Two Line Design
Objective - Create a design in Adobe Illustrator that uses a maximum of two lines, three colors, and the Gestalt principle of closure.
Direction - I chose to use the head of an Agile 8-string guitar as my design. I only used the head of the guitar so that I could emphasize the eight tuning pegs and still leave the rest of the guitar to be created in your head. I included the text "got djent?" to hint towards the kind of music that many people play on an eight string. "Djent" is a guitar technique often used in progressive metal, but many people would go as far to say that it is a genre of music in itself.
Likes - I really enjoyed making this design. Illustrator is a program that I have worked with in the past, so there wasn't a whole lot that I needed to learn in order to make my design.
Dislikes - The only dislike I had was at the end, because the design had to be just lines with no effects, it looked really plain. I think that after we go back and edit them, I will like how the design looks a lot more.
Time - This design took about 4 hours to complete.
Direction - I chose to use the head of an Agile 8-string guitar as my design. I only used the head of the guitar so that I could emphasize the eight tuning pegs and still leave the rest of the guitar to be created in your head. I included the text "got djent?" to hint towards the kind of music that many people play on an eight string. "Djent" is a guitar technique often used in progressive metal, but many people would go as far to say that it is a genre of music in itself.
Likes - I really enjoyed making this design. Illustrator is a program that I have worked with in the past, so there wasn't a whole lot that I needed to learn in order to make my design.
Dislikes - The only dislike I had was at the end, because the design had to be just lines with no effects, it looked really plain. I think that after we go back and edit them, I will like how the design looks a lot more.
Time - This design took about 4 hours to complete.
Cover Competition
Objective - This project was a competition to see who could design the best cover for the Student Handbook or the Commencement Program. My design was for the Student Handbook.
Direction - I wanted to try out layering different things on top of each other for this project. I used a different color scheme on the top and bottom sections than in the middle and put the top sections in front of the compass rose graphic in the middle. This created the illusion that the middle is almost like a part of the cover that is missing and you are looking through it.
Likes - I enjoyed being able to fully use Illustrator in this project. With my last project I felt that everything looked a little bit too simple. With this one I had the freedom to use effects and layer different graphics to make certain things stand out.
Dislikes - There weren't many things that I disliked about this project. I came up with an idea that I believed to be good enough to use pretty quickly. The only thing that I didn't like was that the project felt just a little bit restricted. It had to represent the school well so there were only a few graphics that would make sense and the colors should have been school colors. It wasn't really a big deal to me and I got around it to create a graphic that I thought would work well for the Student Handbook.
Time - It took me about 5 hours to complete this project.
Direction - I wanted to try out layering different things on top of each other for this project. I used a different color scheme on the top and bottom sections than in the middle and put the top sections in front of the compass rose graphic in the middle. This created the illusion that the middle is almost like a part of the cover that is missing and you are looking through it.
Likes - I enjoyed being able to fully use Illustrator in this project. With my last project I felt that everything looked a little bit too simple. With this one I had the freedom to use effects and layer different graphics to make certain things stand out.
Dislikes - There weren't many things that I disliked about this project. I came up with an idea that I believed to be good enough to use pretty quickly. The only thing that I didn't like was that the project felt just a little bit restricted. It had to represent the school well so there were only a few graphics that would make sense and the colors should have been school colors. It wasn't really a big deal to me and I got around it to create a graphic that I thought would work well for the Student Handbook.
Time - It took me about 5 hours to complete this project.
InfoGraphic
Objective - The objective of this project was to create an infographic on a certain topic in Illustrator. An infographic is simply a graphic that displays a lot of information to the reader in an organized way. Research was to be done on your specific topic and then organized. The final product had to be 12" x 36".
Direction - The topic that I chose was the unrest in the Middle East. I used a texture on the background that resembled sand which many people would connect to the area where these events took place. The main focus of this infographic was the map in the center. I used the map to connect the text describing the events in each country and a picture of their flag with their location on the map. I also created a bar graph at the bottom to show the death tolls in the main countries affected by the protests and uprisings that occurred.
Likes - I liked that I was lucky enough to get an interesting topic. It really made researching it a lot easier because I was interested in learning about what was going on in the Middle East and Northern Africa. I also really enjoy working in Illustrator, so I was comfortable enough with it to make the infographic look how I wanted it to.
Dislikes - The main dislike I had about this project was trying to get everything fit how I wanted it on the page. I went through a couple of different layouts for the text for the "Overview" and the descriptions of the top two countries. I just for some reason could not organize them to be symmetrical like I wanted. After a little bit of messing around with it, I got the layout that I wanted.
Time - I worked on this project for about 7 hours.
Direction - The topic that I chose was the unrest in the Middle East. I used a texture on the background that resembled sand which many people would connect to the area where these events took place. The main focus of this infographic was the map in the center. I used the map to connect the text describing the events in each country and a picture of their flag with their location on the map. I also created a bar graph at the bottom to show the death tolls in the main countries affected by the protests and uprisings that occurred.
