CAUSEGEAR® Tote Bag Cityscapes

Summary

In September of 2018, Brad Jeffery, co-founder and CEO of the award-winning, Chicago-based, L3C organization CAUSEGEAR® (now MADE FREE®), called me and asked if I’d be willing to work with their organization to create custom tote bag cityscape designs for some of their clients. I agreed to offer my services and, over the next several months, continued to design tote bag cityscapes for CAUSEGEAR® throughout the remainder of the 2018-2019 school year.

For each design, I was given the name of a city and a list of potentially identifying landmarks or buildings. With this information, I then used Google Images and Google Earth to research the architecture of each building—its location, its unique attributes, and its size in relation to other buildings—making design decisions based upon my research. I then brought the images that I gathered during my research into Adobe Illustrator and used them to help guide my designs for each building.

By the end of the school year, I had finished six cityscape designs in total, and tote bags with my original designs are now being sold by CAUSEGEAR® clients in four states. Of the six designs I worked on, my three favorite are featured below.

Fells Point

Baltimore, Maryland

This was the fourth cityscape design I created. It’s also my favorite. Fells Point is a popular tourist attraction off the coast of Patapsco River in Baltimore, Maryland, and the six buildings in the design can be found by the waterfront on Thames Street.

New Creation VA

Harrisonburg, virginia

This was the second to last cityscape design that I created. It was made for New Creation VA, a faith-based nonprofit organization in Harrisonburg, Virginia, committed to counteracting sex-trafficking. The four buildings represented from left to right are as follows: First Presbyterian Church, Rockingham County Courthouse, Bank of America Building, and the Joshua Wilton House.

More Than Words

Boston, MAssachusetts

This was the first cityscape I worked on, and the design was created for More Than Words, a nonprofit social enterprise in Boston, Massachusetts, that helps at-risk young adults develop business skills. The design went through six revisions, but, looking back now, I’m happy with how it turned out. The six buildings and landmarks represented from left to right are as follows: Berkeley Building (aka Old John Hancock Building), Zakim Bridge, John Hancock Tower, 111 Huntington Avenue, Prudential Tower, and 660 Beacon Street.