Psyche Inspired: Addison Mayhew

Institution: Rochester Institute of Technology

Major: New Media Design

Psyche Inspired Class: 2025-2026

A vector poster with flat shapes and grain texture shows NASA’s Psyche spacecraft flying over Mars’s Valles Marineris. Tall canyon walls in reds, oranges, and yellows fill the scene with blocky shadows. Above is a starry blue sky. White text reads “Onward to Psyche” at the top and “Valles Marineris” at the bottom, with “Mars Flyby 2026,” “NASA Psyche Mission,” and the Psyche Inspired logo below.

Onward to Psyche

Addison Mayhew

December 12th, 2025

Major: New Media Design

Genre/Medium: Vector Drawing in Figma

About the work:

Inspired by the iconic WPA National Parks posters that circulated throughout the United States during the 1930s and 1940s, this poster “Onward to Psyche” aims to celebrate the future of space exploration while acknowledging the visual language of our past. The original WPA series was designed to make America’s national parks feel accessible, exciting, and worth protecting. By borrowing that artistic heritage, this work places Mars—specifically Valles Marineris—into the lineage of landscapes once reserved for Earth. The canyon system on Mars is visually reminiscent of formations like Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon, making it a fitting site for a retro-futurist invitation.

The poster commemorates the NASA Psyche mission and the forecasted Mars flyby in May 2026. The Psyche spacecraft appears at the center of the composition: crisp, geometric, and unmistakably technological, contrasting with the soft, stratified shapes of the canyon below. Although the canyon contains the brightest colors in the piece, the spacecraft remains the visual focal point, flying overhead. This reinforces the idea that space is not distant or cold, but familiar and reachable—another place we might someday explore more freely. Read more…

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A digital illustration in a blueprint style shows the Psyche spacecraft orbiting the Psyche asteroid, drawn as a large, irregular shape. Thin white vector lines appear on a dark blue background, forming circular orbital paths, measurement marks, labels, and technical diagrams. Earth appears nearby as a small labeled sphere.

A Design for Discovery

Addison Mayhew

February 6th, 2026

Major: New Media Design

Genre/Medium: Vector Illustration in Adobe Illustrator

About the work:

“A Design for Discovery” is a digital vector illustration inspired by the Psyche mission and humanity’s enduring pursuit of knowledge. Rendered in a blueprint-based visual language, the piece frames space exploration not as distant science fiction, but as the result of deliberate human ingenuity, courage, and care. At its core, the work asks the viewer to consider how far intention and curiosity can carry us—and how something once thought unreachable can become tangible through planning, collaboration, and belief.

The blueprint aesthetic is central to the meaning of the piece. Blueprints represent the unseen labor behind discovery: the calculations, revisions, failures, and quiet moments of problem-solving that precede every monumental achievement. By presenting Psyche—a metal-rich asteroid believed to be the exposed core of a planetesimal—as a drafted, measured object, the illustration emphasizes that exploration is not accidental; it is engineered. Every line, label, and orbit is a testament to human persistence and our desire to understand the ancient structures that shaped our solar system. Read more…

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