KAA Poster

I really have enjoyed working with just black and white and making compositions. I like kerning text and rearranging it until it pleases my eye. After looking at this class, it was pointed out that this composition seems very divided between the text and the image, so it was suggested that I make it one composition together. I did this in my redo. It was also mentioned that my concept was a little unclear because I am trying to reach two very different audiences. 1. The students who might not think their work is good enough to submit and 2. The students who have an emotional attachment to their art and don't want to risk it getting sold. 

This was my redo of the original. 

The class as a whole liked this composition and concept much better than the first. I did a COB for the picture of the pot and I think that was really effective. 

Third Design:

This is my third design for the KAA poster. I changed the arrow to make it look more professional. I also align some of my text to make it a little more neat.

New Newsletter!

 

This is my revised newsletter. Since I made this design, I have done TWO MORE redos! Rusty wants us to design faster than we can type and think! :) I am learning loads from this experience. I also think that tracking the time is helpful because once we are out there in the real world eating mac and cheese trying to just stay afloat, we will have a better idea on how much to charge people for designs because we will know about how long such a project could take.

MAE Posters

All three of my MAE posters went pretty well. The class seemed to like my both my concepts and my designs. 1 poster was only text, one was with an image and one was with a vector drawing. All three were allowed one color: black.

For this first poster (vector only) I chose to have a more fun light-hearted concept. I got the idea from a teacher's quote page. After getting the quote, I thought of doing something cute and fun to tie it in. The birds were effective for giving off the summer feel that I wanted. Making things looks summery are pretty easy when you have color and can use all sorts of reds oranges and pinks but being limited on color, I wanted to make sure my graphic could hold it's own. The only problem with this poster was that the tree bleeds off the page and weren't allowed a bleed.

This was my second poster (photo only). I used a photo from thousand hills form last year. I also wanted to the concept to clear. the "blossom" goes along with the blossoming tree. I am not sure what this tree looks like to someone who hasn't seen the color version, but the tree is normally a gorgeous light pink beginning to blossom. Rusty said the transparent boxed worked well and that he liked the concept! Yay :)

This is the third poster (type only). My classmates and Rusty likes the composition and my use of a grid on this poster. I made a point to highlight the most important facts such as the date and time. The date is bolded and the time is pretty big. I was really happy with all three of my designs. All were approved by Rusty with a few tweaks of course. 

Stranded Island

If I was on a stranded island with a mac, charger, and five fonts I would choose these fonts:

Garamond: Is professional and interesting.

Avenir: Is clean, and looks modern.

Clarendon: bold, has presence, and a great serif

Helvetica: no explanation necessary.

ITC Souvenir: This is my default font. It's great.

Tips and Pet Peeves

Tips that Rusty gave us in class:

• Reasons why to be wary of reversed text on black and color backgrounds.
• Nesting files
• Setting up facing pages in InDesign
• Printing duplex on the laser printer
• How to manage negative space in a design - what are you trying to do with negative space?
• "Sexed" punctuation (from Weds.)

Other things I have learned from Rusty: Do's & Don'ts:

• Always use a grid
• no widows or hyphenations 
• Don't use text that needs to be readable to the general public smaller than 10pt
• Set up a margin and/or bleed. Margin Standard= .5 in.  Bleed Standard= .125 in.
• Don't use papyrus, comic sans, bleeding cowboy and many others
• Helvetica is super cool, yet super overused
• justified is NOT modern
• Black backgrounds are an easy fall-back

My Own Viscom Pet Peeves:

• The color red particularly with black
• huge documents/workspace. I like to design within a small area.
• serifs
• heavy strokes
• Photoshop in general

Highway 63 Newsletter

Front cover

Inside Spread

Back

Animation of Second TypeFace Poster

Animation of First TypeFace Poster

Second Typeface Poster

This is my second Typeface Poster. I did a large A filled with all the numbers, and letters from Bookman. I wanted the negative space in the 'A' to really pop, so I made the background black. I also added some periods to balance the piece. With the block of text, the 'A' and the periods, a diagonal line is created. I think this piece has more presence than my last one. 

Type Face Poster

I chose to do a postcard based off the title of the font, "souvenir." It is a creative way to present a font that isn't quite as predictable as simply displaying the font. Simplicity definitely has a time and a place, and in a way the postcard is simple. It is easily recognized as a postcard but also consists of some elements and structures you wouldn't normally find in a postcard. I only used text. No blocks of color or images, which I thought was the assignment. I think using only typography really worked for this particular assignment.