We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Damarius Haralson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Damarius below.
Damarius, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
The most meaningful project I have worked on would be my movie poster project I did as final assignment before graduating college in 2023. The project was to pick any movie I wanted and create 3 minimalistic movie posters using that movie. The purpose of making a minimalistic movie poster is to create a balanced visual composition that uses simple shapes and typefaces as well as using white space in a way that can get the visual concept across without much major detail. For I wasn’t allowed to use any ideas or create a design concepts that already existed for that movie. I had to have 3 nice well rounded compositions that included the movies cast members, the credits, and the movie title as well as balancing those credentials with the hierarchy of the imagery I created for the movie posters. And as far as the movie I picked I decided to do the movie Tron: Legacy as my movie to create my movie posters for. The reason why this project was so meaningful to me was not because it was my last major assignment before graduation but because I was given the opportunity to work freely on this one without much restrictions so I was able to really put my collegiate years of learning graphic design to the test. from their I went into a deep search of looking at all the movie posters and concepts that were made for Tron: Legacy, just to be sure that even if I use a reference for inspiration that I am keeping my movie posters original and not creating anything too detailed but keeping it simple and effective.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
What got me into the graphic design started back when in the 4th grade when I transferred to a new school. The class I was in just so happen to have a lot of students in it that knew how to draw very well to be 4th grade students. And with me being. a new student in that environment it made me want to be apart of that and teach myself to draw like them. Now it was not easy, I spent years tracing images from coloring books trying to memorize to draw human figures and even cars at one point. However, I would move on from that and furthermore trying my hand drawing graffiti. By the time I was in 8th grade I had begun to pick up steady habits in bending shapes and letters to creating some wild and fun graffiti drawings. In addition to drawing I also have a love for playing video games, and with technology constantly evolving over the decadesI have gotten to see how the gaming developers have used their team to design team to create amazing graphics for upcoming games whether it’s for promotional purposes or for the concept of the games themselves and so this inspired me to want to become a gaming developer. However, once I got a little older as I was narrowing down my options on college choices and finalizing my decisions I came to the understanding that the university I attended didn’t have any programs for gaming development. So I settled for 3-dimensional arts. It was going fine for a while however, by my sophomore year I knew that it wasn’t for me because everything that 3-dimensional arts seemed to include in terms of study was all hands on physical design such as ceramics and sculpture/metal building. So I realized I was going to have to change my major therefore I asked a few of my class mates what were some of their and when I told about graphic design I knew that it was something that I can do. Most of it would consist of digital design and animating some drawing and more importantly to me it was a major that I could use for multiple different avenues of business whether it be for myself or for a major company. With this being the layout for the major I was considering it didn’t take much longer for me to decide that graphic design was the right major for me as I would be able combine two things I love to keep me close to gaming and it’s development.
Some of the things I do for my clients are solve design problems and whether it be for errors in a websites layout or other various issues that may need improving in terms of creating a cohesive and well laid out design. I also create and render new ideas for clients who may be in need for a new design whether it be for their business or for promotional purposes as well. One of the things I am most proud of is to say I love what I do which means a lot because that isn’t something a lot people where I come from can say. Although It’s not my full time job yet and I don’t have a large following of clients/fans I know that If I continue to be consistent and put myself out there as well as keep perfecting my craft my talents, passion, and determination will get far in life its only the beginning.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
My junior year of college after officially switching my major to Graphic Design I was learning a lot of the basics about graphic design principles as well as doing small assignments that would have test my skills on the things I’ve learned. However, there was one assignment in particular known as the Chandelier project where the task was to a create a digital illustration of this wooden chandelier that my professor had assigned to us. And although I was learning the basics to design at that time I didn’t feel as confident just yet with doing a full illustration of a wooden chandelier, especially seeing how the chandelier had many different shades brown, orange, and red along with highlights and midtowns of those colors all blended. I wasn’t sure in beginning how I was going to do it but out of love for what I was doing and the drive I had to want to make a good impression I knew that I was going to find a way. So to begin I started with the basics using what I learned such as pen tooling in Photoshop to copy and paste the shapes and curves of the chandelier onto a blank canvas. And from there I started using a tool known as the eyedropper tool in Photoshop to get those brown, orange, and red colors from the actual image in my colors swatch. And so where the difficulty came in was finding the right mid-tones and highlights of those colors because my goal was to make my illustration of the chandelier look as close to the real thing as possible, and because there can be so many different shades of just one color alone whether light or dark it made finding the right shades of color that much harder. After going through many failed attempts I decided to ask my professor for some advice. I can remember him saying, “You just have to continue playing the colors and finding what looks closet to the the shades in the chandelier. Trust me you will see what I mean”. With me trusting his words of advice I continued to trying different shades of color to get the right balance of cohesiveness as well as a balance of blending them all together. And eventually I did find the right colors now I just needed to figure out how to blend which was another challenge in itself. 3 days had already passed and the project was due in the next 2 days and I knew I wasn’t going to be late finishing this because I was determined to get this done right and on time, so I spent some time after classes to continue finding the right blend between them. So how I figured out how to finally get the colors to blend how I wanted to was an old piece I learned when it came to drawing which was that I can sketch as many lines as I need to until I can get the right lines that works for me. So in this case I just continued to make thick & thin brushes strokes where they were needed but also using the opacity of the brush I was using in photoshop to create that blend of color between dark & light and color to color. With this small technique those next 2 days I spent overtime applying everything I had learned up to that point to blend and highlight the shades of brown, orange, and red to make my illustration of the wooden chandelier look cohesive and the best comparison to the actual thing.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
To me the most rewarding aspect of being a Graphic Designer is that “Wow!” factor once I’ve finished a well composed work. I love to see the results of my work knowing that I really put the focus and attention to detail into my projects being able to say “I did that”. And allowing people to see my work and explain to people what were some of my design choices and why I use certain methods for certain projects.
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Damarius Haralson