About Me

Hello and welcome to my portfolio website! My name is Ashley Duggan, New media major from Old Town Maine currently attending the University of Maine located in Orono. I have interests in many different fields of study some including Graphic Design, Computer Science, and User Experience.

Growing up I lived in Westhampton Massachusetts where I attended Hampshire Regional High School graduating in 2010 with an outstanding achievement award in Graphic Arts. In the fall of 2010 I enrolled in Greenfield community colleges Media Arts program later moving to Canton MA to attended Massasoit Community college enrolling in the colleges Graphic Design associates program. While at Massasoit I took part in the Artists Union Club, shortly after becoming club president later graduating with honors in the spring of 2013.

I have also taken the opportunity to reach beyond my selected major and branch out into new and exciting aspects of technology. The summer of 2015 I was welcomed into a research position at the University of Maine studying under Doctor Silvia Nittel, a Spatial Informatics professor at the college, our goal was to create a practical solution for blueberry farmers across the state who have trouble with crop irrigation. We provided them with a Arduino based sensor network which would take soil moisture readings, providing farmers feedback as to which crops needed water. From then on I decided to peruse a minor in Computer Science while working toward my degree in New Media. While working toward my goal of a degree in New Media I also wish to continue working on expanding my skills in Graphic Design and have taken several design courses outside of my major while attending the University of Maine.

Outside of the college life I spend much of my time with my friends and family and participate in many outdoor activates, some including snowboarding, skiing, mountain biking, hiking, hunting and fishing. I also spend much of my day working on new graphics, creating website designs, and studying new technology. Recently my free time has been spent working with the Bangor Humane Society on my newest volunteer project Postcards For Paws, a new and innovative way to help the humane society market adoptable pets off site and give adopters a way to share their adoption tales. Postcards For Paws will be officially released May 2017!

My Strengths Lie in:

Graphic Design

90%

Website Design

85%

User Experience

75%

Computer Science

75%

Graphic Design

My interests in graphic design sprouted from my grandfather. He taught me about drawing, and sculpting, as well as how to appreciate art. I began working with design software in middle school and throughout high school I strengthened my skills. Today I continue to fine tune my design skills with the hope of one day taking these skills and using them in correspondence with my knowledge in Computer Science and New Media to create innovative and unique projects.

"Natures Song Of Freedom"
This project was about taking a very minimalist approach to designing an image that represented a quality or aspect that you felt reflected something about yourself.
As an avid horse rider, I chose to choose a fond memory of mine and recreated it with typography and graphic merging into one design.

"Unforgettable"
Our objective for this assignment was to listen to a story from storycorps.com and then recreate the event described through a poster that would fold like an accordion into a 8x8 square.
Each time you unfolded the poster a new part of the story was revealed. The story chosen here was about Amy Mundorff. a forensic anthropologist who was working in the New York Medical Examiner's Office on September 11, 2001.

"All That Is Wild"
For this assignment we needed to create a quote that we felt passionate about. With this quote we needed to relate it somehow to imagery but only in a minimalistic way.
I chose to use part of a photograph I'd taken many years back that reminded me of how beautiful and free nature truly is.

"Vitamin String Quartet"
For this assignment we needed to choose one band that we were passionate about that was somewhat unknown to the rest of the class. Once chosen we were asked create a new album poster, CD design, and CD case for the group. My chosen group was Vitamin String Quartet a group that takes modern music to a classical level.

"Magic Shoes"
This project required each student to write an three page essay about a special moment in their life that related to one tangible object, In my case a pair of shoes. Each essay was to be accompanied by a hand drawn image of the object. Two versions of the image were required, one with a letter that was associated with the object and one without.

"Sing"
The purpose of this assignment was to take a happy memory of our past and reflect it with text and graphics. My chosen memory was about my father and I singing to the wolves behind my home. We had to hand draw each letter as well as the chosen graphic to replace one of the letters.

"Bite Me"
This was a relatively simple assignment. We needed to take a simple everyday object that someone would have at their work desk and create another representation of this object as its opposing image. I chose a staple remover and a snake.

"Lego My Snake"
This assignment was to take no more than four Lego pieces and to make something out of them. We later had to relate this Lego design to a real object or creature and create its reflection in the final designs.
The design placement and background was chosen by the professor for this assignment.

"Snow White"
For this assignment we were asked to choose a quote from a list provided by the professor. Once chosen we were then asked to recreate that quote on an 11x17 poster using minimalistic graphics and typography. My chosen quote was from Mae West, "I used to be Snow White but I drifted.". I decided to design this as a message that, Mae West had left for someone in Lipstick on her dressing room mirror.

"Snow Farm Logo"
This was a logo design done for the Nonprofit organization Snow Farm, located in Williamsburg Massachusetts. The design was later used on t-shirts and other marketing materials.

"Hedge Hearts"
This was a package design project for ART 350, Graphic Design II at the University of Maine. All content was designed, created, and assembled by myself.

Projects

These are some of the projects I have worked on beginning Spring 2017. Included are projects based within the college environment. They involve a number of different disciplines from design to physical computing.

Laser Guitar

The laser guitar was developed by myself, Annie Hepburn, and Ryan Libbey as a project for NMD 102. The concept for this project was to create an instrument using Arduino and MAX/MSP. Our groups for this project each consisted of one builder, one programmer, and one musician. Together we decided to build a guitar-like instrument that would play a number of different sounds depending on the programming. We wanted the similar style of a guitar but used lasers instead of strings. The video to the left demonstrates the guitars ability as well as provides a rundown of the code behind the project.

Melodi

Melodi is a Unity video game designed by myself and Ian Donnelly. The concept behind this game was to create something that viewers really had to focus and listen to. Our game is designed for mainly musicians but can be played by anyone. I idea of the game is that there is a melody playing in the background every minute. You need to use the orbs floating on the stands to try and recreate that melody before the four minutes of game time is up. There are four levels to this game total, with the potential for more. This game is designed for mobile as well as VR.