UNDERWIRE COLLECTIVE
Underwire Collective is a queer music talent agency based out of Northeast Florida that I have worked with several times over the last three years. I always love it when they reach out to me for commissions and feel like I walk away with such interesting, unique and fun portfolio pieces.
CUM GIRL 8
In 2022, a colleague of mine encouraged me to contact this music group in Florida. I didn’t think much of it then and fired off a quick email. Within the week, Underwire emailed me back, and we were in conversation for the first commission of many.
SUMMER CRUSH 2023
In March of 2023, Underwire reached out again, asking me to make a handful of illustrations for their new Summer Crush Series. This event was held once a month, all summer long, where one person could purchase tickets to the event, and Underwire would slide into social media DMs to invite their crush for them. I made a poster and three ‘teaser’ images for their social media that told a short story and explained how the event worked. I was told to make the poster and comics feel like vintage teen romance comics, which I think the final product reflects that nicely. Lastly, I felt the need to create extra social media images showcasing the event schedules, which I believe completes the series.
SUMMER CRUSH 2024
The second Summer Crush poster and branding series I was commissioned to make for Underwire. The 2024 year’s theme was the Olympics, and via the prompt, I was told to use the original Wheaties cereal box branding to base my designs on and reuse the same characters I had drawn for last year’s Summer Crush poster. I started with the large poster, and over two months, I worked with the Underwire team to develop a poster, t-shirts, Instagram posts, a take-home cereal box design, and a few other social media post designs. Overall, I loved working on these two projects, and it was such a delight to be welcomed back on the Underwire team for a little bit.
ORIGIN STORY COMIC
Underwire contacted me again after finishing up work for the Summer Crush Series. This is the first time I was commissioned to make a short comic; the goal was to explain their origin story for their website. The main catch with this one was that my comic also had to function as a pop-up banner for events. Since I was already familiar with their team, I was primarily given free rein over the images and design for this piece. When making this comic, I drew inspiration from webcomics formatted to be read on a phone screen. Ultimately, this was the right move since the comic is ‘scroller’ friendly. It was a fact that now exists in so many different forms. The comic can be read in full on their website
SUMMER CRUSH 2025
Underwire Collective contacted me recently to discuss working on their Summer Crush flyer campaign. This one is easily my favorite out of the three that I have worked on thus far. This summer’s theme is ’90s Summer Campy; I had a blast researching and gathering visual information for this poster. Also, this flyer has the most type I have had to work with for this whole series, which posed an interesting design challenge, where I chose to divide the 11x17 document in half. I condensed most illustration work to the top of the page and let the body copy breathe some. This is a current work in progress, the last bit I have left to work on is a bandanna design. I have also included the two sketches I sent to Underwire for consideration. Overall, from start to finish, I made the sketches, final flyer image, and Instagram squares in just under two weeks.
