For The Sake of Being Happy
“For the Sake of Being Happy” is an exhibition design showing the illustration and design of Lily Hoang-Zhu, otherwise known as Liliuhms. With bright colors & cute critter characters, you are invited to let go of any inhibitions that tell you that you need to be one way, & simply have fun. The world of expectations is being you, here you are invited to interact in multiple ways of “play” as you look at the multiple ways in which Lily Hoang-Zhu has created art that makes both herself, and her audience, happy.
ART DIRECTION - Dermot Mac Cormack
“In her mind, the world is full of color, whimsy, and sentient objects. Lily’s work encompasses the joy of being exactly who you are, and embracing being silly, just for the sake of being happy.”
Lily Hoang-Zhu
The logo itself is typographic, however I have used Hoang-Zhu’s mascot, Bun, in most of the branding. The font chosen is playful to reflect the theme of the exhibit & Hoang-Zhu’s work. “For the Sake of Being Happy” is directly pulled from a quote on Hoang-Zhu’s website. The two P’s in happy end up becoming eyes to a smiley face, & in animated forms of the logo, the eyes blink. I decided on a simple concept as to not take too much attention from the artwork itself being exhibited. Since Huang-Zhu is an illustrator, I aimed to keep it typographic rather than illustrative to divide my branding from her illustration assets.
Primary colors, especially yellows are common in Huang-Zhu’s work. Designing the color scheme for the website, I pulled from major colors in her illustrations. It ended up being mainly yellows, with pinks, greens, & browns. Copywriting for the description is borrowed from her “about me” & all illustrations featured on the website are her own illustrations aside for the map which is traced over with the brush that I have used throughout for created illustration assets. The website became a balance of what to use of her work to exhibit her, & what I needed to design myself as the exhibition designer creating a website for the exhibit. While the store has borrowed (& copy pasted) merch from her website, that would be where merchandise for the exhibition itself would be held.
With Hoang-Zhu’s work being so full of joy & whimsy, & the exhibition theme being happiness for the sake of happiness, I created an affirmations app to be featured along with the exhibit. The app walks you through turning on notifications, & multiple customization options including backgrounds that are inspired by patterns found in her work. The mood customizations show expressions of Bun to add an extra cuteness to the app design so the formatting wasn’t too basic. At the end, you would be met with a generated affirmation based on your customizations which would change daily based on the amount of affirmations per day requested. People who would download the app could then check the app per notifications for a boost of positivity each day, even after the exhibition would close.
insert text
insert text
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
All characters & illustrations used are owned by Lily Hoang-Zhu under liliuhms llc original IP, all rights reserved to liliuhms llc.
This project is designed to be branding for a hypothetical exhibition of her work, any & all assets used come directly from her website here with written permission to use non-commercially.