--:--:-- -- in Toronto
Hanna Salzman (HON-uh) is a multidisciplinary designer specializing in graphic work and creative direction. Currently studying architecture at the University of Toronto, she additionally works with brands and independent artists in a variety of fields, ranging from photography & video work to type & web design.
Past work includes projects with musicians, student developers, nonprofits, clothing stores, magazines, and more, with emerging themes centered around industrial design and community through urban environments. Although she is working on a personal project at the moment, she is open to any potential commissions or collaborative projects through the summer and fall.
Work experience
App design
Apparel design
Architectural design
Art direction
Brand design
CAD & 3D modeling
Furniture design
Graphic design
Industrial design
Photography
Research & data
Typography
UI/UX design
Web design
Woodworking
.
Works in
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Premiere
Cargo
Carrd
Figma
Framer
Google Systems
Glyphs
Grasshopper
HTML/CSS
Rhino 8
Shopify
Square Systems
Squarespace
Wix
WordPress
.
Works with
Artists
Brands
Coders
Companies
Creative directors
Developers
Fashion designers
Individuals
Magazines
Musicians
Nonprofits
Organizations
Storefronts
You
Work with Street Lab
CAD & 3D modeling
Graphic design
Industrial design
Research & data
I had the pleasure of collaborating with the design team of the nonprofit Street Lab over the summer to coordinate and design outdoor pop-up programs across New York City, further assisting the program team as a staff member by helping deploy these programs across multiple locations. Between the office, warehouse, and field, I studied how the intersection of community engagement and design activates communities in need, with portable industrial solutions and fabrication techniques thriving in public spaces for kids and adults alike. Specific projects I joined in collaborating on included portable misting arches and shade to help bring relief to New York’s vicious heatwaves in the summer and promote safe playing in the city streets. Additional work included graphic and branding design for the organization, including their portfolio design for submission at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards, and CAD modeling for portable storage design.
Judy
Art direction
Graphic design
Research & data
Typography
Web design
Inspired by the history and dominance of American highway signage design around the world, this project was selected as one of three Capstone projects developed in my senior year of high school. Over ten months, I worked closely with advisors, mentors, and professional type designers to research and produce a font that honored the legacy of Highway Gothic and its infamous battle with Clearview for standardized usage across North America. Its primary focus was to examine the priority of accessibility and legibility in widespread usage of type while retaining aesthetic representation for average encounters. After months of research, design, and legibility testing, the first iteration of Judy was released freely for public use in May 2024, accompanied by an accessible website and specimen booklet. An updated release is planned for the future to provide support for more weights, languages, and styles.
Salem June, Silver Star
Art direction
Graphic design
Photography
Working with Boston-based musician and composer Salem June, I helped photograph and direct the design behind the artist’s debut studio album, Silver Star. The project involved capturing specific ranges of light through double-exposure techniques to produce visual components that would accompany the music, such as album artwork, themes, and other recurring motifs. The album’s photography and digital identity were guided primarily by the artifacts of digital noise, loops, and static that the artist incorporates throughout her work, most explicitly on the album.
SAFA
App design
Art direction
Brand design
Graphic design
UI/UX design
Before its initial launch to the App Store in 2023, I joined the team of SAFA, a campaign from two classmates in pursuit of expanding accessibility to youth soccer players across the world through recruitment, professional clubs and leagues, and scholarships. I was tasked as the sole designer, creating a comprehensive brand identity meant to attract both young and professional audiences to the platform. Ultimately, working with the team, the identity consisted of app design and layout for the prototype, as well as communications messaging for logos, advertisements, and other hypothetical scenarios meant to help the brand grow from its small network.
Cherry-Coloured Funk
Bench, cherry wood, 52 × 34 × 1 in
Designed as part of a six-week residential intensive program at the Rhode Island School of Design, Cherry-Coloured Funk is a design piece meant to capture both the perfect and imperfect aspects of furniture and how we incorporate leisure into daily ritual. Invoking repetitive elements found in common benches, such as church pews, the structure of the project takes sharp angles and curves to create arched walls. Where traditional benches inherently restrict guests with length, rails or other forms of hostile architecture, Cherry-Coloured Funk is designed to welcome leisurely activity in all forms. The cherry wood used to construct the bench is deliberately knotted and hand-chiseled with carvings to reflect its natural, imperfect “funk,” and its shell is stained with different color coats to invite placement inside or out in harmony with its environment, whether natural trees for leisure in nature environment or with the furniture and walls of a home in a constructed one.
Super Point
CAD & 3D modeling
Architectural design
Furniture design
Graphic design
Research & data
Super Point isn’t just home to the best pizza in Toronto, but also a beautiful community. As part of an architecture course centered around drawing and representation, I spent an entire semester on this “third space,” meticulously documenting and measuring every chair, table, and corner of the restaurant to produce an accurate replicated model of the space in computer-aided design (CAD) software. From this model, I used different planes, angles, and views to construct unique architectural drawings, highlighting different areas of the space, as well as its exterior. Using these line drawings, I then created a poster using imagery and themes from psychedelic music posters, inspired by the soundtrack of the space and the people within it. Altering perfect lines to warp within context and distort perspective allows a unique glimpse into the space apart from its standard exterior representation. Its final presentation stands at 1 × 1.5 m (39.4 × 59.1 in) with a smaller print now framed in the space. In addition to its printed colorway, a select multiple additional colorways were created to honor the music and culture the poster drew from.
Walcott
Photographic series
Walcott is a digital photography series centered around environmental activism and the future of Cape Cod, where extensive coastal erosion has devastated the landscapes I grew up with. In my observation for over a decade and a half, rapid sea level rise from human-accelerated climate change has made the dunes of the Cape remain some of the most vulnerable in all of Massachusetts. Beaches and ponds have been severely transformed, shrinking until some have been completely engulfed by water without a shore left. Developed during my first years of high school, this series documents sandscapes across five different dune locations on the Cape, where erosion has impacted each to different extents. In addition to a somber look towards the future of these areas, it reflects the beautiful natural presence as it exists today, and a reminder to preserve and take care of our delicate environment.
America sixty-nine years later how much has changed except Ginsberg’s money won’t even get you a two-liter Coke
Inkjet print photograph collage on Coca-Cola-soaked matte paper, roughly 20 × 20 in
Compelled by the language Ginsberg used to describe his raw emotion tied to the America of his era, I aimed to compare his feelings to my disillusioned state as I watch America as a citizen from afar this year after leaving. Blown up to 400 square inches and sprayed with 4 liters of Coca-Cola, Ginsberg’s poem is overlaid with iconic imagery reflecting the state of America, its paragon of free speech, and censorship in protest over the course of nearly seventy years. While its nature is inherently political, its aim is not to capture an “anti-American” perspective, but instead focus on the events and emotions that have flooded my mind as I brace for a new America under Donald Trump’s second presidency and the events that are likely to unfold in the next four years, which will prompt its own reflection in seventy years as the America of the future contemplates how its values stand the time between each commentary on the last.
