Johnson Afolayan Graphic designer, Lagos
Job № 26–04 Sheet 01 of 01 Proof, 01.10.2026

Johnson Afolayan

Independent graphic designer in Lagos. I build brand identities, packaging and campaigns — work that has to survive ink, screen and shelf.

Scope Identity, packaging, campaigns, presentations
Practising since 2023, Lagos — remote-friendly
Selected work below

Selected work

Four projects, made between 2023 and 2025 — each one taken from first concept to final files, and built to be printed, shipped and used by people who never meet the designer.

  1. 01 Threshold Press Identity & book series 2024
  2. 02 Cadence Quarterly Art direction & editorial 2025
  3. 03 Harmattan Roasters Brand & packaging 2025
  4. 04 Atlas Archive Exhibition identity 2024

Project 01

Threshold Press

Client
Threshold Press, Lagos
Role
Identity & series design
Year
2024
Scope
Wordmark, guidelines, 24 covers, stationery
Threshold Press cover system: the wordmark THRESHOLD over flush-justified PRESS, with a cyan rule and the line Twelve Books One Voice.
Cover 01 of the standing series — masthead and tracked line, nothing else.

Threshold publishes twelve novels a year, each with a different author and almost no shared audience. The cover system they needed could not depend on taste being reinvented every season — it needed a rule. So the identity is one expanded grotesque, set two ways: the masthead at full width, and a tracked line that carries the title and imprint data. A hairline, a numbered spine mark, and whatever the book itself brings to the table.

Four seasons in, twenty-four covers have come off the system without a single exception, and the publisher's in-house designer now sets them without me. That was the actual brief.

Print: sheetfed offset, two colours, 120gsm uncoated.

Guidelines spread: the wordmark on a construction grid with a dashed clear-space box, then the type scale, colour chips and the do and don't rules.
Guidelines spread — construction, clear space, type scale, ink rules; written so the in-house designer can run the system without me.

Project 02

Cadence Quarterly

Client
Cadence Quarterly, independent journal
Role
Art direction & editorial system
Year
2025 — issues 01 to 09
Scope
Grid, type programme, issue templates, production
Cadence Quarterly issue nine cover: expanded CADENCE masthead in white on black above a cyan waveform, with the line Quarterly of sound, memory and place.
Issue 09 cover — the waveform rule doubles as the department marker.

Nine issues in, Cadence runs four recurring departments: criticism, interview, archive, and a score section that no layout I had seen could survive — musical notation needs horizontal room a magazine grid rarely admits. The art direction holds a fixed masthead over a field that flexes: type measure tightens for dense criticism, opens for photography, and the waveform rule marks every department change so readers can navigate the issue by silhouette alone.

The type programme is deliberately small — one grotesque at two widths and one serif for reading — because the production calendar is quarterly and the team is two people. The issue templates run from the same rules, so a campaign ships across print, feed and inbox without redrawing a thing.

Print: web offset, 4/4, uncoated stock, 96 pages.

Template kit: four tagged square social templates — announce, quote, feature and in-print — plus a newsletter header, all built from the waveform rule.
Issue templates — announce, quote, feature, in print, plus the newsletter header; one grid across feed, story and inbox.

Project 03

Harmattan Roasters

Client
Harmattan Roasters, Lagos
Role
Identity & packaging
Year
2025
Scope
Stamp mark, six-SKU bag system, café signage
Harmattan Roasters packaging artwork: a roundel stamp mark with HR monogram above the expanded wordmark HARMATTAN on kraft.
Bag face — kraft stock, two inks, one stamp struck by hand.

Six origins, one shelf, and a café counter where bags stand with their backs to the room. The mark is a stamp, because the packaging is finished by hand: the bag prints in two inks on unbleached kraft, and the roast date is struck once per batch after roasting. The wordmark is set wide enough to read across the counter from four metres, and every SKU shares one frame — only the origin name and the date change, which is how a four-person roastery keeps a packaging system alive without a designer on call.

The roundel does double duty: on the bag it is the mark, on the café window it is the stamp, and on the wholesale carton it is the only thing that prints.

Print: flexo, two colours on unbleached kraft, hand-stamped dates.

