graduation cards
In May/June 2025, i was tasked to create a commemorative pack for those graduating this year. this included three cards (including the back of the card), a sticker/badge, and a belly band to keep everything together. I started out with a few ideas and composition cards that I sent to the client.
I wanted all of the cards to obviously be unique to Sunderland, so I thought maybe I could use lions which are depicted on the Sunderland FC badge. Or perhaps, ships which call back to when Sunderland was a ship building city. I also toyed around with potential locations, the clients choosing the City Campus, Monkwearmouth Bridge and Roker Beach to be the main three scenes.
At the side is a seagull with a graduation cap. The reasoning for using the seagull is because of the sheer amount of seagulls across Sunderland. I remember waking up in the morning because of how loud they all were when I first moved there.
Surprisingly, the clients really loved this sticker design and accepted it without many changes.
I created much more detailed versions of some of the ideas I had, above are the illustrations that were not selected. I enjoyed making all of these, and I really wish the Riverside card was selected as it is my favourite design out of all of the ones I did!
There were quite a few changes when it came to the piece below, replacing all of the seagulls to people in Sunderland FC merch, with the stadium in the background. It is not my favourite but the clients seemed to like it!
The belly band! There's not much to say about this one other than I gave the client the top belly band first but they requested it to be much simpler with the full University of Sunderland logo. So, I did, and they accepted it.
These two are the final two cards I had made. The one of the left features the Roker Pier, with two people celebrating their graduation with ice cream on the beach, while the one on the right shows the City Campus with my original graduation seagulls. I find this one to be the most iconic and I am so happy with how it turned out.
