Week 3.2

This poster is an ad done in InDesign for the Modern Art Gallery's Plus 3 Exhibition. I remember this one taking a lot of playing around to get something acceptable. We were supposed to be using a design grid to do it, specifically the modular grid.

Anyway, the color scheme was something I chose early on, but didn't actually implement until later. Since the design was for the Modern Art Gallery, and modern art has connotations of red and black to me, those are the colors I wanted to use, with a few spots of gray to temper it a little. The typefaces were also chosen for the modern aesthetic, partly because they were sans serifs, and partly because I wanted emphasis on the artists. Because of that, I gave the artists a heavier look than the rest of the information to draw more attention to them.

The biggest problem I remember having was getting the names of the artists to fit on the poster. Originally, I didn't have them tilted, nor did I have them intersecting. After some time of failing to get it work horizontally or vertically, I got frustrated and tilted and intersected them, possibly throwing out the grid in the process. I'd never liked the grid idea anyway; I just wanted the project to work. And it helped, much to my relief. After that, all I had to do was toy with the arrangement of the other components and add the color and design elements to the poster, and it became what it is now.

Week 3.1

Before I started college, I used to do minimal web design for myself and some friends - but that didn't entail designing websites from scratch so much as designing layouts for existing websites. Even so, it gave me enough experience in HTML and CSS to not be completely lost when I had to take web design as a class.

This is my first "real" website design, I guess you could say. It was made in Photoshop CS3 as a project for which I chose the Downtown Dance Studio. My concept for it was fairly simple: it was a dance studio - and one for ballet, if the provided logo was any indication - so I went for elegance. The main color for the website was taken from the logo; I didn't think that, were this for a real client, deviating too far would go over too well, and I knew I could make it work. I ran into one problem with using that color, however; it was too flat and plain to be used as a background for the text boxes and navigation bar. So I tried using a gradient overlay, and got the effect it has now, which was much more to my liking.

As for the text itself, I still wanted to keep true to the client's already existing identity. I seached through serif typefaces to find one similar to the logo's, and I actually ended up finding the same one. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have used that typeface for the body text and kept it to the headers and navigation links. I might change that in the future for better readability.

I didn't have that many problems with the design. The main thing that bothered me was that there was a lot of white space between each component that made it look... oddly spaced, I guess? I'm not sure what led me to try borders, but once I did, it made it look much less like the parts of the site were floating. But there was still a bit of white space that I didn't like, so I made some decorations out of dashed lines to fill it up. That made everything look more unified, and completed the design.

Week 2.2

My mafia spider illustration was done in Adobe Illustrator (surprise, surprise). The assignment was to make a character illustration out of a spider, and the idea for it came out of a conversation with some friends - we were joking about mafia stories at the time. And since spiders aren't generally viewed as pleasant creatures, and the mafia isn't necessarily a pleasant group of people, I thought it fit. The colors - black, gray, and red - were chosen because they were both traditional mafia colors and common colors of spiders.

The main problem I had with the illustration was the spider's pose. At first, I had two of his "hands" resting on a couple of guns sitting on the desk, but that looked a little awkward and had no real focus to it. This was solved by making the spider hold up one of the guns and point it at the viewer, which both gave an actual focal point to the illustration and gave it more of a mafia feel.

Week 2.1

This is a model I did of Scrabble pieces created in Maya. The assignment was to make a model that used text in some way. I cycled through a couple different ideas before deciding on this one, and I wanted to try engraving the letters into the pieces because I didn't like the look of mapped text. I tried to get as close to the actual font used on Scrabble pieces as I could, so I used Arial for the engravings. There was really only one reason behind the color choice: green looked the best with the glassy material I wanted to use.

I had one major problem with the model: the point values on the pieces. What I was trying to do was to first engrave the letter, and then engrave them into the piece, and I got that to work once, somehow. Any other time I tried it, it failed. I never actually figured out a solution to that, but the teacher did offer a suggestion that I mean to try out.

The shadows were a bit of an issue too, but if the model can fool people into thinking the pieces are real instead of computer generated, I'm happy with it.

Week 1.2

I've always liked typography. The thing is, most of what I've seen from that style of art used complete words and sentences, and sometimes even built a picture. I haven't seen much in the way of abstract typography pieces. But with so many different typefaces to choose from, I thought it could look nice, if it was done right.

So I tried my hand at it. I actually had no idea where to start, but all it took was a little playing around with letterforms and glyphs, and then I had this little composition. What I like most about it is that there's just a small amount of color. That's a style I have always enjoyed seeing, and I don't like leaving something devoid of at least a touch of color, so I tried it out. I added in the two grays after that because I didn't want it to be stark black and white and the one bright blue. That can be a hard transition to make sometimes, so I tried to soften it up a little. I like to think I succeeded, but that is, of course, up to the person looking at it.

Week 1.1

This was a poster done for an illustration class last year. The instructions were to create a poster advertising a "modern" product, but to use a vintage illustration style.

I remember having a pretty hard time just coming up with an idea. I couldn't think of what product I should use - I just knew I didn't want to use a computer or a phone. The problem was, every time I tried to think about it, those were the two products my mind kept bringing me back to, no matter how much I tried to stray away from it.

So I stopped thinking about it for a while. Not completely, of course; it was still in the back of my mind. I simply refused to concentrate on it while I tried to work on other things. That's what ended up saving me on this project, I think.

When the idea finally hit me, I was sketching. It wasn't meant to be for any project in any class; I was just taking a break to to draw whatever came to mind. Before I knew it, I had the base sketch of the lady in the poster. She gained some headphones, and I briefly considered having those as the product, but they felt too out of focus with her being cut off on the right side. That look didn't do much for the headphones in the way of a spotlight. So I took it a little bit further, and drew what might be connected to them: an MP3 player. It got easier after that. I didn't do much in the way of revising anything from the sketch to the next step, even though I probably should have. All I had to do was just get everything laid out and put in the final touches. I didn't realize it until some time after it was finished, but I'd made a poster I could be proud of.

It's hard not to stress about a project when you're on a tight schedule. I have a big problem with that sometimes. But I think that sort of stress makes it a lot better when you actually get a chance to relax and put the cause of it out of mind for a minute or two. I know my concepts tend to turn out better when I'm not concentrating on and putting all my energy into it. This "Mozart MP3" poster simply brought that to my attention, and I'm still thankful for it.