Post #16!

Ok so today we are going to take a blast from the past and compare advertisements from then and now. Lets take a look at a few of them!

This is a great example of how advertisements used to be. This is a basic color scheme with a powerful message. This ad went nation wide during the war. It was a very basic message to understand and with uncle sam pointing directly at you it made you feel like he had a connection with you. Like he wanted you specifically for the army. (obviously.) This poster is just a great example of how someone can get there message across so powerfully just by hanging a picture with words.

Today there is a sad fact of life. And thats that the internet is taking over the world. Nowadays we just do not see ads like they used to back in the day. I asked my friend today if he could think of a good poster ad that I could use for my blog and he could not think of anything.

So with the ever growing technology age I have to say that poster ad's are slowly dying. It is just much easier to look something up on the internet or put it on your website. 

Till next time!

Post #15!

For this post we will be talking about another exercise. This exercise was replacing the head of Amelia Earhart on the picture of the first all women's space crew. This was another photoshop exercise and I was even more excited to learn this one. It will help me make cool photos and "illusion" photos. Anyways here is my final outcome:

Look at that! amazing I didnt know Amelia Earhart was there! haha. So overall I think this exercise was much easier to do then the human corpse. I am really proud of myself though and how realistic this looks. I think the hardest part of this exercise was trying to get the flag to match up. I didn't want the flag to look like it was fake or had been tampered with. The other thing that I struggled with was her neck. I was trying to get the head to line up as good as possible but it was very tough. There is a bit of a two tone difference in her neck due to the fact that I wanted to get rid of the scarf she was wearing in the picture that our lovely professor provided us with. The black and white spots on the neck just did not quite match up perfectly. Also her head looks a little big for her body. And like I was saying the neck looks weird. But I think for only my second or third time using photoshop I think I did a really good job. 

I have to say while doing this project I did feel a little bad. We had to cut out that girls face in the picture to make it look like Amelia Earhart was actually there. That poor girl. Anyways overall I am happy that it looks somewhat realistic. 

Anyways till next time!

Post #14!

Hello classmates and future designers! So this next post as you most likely guessed is about my third project the poster! At the beginning of this project I had a lot of trouble deciding what my topic was going to be. My mind was all over the place but I eventually decided on anti-authoratian. Oooo-Ahhhh.  I decided to pick this topic because it is something that almost everyone can relate to. At one point or another in your life you have said "forget the rules!" and tried to be a cool rebel or something. Don't lie. We ALL had that phase in our life. But anyways lets get back to whats important and thats the design of my poster.

Bam! look at that its my final poster. First things first lets talk about the "slogan". I decided to use these words because that way it gets you to think a little bit. Maybe the government isn't telling us everything.  Maybe everything that we have is actuality an illusion even though we think we are "free" maybe were not. Who knows. The mystery is what I was going for.

The next thing to talk about are the pictures. In the top left and the bottom left I used pictures of things that represent our supposed "freedom" such as The Bill Of Rights and the "justice" symbol. I thought it would be a great way to express what the government tells us. Next in the upper right hand corner there is a picture of drugs, money and a gun. I used this picture to represent the drug contra-band scandal with the CIA which I show a picture of in the lower right hand corner and how they are accused of bringing cocaine into the United States. The one in the middle on the bottom is of Richard Nixon and the watergate scandal. This one did happen back in the day but it is a great example of how you shouldn't always believe what you hear. The last picture is the one in the center of the eyes. I used this picture because it is a great way to show that even though you can see it, does it really happen? Just like  a magician with his tricks. 

Someone in my class (sorry I dont remember your name!) said that this sort of looks like an old playbill too. Even though I did not intend for that to happen I am happy that it did. It really pulls the look together to give it that old timey feel.

Well that is all I have to say for this post so till next time!

Post #13!

Today we are going to talk about one of the exercises. This exercise taught me how to use photoshop! I was really excited to learn how to do this exercise because I have always wanted to learn how to use photoshop as I have no prior experience. What we had to do in this exercise was create a "human corpse" out of images that our text book provided us with.

Tada! This is my final product of the exercise. I think it came out pretty good considering I have never used photoshop before. The first thing I did when doing this exercise was lay out the hands in the background. You can not really see them in this pic but there are hands touching in the background in blue I assure you. I had to line the hands up so it looked like they were touching then i changed the opacity of one of the hands so it gave the illusion that you could see through it. Then I changed the hue to a nice blue just like they did in the book. 

