One-line summary: An illustrated zine and companion poster exploring one of the world's earliest civilizations through hand-drawn artwork and narrative-driven design.

This project explores Mesopotamia — one of the world's earliest civilizations — through two connected formats: an educational zine and a standalone poster. The zine uses sequential illustrated spreads, short descriptive text, and a warm, sunbaked color palette to walk the reader through key icons of the civilization, from the Ishtar Gate to the Lamassu statues to the ziggurats. The poster distills the same world into a single striking image: a central figure framed symmetrically by monumental stone guardians, with bold typography anchoring the piece. Together, the two formats show how the same subject can be handled at different scales — one built for close reading, one built to be read at a glance.

Illustrator & Editorial Designer — I handled research, hand-drawn illustration, page layout, and typography for both the zine and the poster, working entirely in Adobe Photoshop.

This was a self-directed editorial project: take a historical subject with a lot of visual richness — architecture, mythology, artifacts — and turn it into a piece of educational design that's genuinely engaging to look through, not just informative.

Research: I chose a handful of the most visually distinct icons of Mesopotamian culture — the Ishtar Gate, the Lamassu, the ziggurats — as anchor points, prioritizing subjects with strong silhouettes and interesting stories over exhaustive coverage.

Illustration: Each spread was hand-drawn and painted digitally, using a warm, textured palette (ochre, dusty blue, deep indigo) to evoke sun-worn stone and desert light, giving the piece a tactile, almost archival feel rather than a flat infographic look.

Editorial pacing: The zine is structured like a small guidebook — short blocks of accessible, conversational text paired with each illustration, so the pacing feels like discovery rather than a lecture.

Poster composition: For the poster, I applied strict visual hierarchy and symmetry — a central figure flanked by oversized Lamassu statues — so the piece reads clearly even at a glance, with bold display type doing the work of a title card.

Zine: "Mesopotamia: Icons in Stone" — multi-spread illustrated booklet

Companion poster — "Mesopotamia: Where Civilizations Began"

Adobe Photoshop · Hand-drawn Illustration · Editorial/Publication Design · Typography · Visual Hierarchy & Layout