Project 04

Atlas Archive

Client
Atlas Archive — permanent collection
Role
Exhibition identity
Year
2024
Scope
Identity, wayfinding, 240-page catalogue
Atlas Archive exhibition artwork: ATLAS set huge over a survey grid, with ARCHIVE tracked below, a cyan block, coordinates and registration marks.
Exhibition poster — survey grid, coordinates, one block of process cyan.

Atlas Archive gathered a hundred and forty maps, plates and instruments into a single hall, most of them drawn by people who never called themselves designers. The identity borrows their working language: a survey grid, coordinate marks, and one block of process cyan for wayfinding — nothing on the walls that a cartographer would not recognise. The programme ran a full season, with a wall system the gallery team could re-set between rotations and a catalogue that had to bind a hundred and forty captions without ever feeling like a ledger.

Wayfinding, poster and catalogue all run from the same grid, so the exhibition reads as one object from the street to the last vitrine. The walls carry forty pictograms cut to one stroke weight, and that same geometry tiles into the pattern used on the endpapers and the shop bags.

Print: offset, 4/4 plus spot cyan. Catalogue: sewn bound, 240 pages.

What I do

Six to twelve weeks, start to finish: a written brief, concept routes, feedback rounds, and files a printer — or your team — can open on the first try.

  1. 01

    Brand identity systems

    Marks, lettering, type and colour systems, plus guidelines written to be used, not filed — and the glyph tests that prove a script can set its language.

  2. 02

    Presentations & decks

    Identity decks, brand strategy presentations, one-pagers and pitch material — designed to be presented and to keep working after they leave the room.

  3. 03

    Packaging & print production

    Structures, artwork and press-ready files — and a press check when the job needs someone standing next to the printer.

  4. 04

    Campaigns & social systems

    Art direction, key visuals and campaign routes, with social templates that hold together from billboard to story frame.

  5. 05

    Editorial & publications

    Magazines, books, catalogues and reports: grids, type programmes and image direction, followed all the way to press.

  6. 06

    Systems & assets

    Templates, icon sets, illustrations, patterns and brand kits your team can run without me, documented well enough that they do.

Studio

Signage kit board: an ink directional panel reading MAIN EXIT with a cyan arrow and five language lines, two smaller signs for STUDIO 4 and RECEPTION, a colour bar and production specs.
Signage specimen — A1 board, five language layers, PDF/X-4, 3 mm bleed, outlined type.
Stationery set: Threshold Press letterhead, business card front and reverse, compliment slip and DL envelope, laid out on a grid with captions.
Stationery for Threshold Press — letterhead, card front and reverse, compliment slip, DL envelope.

I'm Johnson Afolayan, a graphic designer in Lagos. Three years of professional work across identities, packaging and campaigns — taken from first concept to final files, most of it printed. The portfolio is deliberately ahead of the CV: complete systems, not just hero shots.

I work remotely with small teams: clear briefs, concept routes, revisions, organised handover. I take feedback well, keep deadlines, and I care as much about the unglamorous half — grids, artwork checks, press-ready files — as the launch. I set type in Nigerian languages as a side discipline, and I keep every proof I've printed.

Sequence

  1. 2024– Independent designer Identity, packaging, campaigns — remote
  2. 2023–24 Junior designer Studio Kalamo — Lagos
  3. 2021–22 Design intern Bourdillon Press — Lagos

BA Visual Communication, University of Lagos, 2022.

Toolkit

  • Draw Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign — artwork, retouch, press-ready layouts
  • Systems Figma — components, prototypes and handoff files for team and developer
  • Motion After Effects — covers in motion, title cards and social loops
  • Assist AI-assisted tooling in daily production, where it earns its place
Three poster applications side by side: a Threshold Press launch poster, a Cadence issue 10 poster with waveform, and a kraft Harmattan Roasters poster with stamp roundel.
Poster applications from three of the systems — Threshold's launch night, Cadence issue 10, Harmattan on the café wall.

Have a job
for me?

hello@johnsonafolayan.studio

Available from November 2026 — open to a permanent place on a creative team, and to select freelance briefs. Send a brief, a deadline and whatever has already been decided; I reply within two working days.

Based in Lagos (GMT+1), working with clients anywhere.