After that I imported all of the pics and arranged them in a way that was closest to an actually human body. Then I changed the opacity and hue to an orangey yellow and there you have my finished product.

Overall I had a lot of fun on this exercise! It taught me a lot of cool skills that I used in my poster project.  So you can only guess what my next post is going to be about.  Anyways I  like the presentation of how this exercise came out. So with that till next time!

Post #12

Alright this might be somewhat of a blog blast so bare with me folks. In this post I am going to talk about our last project, my magazine layout! I think everyone in my class did a great job and had some sweet magazines! But now you all get to be the judge of mine!

Tada! My final project. I know you guys can not see the text but that doesn't matter. Overall I think my project came out well. The presentation is nice and everything is aligned and there are no orphans or dangles. Although I am happy that it came out neat and tidy I wish I had done some cooler stuff and done a two page layout instead of a one page layout. I could have done some crazy cool design but instead I stuck to the boring route. Now I am not saying I hate my final product because I don't I definitely think I would read it if it were presented to me in a magazine layout. I just feel like there is something missing and it could have been improved somehow. Unfortunately I had a MASSIVE and when I say that I mean HUGE brain fart. I just ran out of ideas. I really tried to brainstorm before the due date but I just could not think of anything else that I should add to change the layout without ruining my overall design.

So there is good and bad with everything. The good is that it is really neat and readable. Yay! But it is not as exciting as some of my peers designs. And thats bad. Boo.  I think that this assignment was not the most fun because we didnt have as much creative control as I would usually like. I know that this might be what I am given some day by a client but it was not my favorite assignment.

Anywho thats all I have for you for this post, so till next time!

Post #11!

Long time no blog! So over spring break I was fortunate enough to take a trip to Florida! Not only did I go to Florida but I went to Universal Studios! IT WAS AMAZING. Especially since I am a huge potterhead I got to experience the one and only harry potter world! It was so fun! I actually felt like I was in hogsmeade and I drank so much butter beer it was so good! (non-alcoholic of course). Anyways you are probably wondering what it has to do with communication graphics? well that has nothing to do with it but I also went on a ride at Universal for the movie Despicable Me. If you have not seen it I highly suggest that you go see it! It is adorable and hilarious!!! But while waiting in line for the ride I noticed several posters and there design for this specific ride so lets take a look at a few!

So this is the first "poster" that I saw and I thought it was the coolest thing! It shows you what a minion is made of and how they are designed. Its basically the blue print to creating the perfect minion. I thought it was done very well and you can even see in the lower right hand corner guru's signature. 

The second poster I saw was very simple but visually appealing to me. The reason it says "join us" is because in this ride you become a minion. I think it is adorable and perfect for the audience they are trying to reach for the people waiting in line. They wanted to make it fun and nice to look at. Also if you notice they used the basic color scheme! Red, yellow and blue are all there.

So that is all I have for this post! Basically vacation was awesome and thanks to this class I payed attention to the little details such as the colors, kerning and the overall design of posters while waiting in line for some totally awesome rides! Till next time!

post #10!

Okay so this is the last post that you will see from me for today, I promise. Lets start talking about what ideas I have for my next project.

Here is the example that we were giving for what our final project is to look like for this project. So I think for one of my images that I will include is the color wheel. I was thinking about putting it off to the side and having some text wrapped around it. I thought that this would be useful in the fact that the whole article is about the psychology of color. Like thats the title so of course I am going to have a color wheel thrown in there somewhere! Another cool design element I was think about doing was just sticking to the three basic colors. yellow, red and blue. I say this because within the first paragraph of the article that we will be designing on is the McDonald's colors which are red and yellow. The reason I want to throw Blue in there as well is so that people don't feel rushed like they do at McDonalds. Also looking back to my post about magazines, I might try to change things up a bit and wrap the text in a different way then everyone else. Maybe I will even do a black background. I have a couple ideas in mind but I have no idea what I am going to do yet.

To wrap things up I am very excited to start working on this next project. It should be really fun to design a magazine layout. Maybe someday I will actually be working for the national geographic and have to design a layout of my own for one of their spreads with a fantastic article that will be featured on the cover about my journey around the world. Like I said maybe...in another world haha. But none the less I am excited for this project and cant wait to get started! Till next time!