Reagan Ka
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Design Hero Spring 2024
As part of a project focused on honoring personal design heroes, I chose Ralph McQuarrie, the visionary concept artist behind the original Star Wars trilogy. This project explores McQuarrie’s artistic journey through a cohesive design system: a poster, a curated booklet, a mobile experience, and a motion animation that pays tribute to the imaginative worldbuilding he helped bring to life.
Print/poster design, design systems, motion design, identity design
Adobe CC (InDesign, Photoshop, AfterEffects), Figma
15 Weeks
Who is my Design Hero?
This project focused on creating a visual identity nspired by a personal design hero. I chose Ralph McQuarrie because of his ability to shape immersive worlds through atmosphere, storytelling, and visual design.
As someone who has loved Star Wars since I was little, his work has always felt especially inspiring to me. His concept art played a huge role in defining the visual identity of one of my favorite franchises, which made this project a chance to explore cinematic imagery, nostalgia, and worldbuilding through my own design process.
Designing for a world with its own identity.
PROCESS
Amplifying the worldbuilder himself.
Ralph McQuarrie’s illustrations are deeply tied to the visual identity of science fiction, particularly through their influence on Star Wars. Because his imagery is already so recognizable, I wanted to avoid simply recreating existing visuals and instead focus on capturing the emotional qualities of his work — scale, mystery, atmosphere, and cinematic storytelling. The challenge became finding a way to reinterpret those ideas through typography, layout, motion, and graphic form.
The process began through researching Ralph McQuarrie’s illustrations, interviews, and creative philosophy to better understand not only his visual style, but also his voice as an artist and storyteller.
Rather than simply referencing his imagery, I wanted the project to highlight the humanity behind his work — the imagination, atmosphere, and emotional depth that shaped the worlds he created. Through experimentation with typography, composition, motion, and image treatment, I developed a visual system that aimed to amplify his artistic perspective while translating his cinematic language into a contemporary graphic design experience.
DELIVERABLES