Assignment # 20 Social Issue Poster
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Assignment # 19 Stationary Package
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Assignment # 18 Wordmark
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Assignment # 17 Combimark
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Assignment # 16 Timeline
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Assignment # 15 Illuminated Manuscript
In this assignment we were to mimic the illuminated manuscripts hand drawn my monks during the middle ages. The assignment was sort of two pronged, because we had to make the paper texture and designs in photoshop, but add the words in InDesign. For the paper texture i used many different brushes in black, then put a plain tan background layer on top. This way, I found, I could effectively use layer blends and transparency manipulations to achieve a proper and authentic paper. The rest was simply done with different brushes and some transparency manipulaition. The text was also pretty straightforward, just had to put it in and use the textwrap tool so it would go around my "Initial Cap." I also added some changes in size and color for some important words.
Assignment # 14 Career Poster
For this assignment we were each given a career in the graphic design industry and had to make a poster trying to get people interested in that career. I received freelance designer. After finding out exactly what a freelance designer did, I immediately saw it as kind of a modern day knight, in the sense that they go from assignment to assignment as a knight of the medieval stories would go from quest to quest. So when I realized we had to use a Z pattern, the sword for the diagonal was the first thing to come to mind. It would be the perfect attention grabber to drag the reader away from optical center. For optical center i used the little slogan i made up, emphasizing the word night by using an aptly fitting blackletter font, and making it white (eyes are attracted the light areas). then i put a more full descripton on the bottom of the z, emphasizing it with more blackletter words. The least important information i put going down the diagonal. The spot i chose also created a sort of balance in the page. On a non-orginizational note, the reason i chose to use so many different styles -- from a traditional mexican pattern, to the blackletter and modern fonts, and the collage style of the knight -- was because i thought of a freelance designer as a sort of all encompassing field of design, getting exposed through all the different companies that they work to such different styles of design.
Assignment # 13 Exquisite Corpse
So yeah, this assignment was pretty fun. I liked working on it because it was really open, you know, like I could make it anything I wanted to. So I decided to make it interesting. I thought a thumbs up looked at least kind of like a torso and a neck. For our two principles we had formal balance and emphasis. Formal balance was eazy-e, but the emphasis took a little bit of thought. I realized that human arms are kind of natural leading lines, so I used those to draw the viewer in from the open sides of the picture, but I needed more. So for my background i used the Eiffel Tower, which created a sort of triangular frame around the thumbs up
Assignment # 12 Alphaposter
This picture is pretty self explanatory. I just placed all of these pictures that i took:
- in alphabetical order to create rythym and unity
- all in different angles to create variety
- and on a cork board background to make things interesting
Assignment # 11 Photo + Text Manipulation
This was our first assignment to be finished this semester. We were instructed to take a picture, and then in Photoshop add text to that picture in a way that would be, I presumed, aesthetically pleasing. So my favorite part of this assignment was figuring out exactly what I was going to do in this assignment, as I had already chosen the photo and song lyrics in my head. The song is one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands: "A Stone" by Okkervil River. I knew, as well, that I wanted to put the first part of the lyrics spread out upon the stones, as in the song, the narrator lists out the terrible reasons why his unrequited lover "love[s] a stone." But then there was the rest of the beautifully written song that I had left out, and didn't know what to do with. The rest of the song consists of the narrators reaction to his lover, both metaphorically and symbolically, and with that contrast I knew i did not want those words on the stones as well. Then I saw the sky; freedom and earnesty, as the narrator describes himself, it was perfect. So i put the rest of the lyrics up in the sky. This was difficult, because i knew i wanted them only in the sky, and not the mountain. I ended up using the magic wand tool to cut out the entire sky (this was quite tedious on a grayscale photograph) and place it on a different layer. This allowed me to have the words over the sky, but under the mountins. The rest was easy. I just manipulated the opacity for the words on the stones to make them fit a little better, and the fade on the sky words was done through a Hard Light Layer Blend.
Assignment # 9 Design with Type
Assignment # 8 See What I'm Saying
This was our first assignment concerning typography. We were told to recreate a picture of just about anything, as long as it was more complicated than a football, using just one word over and over. So, as I am not the biggest fan of police brutality, and we have been forced to watch a lot of it in the news lately, what with all this peaceful protesting, I decided to take this opportunity to create a graphic design that was somewhat topical. I chose the recently made infamous picture of the "Pepper Spray Cop," who discharged his spray on completely peaceful students protesting at UC Davis. And for my word, I chose "peaceful." I thought it would be interesting to show the logical gap in using violent force to to silence pacifistic activists. Designing this, though, was quite the challenge in itself. It took some thinking to decide when to make the letters smaller and more dense, or larger and spread out, to emulate shading. Another challenge I stumbled for a little bit on was making the picture look full without too much commotion. Because it was a really involved design, I chose to more or less outline the officers body, leaving some connections to the minds eye, except some majorly darker areas that I wanted to extenuate. One thing that I wanted to make sure to do was point out the word peaceful. I saw the opportunity to do that in the spray of the pepper spray device. This was the most jumbled area of letter (a little bit of symbolism there for ya too), so I thought that could even better bring out the one, uninterrupted "peaceful" by contrast. As you can tell, this was a lot to think about, so I was a little crunched for time, but overall I'm really happy with how this one turned out.
