Niamh MacDonald
An Illustration student who loves blending graphic design and illustration to create simple yet captivating designs.
About
Initially, my artistic journey gravitated towards traditional forms of image-making, but I soon discovered a way to merge my passion for graphic design and mathematics into my illustration work. This fusion allows me to create simple yet bold compositions that blends creativity and technical precision. My 4th-year portfolio showcases the evolution of my style working digitally to craft designs for playing cards, book covers, and tarot cards.
One of my favourite aspects of Illustration is designing sets of cards, where I can weave together multiple small illustrations onto a cohesive narrative. I love the challenge of creating diverse yet interconnected designs that come together to tell a story and make each set of cards a mini gallery of Illustrations.
I particularly enjoyed the challenge of designing a set of Major Arcana Tarot cards, where I had the opportunity to create 22 individual cards based on the key symbolism and meanings of each card. My goal was to maintain cohesion across the set by using consistent texture, colour schemes, and composition techniques. This project allowed me to delve deeply into the symbolic aspects of each card while exploring ways to visually connect them and develop my technical skills in digital image making. My goal is to continue this project to design a full tarot card deck!
Major Arcana Tarot Cards
As part of my personal project I designed 22 Major Arcana Tarot cards. Finding unique symbolism for each meaning was a challenging yet fun project and I am looking forward to designing the Minor Arcana set to accompany these cards in the future.
City of Stolen Magic Book Cover
For the Penguin Book competition, I redesigned the cover for the Children's book The City of Steel Magic by Nazneen Ahmed Pathak. The grid layout allowed me to capture all the important details and symbols of the story whilst maintaining a clean and easily readable design.
Glasgow Four Playing Cards
In collaboration with the Dundee V&A I designed a set of playing cards which reimagines the famous Glasgow Style curated by the Glasgow four into a digital graphical style. Each suit is represented by a different member of the Glasgow four and reflects their styles.