“In bad times and in good, I’ve never lost my sense of zest for life.”-Walt Disney

Before jumping into the Adobe Creative Cloud, I had to get my hands dirty with bold and bright paint. The art classes, teachers and camps I had and attended in grade school were amazing, but I believe that I sharpened my skills, furthered my talent and learned more about painting when I was put to the test in college. By becoming heavily involved in the University of Georgia’s largest campus organization, UGA HEROs, I showcased my talent numerous times throughout the semester in the middle of the school’s busiest bus bay.

PAINTINGS

PAINTINGS

These street paintings led to beverage cooler designing contests, which one first place and a $350 bid, murals in condominium and apartment complexes, designing and painting the 38th bulldog statue in Athens, a mural in the University’s Visitors Center, which is seen by 25,000+ people each year, and much more.

iHEROCAMPAIGN

UGA HEROs is the largest student organization at the University of Georgia. Their mission is to provide quality of life programs for the 12,000 kids in the state of Georgia affected by or infected with HIV/AIDS.

After hearing many students on campus ask what exactly HEROs was, I developed the iHERO campaign for our 2014 recruitment week.

The goal of iHERO was to let the University of Georgia know why our members fight so hard for the kids we love and care for so dearly. This campaign led to a record-breaking 1550+ new members, compared to the 2013 recruitment period which brought in 1100 new members. With my knowledge of advertising and graphic design, I was able to produce 200+ personalized profile pictures, a massive painting covering the widest street on campus, graphics for all forms of social media, t-shirt and sticker designs and more.

Worth it.

iHEROCAMPAIGN

At each UGA HEROs event for the past three years, I designed and painted banners to serve as backdrops for photo opportunities like these.

The iHERO banner on the left is my personal favorite. In addition to this banner, there were four other splattered iHERO banners that I created for WOW Week, or HEROs’ week long recruitment period that takes place during the first few weeks of class.. I placed a mini trampoline under the banners so people could jump and strike a pose midair.

UGA HEROs took over Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter with these fun, vibrant pictures for the entire week.

UGAHEROs

I also paint and design for this HEROs when the organization competes in contests with other philanthropies. Each year, the local Chick-fil-A holds a week long competition called “Chick-fil-Anthropy.” For the past three years, I’ve designed and painted the windows—receiving first place each year. Another student organization held a cooler painting competition. My work won the competition and received the highest bid of $300.00.

UGAHEROs

Collegiate philanthropic involvement has clearly been a huge part of my time at UGA.

Philanthropy Phormal brought together the three largest student organizations at UGA for a night of celebration and unity. I, along with members of UGA Miracle and Relay for Life planned this milestone event. I am honored to have been a part of this now annual event.

World AIDS Day fell on December 1, 2014. This was one week from the UGA HEROs Olympics, the organization’s end of the year event. I created the #ADozenDollarsDay campaign for the organization. Personally, I raised over $2000 that week with this campaign.

Running back Todd Gurley’s hurdle led to a victory over Tennessee for the Bulldawgs. It also did the same for UGA HEROs, as I quickly created a graphic for Fresh-man Council recruitment. With it, we had a record breaking number of applicants.

UGAHEROs

At the end of each year, UGA HEROs has its final event that called the Olympics. During the this event, they reveal how much money they have raised throughout the year.

Typically, the members of the executive board will hold multiple poster boards, each with a number or character on them, but this year I finally put into action a plan that I’ve dreamed of over the past year. I built a wall 16 feet long and 8 feet tall, painted it white and, well...the rest can be seen at: www.youtube.com/c/RyanSichelstiel

UGAHEROs

In between my philanthropic involvement at UGA, I squeeze class and studio time into the mix. These are some beginning sketches that I made in my Electronic Design and Design Drawing Techniques class. From breaking down the structure of a teddy bear and soundwaves, to seeing how simple shapes like circles, squares, and triangles ap-pear in everyday objects, this class taught me to open my eyes and see the world for all of its intricacies.

DESIGNCOURSES

In my Electronic Design class, I also studied animal figures. My projects focused on flamingos. I found their shape and weight dis-tribution extremely interesting, especially in terms of their design.

Using Adobe Illustrator, I explored the different monotones, duotones and tritones. Through this exercise, I mastered various techniques that are used in the Adobe Creative Suite.

DESIGNCOURSES

Another project in Electronic Designinvolved experimenting with text layout and how the particular layout and composition of a work conveys the message of the text.

DESIGNCOURSES

DESIGNCOURSES

For a project where I had to design a Twitter feed, I searched through one Twitter account. I chose @Disney to findexisting tweets that contain both text and image. I redesigned them to contain both the image and text in one space.

DESIGNCOURSES

My final project in Electronic Design was to give an update to the signage around the University of Georgia. This segments of the infographic, which contine on to the next two pages, show the research and design choices that I made along the way.

DESIGNCOURSES

After deciding on the sign layout, the next areas I considered were shapes, color and logo.

DESIGNCOURSES

The final product shows new signs that signify whether the University of Georgia buildings are affiliated with food and dining, academics, athletics, or housing.

