Emily McLennan

I'm Emily, a graphic designer with a strong eye for detail and passion for creating visually engaging, bold, and purposeful designs. I value collaboration in my design process and love bringing concepts to life through visual storytelling, illustration, typography, and photography. With experience across branding for small businesses and agency work during my three-month internship at Overport Agency, I've developed a strong understanding of the creative process from concept to execution.

Outside of design, photography is a big hobby of mine, and I love translating that same sense of composition and emotion into my designs. Sustainability and environmental issues also hold a special place in my design approach, and an area I have enjoyed exploring in many of my projects. As I continue to grow, I’m excited to keep pushing my creativity, expand my skills, and create intentional designs that connect with people.

Let's Jazz Festival

A jazz festival held in Fitzroy Gardens, featuring an event poster, brochure, and website design. The visual identity aims to appeal to a broad demographic, especially young adults and families. Incorporating vibrant colours, playful typography, and groovy illustrations, the design associates a fun, lively, and youthful feel with the festival.

Woven

A brand identity for Woven, a social enterprise that host free clothing swaps around Australia. Inspired by the idea of weaving people and clothing together, the design features flowing, connected elements. The look is bold and feminine, designed to resonate with women and mothers and feel inviting and playful across all brand touchpoints.

Hey Batter Batter

A complete rebrand for a small baking business, designed to reflect their fun personality and baking style. The goal of the design was to create a cohesive identity that could be applied across various touchpoints, including stickers, packaging, and social media. The hand-crafted icons add a personal touch and extra flair across the entire brand.

Open to All Annual Report

An annual report for the State Library of Victoria, with a visual language shaped around their values of community and knowledge. Inspired by the Library’s open architecture, the design uses oval motifs to reflect the archways and expansive interiors, symbolising openness and the idea of inviting people in to learn and connect.

The Secret

A campaign for The Greens, that promotes mindfulness about our impact and connection to the environment and community. Inspired by ‘The Secret Garden’, the campaign uses themes from the story across ten poster designs placed around Melbourne’s gardens. Each one focuses on sharing a ‘secret’ and has free flower seeds accessible through the QR code.

Acknowledgement of Country

The School of Design and Architecture respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners and knowledge-keepers of the lands, waters and sky that surround us, where we work, learn, create, communicate and make place. We recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded and this always was and will always be Wurundjeri Country. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who continue to make a better world through design.

We extend our acknowledgement to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, students, alumni, real-life clients, and knowledge keepers, who have contributed to our own education diversity and growth. We will continue to ensure that staff and students respectfully honour ancestral connection to Country and Place in everything that they do.

We are dedicated to the notion of design to make a better world and we acknowledge that making tools, shaping place, sharing stories, making meaning, wayfinding and collaborating have long been and continue to be both central and integral to First Peoples' cultures. We recognize that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ cultural contributions have continued relevance to design practice and commit to: reconciling ancestries of design and contemporary practice as well as pursuing culturally and professionally appropriate ways to engage with a diverse population of colleagues, industries and clients. In a time of treaty-making and voice we understand that there are overlaps between caring for Country and the sustainable production of goods, services, experiences, products and buildings.

Guided by the principles of respect, reconciliation, and reciprocity we undertake to indigenising and decolonising design practice by dismantling colonial structures and challenging biases that have marginalised Indigenous voices and design.

As students of SoDA you will be given opportunities to both engage with and educate yourself in Indigenous creative practices and cultural protocols through a lens of inclusivity, diversity, respect, mutual understanding, inter-cultural dialogue in all aspects of design practice. Indigenous people have been telling stories, making tools, and connecting to Country through visual media, placemaking and place marking for more than 60,000 years and these practices are part of an ongoing, evolving and live tradition.