Looking back, this is either my favorite project, or tied for #1 at least. This project combined two things I love, design and indie games. Going into this, I was not expecting this to come out so well. I was concerned at the time that my portfolio and skillset was stagnating in a comfort zone, and so I challenged myself to do something different, and the result was phenomenal.

For this project, I took inspiration from old Sears Gaming catalogs and wanted to bring some of that energy into the current indie gaming space. I recreated a few pieces of my favorite art from various games (Monstro from The Binding of Isaac, and Cuphead and Mugman from Cuphead), with a logo inspired by the design of Moonlighter. The logo ended up being, to this day, my favorite single logo I’ve designed, and was for a brief while the inspiration for a version of my personal branding logo. Everything about this project has so much personality and life to it, and it was overall an incredible experience.

The name Portal was not taken from the game Portal, I actually completely forgot that the Portal series even existed until someone mentioned it during a presentation. The original name for this catalog was “The Creator’s Portal” and it was more heavily focused on people who create art and designs for gaming, but I ultimately simplified it to just “Portal.” Happy accident, or silly mistake? I don’t really care which, I love it either way.