When I decided to develop the visual identity for Diles Que No Me Maten’s Richmond concert, I wanted to avoid the predictable language of rock posters. Instead of photographing the musicians themselves, I imagined a fictional community of people who could exist inside the band’s music.

Each poster introduces a different character. Some appear awkward, others confident, mysterious, rebellious, or quietly eccentric. Together they feel like pages from an imaginary high school yearbook where every outsider became the protagonist.

The visual direction draws from editorial portrait photography, vintage yearbook aesthetics, experimental fashion, and absurd humor. Bold hairstyles, expressive faces, colorful clothing, handmade typography, and carefully controlled studio lighting create a world that feels both familiar and slightly surreal.

Building a Fictional Cast

The band takes inspiration from improvisation, post punk, krautrock, jazz, psychedelia, and Mexican literature. Rather than illustrating those influences literally, I translated their unpredictable energy into a diverse collection of portraits. Every character carries a distinct personality while remaining part of the same visual universe. The result feels playful, slightly uncomfortable, expressive, and memorable, much like the band’s live performances. Although every portrait looks photographic, each image began as an AI directed concept. I developed dozens of prompt variations to explore casting, styling, expression, wardrobe, and personality before selecting the strongest compositions.

Creative Process

This project combines Generative AI with traditional graphic design. I used Midjourney to generate the initial portrait concepts and explore different personalities. I used Figma Weave to experiment with layouts, typography, and visual directions. Finally, I completed every poster in Adobe Photoshop, where I refined the images, balanced color, integrated typography, adjusted composition, and prepared the final production artwork.

The AI tools accelerated exploration, but the creative direction remained entirely human. Every portrait, expression, crop, color decision, and typographic choice served the overall identity of the series.

One of the prompts explored during development was:

Hyperrealistic comedy style yearbook photo of a fictional eccentric Guatemalan Indigenous dye blonde plus size woman with an exaggerated facial expression, absurd hairstyle, strikingly inappropriate outfit, studio lighting, high school yearbook aesthetic, ultra detailed realistic skin texture, subtly comical, rock alternativo y experimental vibe.

That prompt became a creative starting point rather than a finished solution. Each selected image evolved through iteration, editing, curation, and graphic design.

Final Result

The final collection transforms a concert announcement into an editorial portrait series. Rather than promoting a single performance, the posters introduce an imagined cast of characters that reflects the chaotic, poetic, and experimental spirit of Diles Que No Me Maten while giving the Richmond show a distinctive visual identity.

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A great concert poster does more than announce a show. It creates anticipation before the audience hears the first song. For this project, I designed a complete poster series for Solya’s Queen of Texas concert at The Canal Club in Richmond, Virginia. My goal was to build a visual identity that captured her music, personality, and stage presence.

Building the Atmosphere

I drew inspiration from Solya’s Queen of Texas era and blended gothic romance, dream pop, surreal Americana, fashion photography, and sacred symbolism into one cinematic world. Instead of creating standard promotional artwork, I treated every poster like a frame from an independent film or a luxury fashion editorial.

The series places Solya inside a dreamlike version of the Texas desert. Empty highways, abandoned motels, vintage roadside signs, telephone poles, oil pumps, drifting dust, roses, and oversized moons appear throughout the collection. Together they create a lonely yet beautiful landscape that feels both nostalgic and mythical.

Defining the Character

Solya stands at the center of every composition. Flowing ivory dresses, delicate halos, sapphire crosses, and restrained expressions give her an almost timeless presence. She feels mysterious, powerful, vulnerable, and unforgettable all at once. Each poster explores a different emotion while maintaining the same visual language.

Designing for Typography

I designed every composition with typography in mind from the very beginning. I left generous negative space and balanced each scene around the title and event information. The photography and graphic design support each other instead of competing for attention.

Blending AI with Traditional Design

I combined Generative AI with traditional design tools throughout the project. I used Midjourney to explore concepts and generate imagery. I used Figma Weave to experiment with layouts and creative directions. I finished every poster in Adobe Photoshop, where I composited images, refined colors, retouched details, integrated typography, and prepared the final artwork.

AI supported my creative process, but it never replaced design thinking. I directed every image, selected every composition, and refined every detail until the series felt cohesive and intentional.

Final Result

The finished collection presents a cinematic identity for the concert while expanding the visual language of the Queen of Texas album. The posters combine music, fashion, photography, graphic design, and emerging AI tools into one unified campaign that feels haunting, elegant, and distinctly contemporary.

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Journaling is an ongoing personal project where each day becomes a short video diary entry. Instead of traditional writing, the diary takes the form of surreal self-portraits, sculptural busts that resemble fragments of the self. These portraits become the narrator of the day. Each entry begins as a written reflection: a small observation, a memory, a thought about the day. That text becomes the voice of the portrait.

Using generative tools, the process unfolds across several stages:

First, I design the portrait using Midjourney, exploring surreal interpretations of the human head and bust as containers of thought, memory, and mood. The selected portrait is then animated with HeyGen, where the bust recites the diary entry, transforming a static image into a speaking presence. The narration itself is also generated through AI voice synthesis, creating a strange but intimate effect: the portrait becomes both author and narrator of the daily reflection.

Finally, the pieces are assembled in Adobe Premiere, where the visual rhythm, sound, and pacing shape the final diary entry. The result is a hybrid between personal journaling, experimental portraiture, and AI-assisted filmmaking, a daily practice that explores how technology can mediate memory, identity, and storytelling.

Each entry is small. But over time, they accumulate into a living archive of thoughts, images, and days.

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The images are developed through a hybrid creative process that blends traditional artistic exploration with contemporary generative tools. Each piece begins with loose sketching and photographic studies to establish composition, gesture, and spatial balance. From there, generative AI is used as a visual exploration engine to experiment with unexpected combinations of forms, textures, and patterns. The results are then refined through digital illustration, where color, line, and atmosphere are carefully shaped into the final artwork.

This oscillation between mediums allows intuition and technology to interact throughout the process. Rather than replacing traditional methods, AI becomes one layer within a broader artistic workflow that includes drawing, photography, and digital craft.

The series is produced as premium giclée satin prints (11 × 14 inches) and is currently available at STUFF-RVA and DAGNABIT! shops in Richmond. Each print is part of the Pheromones series and is individually numbered.

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