DESIGNCOURSES

These watercolor designs, manipulated in Photoshop, were inspired by various themes in nature.

DESIGNCOURSES

These watercolor designs, manipulated in Photoshop, were inspired by various themes in nature.

DESIGNCOURSES

Some of my favorite projects from the University of Georgia’s Design Drawing Techniques class include a tattoo, mock album cover and rustic billboard design.

BOOKDESIGN

My younger cousin, Alexa Tebben, published two books in 2014. She reached out to me to design the cov-ers that held her pride and joy togeth-er.

Finding Joy’s cover was created in June 2014.

The Danger of a Wish’s cover was designed in November 2014, after I had more experience with the Adobe Creative Suite software.

One of the top wide receivers at the University of Georgia and in college football, Malcolm Mitchell, approached me about de-signing a platform for him to showcase his love for reading.

In addition, he wanted a space to advertise and sell his first book, The Magician’s Hat.

His site, www.readwithmalcolm.com,gained the attention of ESPN, USA Today and other major news outlets—totaling in over 7000+ views in the first few hours. These are some of the images and branding that I created for his website and social media outlets.

READWITHMALCOLM

UGAHOMECOMING

One of my closest friends, Colton Fowlkes,was represented on the University ofGeorgia’s 2014 Homecoming Court.

As his campaign manager, I created shareable graphics, Facebook cover photos and profile pictures, and even street art to encourage students to vote for Colton.

Colton earned the title of UGA’s 2014 Homecoming King.

Now, if he was crowned because of his personality, people skills or accomplishments on campus, or because of this campaign...you can decide.

At the University of Georgia, there is an extremely large bus bay—roughly 80 x 25 feet—in front of Sanford Stadium. For multiple events and promotional purposes, I have designed and painted huge pieces of work across this street.

The iHERO painting, pictured at the bottom, is the one I’m most proud of.

STREETPAINTING

SHIRTDESIGN

The most fulfilling part of shirt design happens when you see someone wearing your shirt around town. You know that in the morning, they looked through their closet and drawers that morning and chose your design to wear for the day.

VISITORSCENTER

The city of Athens, Georgia has 37 custom bulldog statues scattered around at various businesses, academic buildings and hot spots.

That was until October 2014, when the 38th bulldog moved to town. The University of Georgia Visitors Center Directors believed that my skill and talent could bring their new mascot to life. One of the directors always reminds the staff to “be remarkable.” With that in mind and to pay homage to the staff, I named this bulldog Mark, so the student tour leaders are reminded before embarking on a new tour of our home and school to be remarkable representations of the Bulldawg nation.

Of all the jobs and tasks I have taken on throughout my 22 years of life, this is the proj-ect that I take the most pride in.

How sweet it is to know that Mark will contin-ue living the dream in Athens long after I move on to accomplish bigger projects and fulfill bigger dreams.

VISITORSCENTER

The Universty of Georgia Visitors Center held a conference with the Public Affairs Department. To keep things exciting, they wanted to have an activity in the middle of the day. They decided to hit a pinata, but instead of buying one, they wanted one that represented the Visitors Center. I was asked to make a replica of our tour bus. Both the administration and I were extremely pleased with how it turned out.

Another conference is coming up, and the Visitors Center is in charge of building morale among the colleges for the 2015 Collegiate Information and Visitor Services Association conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

The CIVSA mascot is a civet cat. I met with the administration and discussed their desire to create a “Flat Stanley” character of sorts to send out to all of the colleges who are participating in the conference. On the right with a guitar, you’ll meet the 2015 Nashville Conference mascout Civy, who is currently making his way around 700 colleges and universities around the nation.

SNAPCHAT

When I head home to the small town of Perry, Georgia for holidays and special weekends, I need something to occupy my time and interest. Thank goodness for Snapchat.

VIRALMEME

Truth be told, once I finished the UGA HEROs portion of this portfolio, I decided to step away from my laptop for a while and, well, procrastinate. This happened to be the night the 2015 Grammy Awards aired on CBS.

As I was watching some of these celebrities walk the red carpet, I noticed Rihanna running into the show in a large pink dress just a few minutes before the show started. As soon as I saw her in this tent-like ensemble, I immediately recognized her dress to be the shape of an umbrella, which immediately reminded of her hit song, “Umbrella.”

I quickly Google searched for “umbrella” and “Rihanna grammy 2015” in another. I combined the two images to-gether, found it to be quite humorous and took to Twitter to share my work with my followers.

“You can stand under my umbrella.” -@rihanna #GRAMMYs

From 60 retweets in 30 minutes, to an Instagram account with over 1.2 million followers, to Buzzfeed.com—the meme went viral.

The next morning, I woke up to videos and texts from friends of my Rihanna Umbrella meme on the Today Show and Good Morning America. Later that night, the image was featured on E News! twice throughout the program and on Entertainment Tonight as well.

As of right now, the meme has reached major media outlets such as CNN, NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, E! News, Entertainment Tonight, MTV, VH1, Cosmopolitan, Billboard, and Buzzfeed.