The Esse Retreat is a conceptual three day retreat in which my collaborator Ashley Gibson and I are in progress of creating a visual system surrounding the values and personality of the retreat.
Collaborator: Ashley Gibson
Timeline: 6 Weeks
Tools in Use: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Indesign, Figma
Case Study:
In the beginning of the process, Ashley and I brainstormed three different visions of possible retreats or conferences that we could follow and landed on the vision of giving people the opportunity to “define the circle of life for yourself”, in relation to nature and personal growth.
We then narrowed down our possible retreat into six specific values of intentionality, hope, connection, intricacy, renewal, and vulnerability.
From here, I picked out two values to draw a personality from and create two moodboards of visual inspiration to draw from as we continued our process.
Our next task was to create a name for our retreat. We created a lot of different ideas that centered around our concept of “the circle of life” and that lended us to the idea of making the name of the retreat be a pallindrome so it would be read the same forward and back (much like the cyclical nature of life).
We landed on the name “esse” which means one’s actual being, and essential nature.
This is an idea of an initial lockup and poster design I created.
This is an idea of an initial lockup and poster design I created.
After critique from our peers and mentors, we realized that the wordmark was a bit too angular and sharp for the personality and values of the retreat. We then decided to create more variations that involved handmade letterforms.
These next posters are my ideas for a set of designs with the colors of pink and green. Coming up, we want to create our own symbol set to match but start to encomperate more photography and textures as well.
After these poster ideas we decided that we wanted to lean back into our original idea of adding photography, but keeping the graphic style of iconography and logo mark.
We then decided with this circle logo mark, we should make a set of symbols that are circular in nature and follow the same language as the logo we see above ( we ended up cutting the flower, she just didn’t up fitting with the system :// ).
We then went on to follow this language that follows the pallindrome nature of Esse and decided to use reflected images that are the same back and forth.
These were some of our web and social media mockups in progress.
After some deliberation, Ashley and I realized that we really needed to finalize a set of symbols that corresponded with our three days: life death and rebirth.
Each of the symbols for life, death, and rebirth had many iterations, shown here are some from the life symbol (yes some are hard to even look at). However through this process I realized the importance in iteration and to keep trying and thinking until you reach your personal satisfaction level.
![]()
Each of the symbols for life, death, and rebirth had many iterations, shown here are some from the life symbol (yes some are hard to even look at). However through this process I realized the importance in iteration and to keep trying and thinking until you reach your personal satisfaction level.
After critique with senior designer, Michael Souvanthalisith, we found the tie that brought our whole system: using the three colors in intentional ways, and leaning on our reflection imagery and circular motif.
It was about a week later when I randomly went to Palm Springs and was able to visit Joshua Tree myself and actually take the imagery that we ended up using in our system.
That trip was very special to me, considering I had spent so much time envisioning this retreat and Joshua Tree as its home.
It was about a week later when I randomly went to Palm Springs and was able to visit Joshua Tree myself and actually take the imagery that we ended up using in our system.
That trip was very special to me, considering I had spent so much time envisioning this retreat and Joshua Tree as its home.
Videography has always been a passion of mine, so to make both the trailers for the retreat was something I was excited to take on. Below is the video for a possible speaker intro, this one being for Duncan Trussell.
After we had the photography, final symbols, and video pieces made, we just followed the system we laid out to create the rest of our retreat items.
Scroll back to top to see the rest of the deliverables that were created after we made our final refinements to each piece.
Working with Ashley was so wonderful, we each brought different ideas and styles to the table and landed on something that really worked for the both of us.
Thank you Leisha Muraki for being such a stellar leader and teacher this quarter. I feel like I learned so much and loved making a visual system for something near to my heart. ︎
Scroll back to top to see the rest of the deliverables that were created after we made our final refinements to each piece.
Working with Ashley was so wonderful, we each brought different ideas and styles to the table and landed on something that really worked for the both of us.
Thank you Leisha Muraki for being such a stellar leader and teacher this quarter. I feel like I learned so much and loved making a visual system for something near to my heart. ︎