Assignment # 7 Blend Yourself
For our seventh assignment, we were required to "blend" ourselves into a picture of a group of some celebrities. So i chose to become a member of Velvet Underground, a band I have been listening to a good bit lately. I also chose this picture because it had Andy Warhol in it, and I thought that was pppppprety cool. So first i had to take a picture of myself that would fit into the picture. I then place that picture on top of the Velvet Underground shot, and began the real work. First i just used Photoshops brush tool to cut out most of my picture, in a way that made it look like I was standing behind Nico and Andy. I then made both photographs a sort of grayscale, because the original Velvet underground picture had a weird yellow tint that i could not replicate. I did this by using the luminosity layer blend. Then i ran into another problem, the lighting and quality of my photo was much different than the original picture. So I adjusted the levels and curves of my photo until i got a match. Overall I am extremely happy with the outcome of this assignment!!!
Assignment # 6 If I Crossed the Road
This assignment was quite enjoyable for me. I had a jolly good time making it and am really satisfied with the final product. In a nutshell, we were assigned to make a page in a children's book in the style of Stephen Kroninger. This meant that we had to "cut and paste" images, and use them in interesting ways to create a scene. So i used things like a pear and muffin tray to make a guitar body, bottle rockets and a milk jug in place of a pyrotechnic rig, and rocks from Stonehenge for P.A. monitors. For my person's body simply cut out the shape from a spandex and denim texture, for the legs and torso, respectively. I gave him an Eraserhead, and a top hat with elephant trunks for horns. Cause everyone knows that all rockstars wear horned tophats. And here's a little secret, I didn't actually cut the audience out of a paper texture... I just used magic wand to remove the audience from another picture, and filled it with a preset paper texture on Photoshop. And finally the background. I had to use three different pictures for the wall stage, and curtains, because i couldn't find just one that worked. But that was easy with some layer masks.
Assignment # 5 Photomosaic
For the Photomosaic Assignment, we made mosaics..... of photos...... out of photos...... hence the name. To elaborate, we had to pick one image to be our main picture, and about 15 other pictures to place and arrange to compose that larger picture. We used photoshop for this, and accomplished the task with diligence and courage! But really we just placed all of the small photos in a row on a layer under the main image, and copied that row, slightly off center until it filled up the whole page. Then we had to use layer effects to give the impression that the large image was made of the smaller images. So for my larger image I chose the painting "Son of Man" by Rene Margritte, and for my smaller images i chose pictures and paintings of apples, snakes, the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve. I thought it was interesting to recreate a simple masterpiece by using all the parts of the story of original human behavior and its effect on us that Margritte so beautifully expressed
Assignment # 4 Pop-Art
This assignment called us to emulate the pop-art portraits of Andy Warhol by editing pictures of ourselves in photoshop. We also had to use four color schemes, one for each of the pictures. The most challenging part for me was adding shadow to my face with shades of whichever color i had used for my skin. Getting the shades to look real and attractive was difficult and fun. I quite like designs in this style, and had fun with this assignment.
Assignment # 3 Color Wheel
For this assignment i was to create a dicircular color wheel, each circle being composed of two different, but related images. i had to incorporate all 12 primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. For my two images i chose and traced the sickle and hammer, a symbol for the Communist Party, and the clenched fist, a symbol of solidarity and unity. I chose these images because i thought that it would be interesting to see two images associated with the Communist party, which has the connotation of being oppressive and bland, in exciting colors. I also enjoyed the idea of solidarity that both of the symbols represent, and the fact that the color wheel is in a circle with no beginning or end i feel accentuated that idea. That is also why i chose to put no one color directly on top, to convey a sense of equality.
Assignment # 2 Textures/Space/Value
The objective of this particular assignment was to create textures and patterns using only the pen tool on Adobe Illustrator. We had to effectively convey the feeling of each texture. My personal favorite design of this assignment was the first pattern in the middle row. I think it perfectly manipulates positive and negative space because I used negative space for the prominent design but if you actually focus on the black positive space you can see on a whole other pattern.
Assignment # 1 Shape/ Line Symbols
In this assignment I learned the basiccs of making symbols. I was able to more effectively utilize the shape and line tools. I also learned that your brush strokes and points are crucial to an effective design.