Likes - I liked that I was lucky enough to get an interesting topic. It really made researching it a lot easier because I was interested in learning about what was going on in the Middle East and Northern Africa. I also really enjoy working in Illustrator, so I was comfortable enough with it to make the infographic look how I wanted it to.
Dislikes - The main dislike I had about this project was trying to get everything fit how I wanted it on the page. I went through a couple of different layouts for the text for the "Overview" and the descriptions of the top two countries. I just for some reason could not organize them to be symmetrical like I wanted. After a little bit of messing around with it, I got the layout that I wanted.
Time - I worked on this project for about 7 hours.
Text Wrap
This project was created in InDesign. We walked through how to do text wrap in InDesign together on the acoustic guitar, and for some odd reason there is a black line on mine which appears when I export it as a jpeg. After that we were to find an image on the internet and make one ourselves. The intention was to practice using the text wrap feature that InDesign offers. I chose to base my project around the TV show "Breaking Bad". I used a live-traced image of the main character of the show, Walter White, as the object that the text was wrapping around. I included a description of the show along with information about the show coming back on this summer in the text. After working with it I can say that the text wrap feature in InDesign is not only extremely easy to use but it is also very helpful in creating a page layout project.
Book Jacket
Objective - This objective of this project was to create a book jacket for your favorite book using InDesign. It had to include all of the parts that a normal book jacket would have.
Direction - I chose to make a book jacket for Stephen King's "It". I designed the front cover based off of the story, and then created it in Illustrator. I did most of the background stuff and graphics in Illustrator, then placed them into InDesign. Most of the text was done in InDesign instead of Illustrator because of how well the program handles and organizes text.
Likes - As with the other projects I have done, I really enjoy working with InDesign. I also liked having the freedom to take the cover of "It" and make it look however I wanted to. When I designed the cover I didn't go off of any of the existing covers for the book. I was a huge fan of the book, so I wanted to create a cover that, I felt, really reflected the story.
Dislikes - One thing that I had trouble with was finding quotes from different people about the book to put on the book jacket. I didn't have a copy of the book with me and they were hard to find on the internet. There were also a few things that I intended to do to make the clown face look more realistic, but ended up deciding not to because they looked differently than I wanted.
Time - It took me about 20 hours to complete this whole project.
Direction - I chose to make a book jacket for Stephen King's "It". I designed the front cover based off of the story, and then created it in Illustrator. I did most of the background stuff and graphics in Illustrator, then placed them into InDesign. Most of the text was done in InDesign instead of Illustrator because of how well the program handles and organizes text.
Likes - As with the other projects I have done, I really enjoy working with InDesign. I also liked having the freedom to take the cover of "It" and make it look however I wanted to. When I designed the cover I didn't go off of any of the existing covers for the book. I was a huge fan of the book, so I wanted to create a cover that, I felt, really reflected the story.
Dislikes - One thing that I had trouble with was finding quotes from different people about the book to put on the book jacket. I didn't have a copy of the book with me and they were hard to find on the internet. There were also a few things that I intended to do to make the clown face look more realistic, but ended up deciding not to because they looked differently than I wanted.
Time - It took me about 20 hours to complete this whole project.
Athletic Schedule
Objective - We were required to create an athletic schedule for a specific sport using InDesign. It had to include graphics that represented this sport along with a table that contained information about each game. The table had to include the date, time, opponent, and location. The final product was printed using the offset press.
Direction - Dustin and I created the athletic schedule for the boys' tennis team. We created the tennis racket and tennis ball graphics in Illustrator. After putting them into InDesign we mirrored them and created copies to keep the project formally balanced. We also included the table of information in the top half of the graphic.
Likes - I enjoyed working with InDesign, other than the boxes that were put around everything that was inserted into the project. I think that it made organizing all of the different components of this schedule a lot easier. I also enjoyed working with the offset press which I have worked with in the past. This project was also made with a specific purpose. It wasn't just a cool design that we came up with and created using computer software.
Dislikes - The main thing I disliked about working on this design was the boxes that InDesign puts around everything. It made working with things a little weird and I did not figure out how to make them go away until I was just about finished with the whole project. Other than that I did not have much to complain about with this project.
Time - Dustin and I spent about 15 hours working on this project.
Direction - Dustin and I created the athletic schedule for the boys' tennis team. We created the tennis racket and tennis ball graphics in Illustrator. After putting them into InDesign we mirrored them and created copies to keep the project formally balanced. We also included the table of information in the top half of the graphic.
Likes - I enjoyed working with InDesign, other than the boxes that were put around everything that was inserted into the project. I think that it made organizing all of the different components of this schedule a lot easier. I also enjoyed working with the offset press which I have worked with in the past. This project was also made with a specific purpose. It wasn't just a cool design that we came up with and created using computer software.
Dislikes - The main thing I disliked about working on this design was the boxes that InDesign puts around everything. It made working with things a little weird and I did not figure out how to make them go away until I was just about finished with the whole project. Other than that I did not have much to complain about with this project.
