. 

Crime and Punishment redesign

This project focused on finding a new way to experience a well-known piece of classical literature. Dostoyovsky’s classic is a well-known piece of media and has been republished many times. My goal with this redesign was to explore the content and add to it as well. Key dates during the author's life and modern interpretations of the themes. I focused on the first chapter and explored its themes of the justification of violence and the cruel truth of life and death. I wanted to reflect this in my design, to find a nice balance between showing the theme and involving the extra information I found. 

The end result was a book with different-sized pages. This allowed a margin to be created around the text. This system allowed me to play with how the footnotes, chronology and information interacts with the text. Pushing and pulling when necessary. This project allowed me to do something creative without illustration. Creating a nice hierarchical system that can be break or change the visual tension was very fun.