Hi, I'm Emily!

I'm a multidisciplinary designer specialising in graphic design and illustration.


Wisp Video Game Concept

Wisp is an RPG game that uses the figure of the witch as a metaphor for queer issues.

Zing Bar Snack

A conceptual bar snack brand, ZING was shortlisted in the 2025 JDO RAW competition brief.

The Spaces Between Places

A conceptual project documenting a liminal space.

A Penny For Your Thoughts

A graphic novel documenting the unlikely story of Penny the pigeon.

Book Cover Design

A cover re-design for one of my favourite authors.

The Laundrette Takeover

A group project in response to the 2025 D&AD Depop brief.

About

Hi, I’m Emily, a multidisciplinary designer with a passion for storytelling through design. My portfolio displays a wide variety of projects I have enjoyed working on and how each is rooted in a different unique concept or problem. I believe that design has the power to make people care about a brand, issue or cause. I have a flair for image making, with illustration and photography woven into many of my projects. In my free time I enjoy painting, film photography, live music and countryside walks!

Qualifications & Awards

TitleInstitutionLevelYear
BA Hons Visual CommunicationArts University BournemouthFirst Class Honours2025
JDO RAWJDO GlobalShortlisted2025
A Level Graphic DesignRainham SixthA2022
A Level Fine ArtRainham SixthA*2022
A Level PhotographyRainham SixthA2022

Contact

Email

[email protected]

Instagram

emilypearson.design

LinkedIn

linkedin.com/in/emilypearsondesign

Get in Touch!

Wisp Video Game Concept

‘Wisp’ is an RPG game that explores queer issues and the fear of the other through the lens of the witch. Play as Rowan, a young queer person as you follow her journey home to self-acceptance and resilience. You will encounter many monsters along the way that will try to slow you down, but not without the help of your guide, Cat-Sith, a witch-cat hybrid inspired by Scottish mythology.

Pitch Deck

Zing Bar Snack

‘Zing’ is a conceptual bar snack brand that was a finalist in the JDO RAW 2025 competition brief.The brief was to elevate the category from ‘basic to bougie’ as alcohol brands have become fancier over time, unlike the snacks. ‘Zing’ is a snack for plant lovers that pairs well with mojitios. I created four boards and a 3D render video for submission. See my design process below.

Social Media Assets

Serve Ritual

The Design Process

I researched into the current bar snack offerings and potential drink and snack pairings. Some of my initial ideas included olives and mango crisp snacks before I decided on plantain chips.

Scamps

The Spaces Between Places

The Spaces Between Places is a conceptual project documenting the liminal space that is a journey. A liminal space is a place or state of transition, change or uncertainty. It is a threshold or boundary between two distinct states, phases or identities. My project focuses on a journey between my home and the beach, using form, colour, photography and layout to conceptualise this. The dos a dos cover allows the two parts of the journey to be viewed separately. The photography inside gives the viewer a sense of motion, showing the main landmark points of my journey.

Photograph Selection

The Design Process

My initial research of liminal spaces and photography experiments.

Prototyping

A Penny For Your Thoughts

This project is a graphic novel that explores the relationship between humans and pigeons by documenting the true story of Hannah and her pet pigeon, Penny. It aims to make us rethink how we treat animals that we perceive to be vermin. The inside spreads tell the story whilst concealing Penny’s identity to prevent bias or assumptions. Her identity is revealed at the end when the novel is opened out into a large poster with an illustration of Penny and Hannah.

The Design Process

Throughout this project, I was working to the ISTD 'Interactions' brief. Although my outcome is largely illustration based, it was this brief that kickstarted the evolution of my project. In the early stages, I was exploring interactions and communication systems to find a topic to expand on.

Book Cover Design

In this self-initiated project, I explored my passion for gothic and folklore novels by re-designing the cover for 'The Lighthouse Witches' by C.J. Cooke. I was inspired by the book's rugged setting on the Scottish coastline and its dark, eerie themes.

The Design Process

I used Procreate to create some layout sketches exploring colour, type and illustration styles.

Illustrations

These are my final illustrations. I used Procreate to draw the lighthouse and Illustrator with a Wacom tablet to create some vector brushstroke waves.

The Laundrette Takeover

This project is in response to the Depop D&AD 2025 brief. I worked in collaboration with another designer, Luc Lockyer, to create 'The Laundrette Takeover'. Depop is a fashion resale platform aimed primarily at Gen-Z. The brief asked us to harness Depop's community to 'make Depop the talk of the town again' amongst crowding competitors.

The Design Process

We worked collaboratively in person to ideate and complete the project by meeting regularly. I really enjoyed working as a team since our skillsets complemented each other.

Why Laundrettes?

Laundrettes might seem like a strange setting for holding a community event- but that was what we loved about it. The brief asked us to be 'bold and disruptive' and we began to identify reasons and associations that made it make sense.

Development

At the beginning of the project, we created illustrations and used stock imagery to attempt to demonstrate our concept. However, this didn't feel authentic to Depop's brand as they rarely use illustration and the stock imagery also struggled to depict the concept. We decided to conduct our own photoshoot later on. We went through many iterations of finding ways to apply Depop's branding to our concept and created a washing machine logo lockup for the campaign.

Photoshoot

In order to bring our concept to life, we gathered some models and held a photoshoot in our local laundrette. This allowed us to stay in keeping with Depop's largely photography-led branding. The photoshoot helped us to visualise the activities at the event and provided imagery for our assets.