Time - Dustin and I spent about 15 hours working on this project.
T-Shirts
Objective - This project was our only one this year that involved screen printing. For this project, in our groups, we were to create a t-shirt design for one of the sports teams. After we created our design on the computer and got it approved we had to burn it onto a screen and print enough shirts for the whole team.
Direction - My group was chosen to design the shirts for the softball team. We started off with four different designs and sent them to the coach to choose the best one. The one we ended up using was pretty much a combination of all of the designs. It had small elements from all four starting designs. The final step was printing the shirts, which we finished up in two days without any major errors.
Likes - I liked that, as with the athletic schedule, this project was created for a specific purpose. The shirts that we printed were actually given out to the softball team. I also liked the screen printing part of the project. Since we had four people working on it, the whole process went pretty smoothly. We had each person on a different job and finished up about 30 2-sided shirts in two class periods.
Dislikes - I didn't really have many dislikes about this project. The only thing I wasn't a huge fan of was that this was a group project. Based off of my past experience with working with other people in this class, I was a little bit worried about how this project would go. Overall, I think that working with this group was not all that bad.
Time - This project took around 10 hours to complete.
Direction - My group was chosen to design the shirts for the softball team. We started off with four different designs and sent them to the coach to choose the best one. The one we ended up using was pretty much a combination of all of the designs. It had small elements from all four starting designs. The final step was printing the shirts, which we finished up in two days without any major errors.
Likes - I liked that, as with the athletic schedule, this project was created for a specific purpose. The shirts that we printed were actually given out to the softball team. I also liked the screen printing part of the project. Since we had four people working on it, the whole process went pretty smoothly. We had each person on a different job and finished up about 30 2-sided shirts in two class periods.
Dislikes - I didn't really have many dislikes about this project. The only thing I wasn't a huge fan of was that this was a group project. Based off of my past experience with working with other people in this class, I was a little bit worried about how this project would go. Overall, I think that working with this group was not all that bad.
Time - This project took around 10 hours to complete.
Digital Colorization
Objective - This project was created completely in Photoshop. We were supposed to trace an image that we found on the internet onto tracing paper and then scan it as a jpeg on the computer. The final goal was to take that jpeg of the traced image and colorize it in Photoshop to make it look as closely as possible to the original image.
Direction - The image that I used was the album cover for the The Avarice Of Man by the band The Red Shore. I chose this design because I really enjoy this album and I think the cover is really interesting. I still have no clue what it really is but it looks awesome so I wanted to give it a shot. It also gave me the chance to use shading instead of just colorizing a picture using flat colors. Also, because this was my first time using Photoshop, I improvised on making some of the elements of this image, such as the clouds and sky in the background.
Likes - I didn't know whether or not I would enjoy working with Photoshop or not going into this project. After working with it for a few class periods I knew that I would really like it. In my opinion, it is a lot easier to work with than Illustrator. I also really liked the image I was working on, which made putting in a huge amount of time working on it not so difficult.
Dislikes - The only real dislike that I had was my lack of experience in Photoshop. Because it was my first time using the program, I didn't know any of the tricks that went into doing things such as digital colorization. I only knew the basics that were taught to us before we started the project. The final image did not come out looking as perfect as I wanted it to be, but I think with a little more experience I could have made it look quite a lot better.
Time - This was easily the most time consuming project of all of them. It took about 25 hours to complete.
Direction - The image that I used was the album cover for the The Avarice Of Man by the band The Red Shore. I chose this design because I really enjoy this album and I think the cover is really interesting. I still have no clue what it really is but it looks awesome so I wanted to give it a shot. It also gave me the chance to use shading instead of just colorizing a picture using flat colors. Also, because this was my first time using Photoshop, I improvised on making some of the elements of this image, such as the clouds and sky in the background.
Likes - I didn't know whether or not I would enjoy working with Photoshop or not going into this project. After working with it for a few class periods I knew that I would really like it. In my opinion, it is a lot easier to work with than Illustrator. I also really liked the image I was working on, which made putting in a huge amount of time working on it not so difficult.
Dislikes - The only real dislike that I had was my lack of experience in Photoshop. Because it was my first time using the program, I didn't know any of the tricks that went into doing things such as digital colorization. I only knew the basics that were taught to us before we started the project. The final image did not come out looking as perfect as I wanted it to be, but I think with a little more experience I could have made it look quite a lot better.
Time - This was easily the most time consuming project of all of them. It took about 25 hours to complete.
Illustrator Tutorials
All of these were tutorials that we were assigned to do in Illustrator after we were finished with all of our other projects. None of them took very long. All together I probably spent about 5 hours on them. My favorite one to do was the chess piece simply because of how the final product came out. It was a fairly simple project but it came out looking pretty complex. I did get a little frustrated because some of the tutorials were for an older version of Illustrator, but I found my way around it and improvised to make the graphics look how I wanted. I definitely think that the skills that went into creating these images are things that I could use in the future in designing other things.