Graphic Design

I would just like to say, I feel like I knew nothing about the meaning of graphic design before this class. I remember the one class we had when Rebecca was presenting her poster and she was telling us a story about how she was explaining to her mom what graphic design was, and her mom really didn't understand.

I feel like this is is when people have to put themselves in the shoes of a graphic designer. I knew that graphic design meant to create a visual piece of texts and/or images to tell a message. Well, since I have been in the shoes of a graphic designer for the past 10 weeks, I think graphic design means a lot more. I think it means to create an element of visual appeal to anything that you want to catch the interest of someone or a group of people. To create this visual appeal you must play with colors, hues, tones, tints, fonts, leading, kearning, layout, text justification, images, and make sure that it all represents a certain emotion or message for the viewer.

Graphic Design is an art. You must be creative, flexible, fearless to try new things, and you must step out of the box and create something that will appeal to others. You have to learn different techniques from different programs. It is a lot of learning and it takes a lot of effort to make one little poster, or one brochure. No one really knows how much work goes into the font, colors, and images on anything, and I think that this class did a great job teaching me that I shouldn't over look design, because people spent a long time making sure I don't overlook it. Trust me, since I started this class I have to make sure I notice everything reguarding fonts, leading and kearning!

Brochure. BRIDES BRIDES BRIDES!

I have said many times this semester how I have wanted to be an event planner, so all semester long I have been working on a portfolio in my Public Relations writing class, that is extremely focused on planning an event called "Brides for the Cure." Unfortunately, I do not ant to post on the internet any of my creative ideas for this event, but you will all see in class a sneak peak of what I have been working on this semester. I am presenting this brochure, with the rest of my portfolio in New York City, when I will be at my intership next year, in hopes to be able to actually plan this event and help out a great cause.

My brochure is extremely PINK! I love it. Obviously, pink relates to breast cancer awareness, because the breat cancer awareness ribbon is pink. The event will be donating to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and their logo is pink, and honestly, I just really like pink.

I made sure I paid extreme attention to leading, kearning, orphans, widows, spacing, fonts, colors, images, and sizes of everything. I think it turned out great!

Critiques!

I really like when we do critiques in class. I feel like I learn a lot from everyone in class! I also feel like it is a great way to get to know eachother. Just like how our blog layouts fit who we are, I think our projects definately are a reflection of our personalities. Some people are bright and loud, and their projects are too. Some people, are dark and mysterious just like their posters. Others are super funny, and their instabooks were halarious. Some people are very loving and passionate and their posters reflect love or passion for an important cause.

I feel like that I learned that design is a reection of the designer. Everyone has their own opion, and everyone likes things in all different ways. I love when things are centered and girly, some people are more black and white with a solid strong type. I think that is what is great about our critiques, we can all be ourselves and know that others think our designs are interesting.

I also like the critiques because then we can vent about our struggles with the Adobe programs and that others are fighting the same struggles. I think all of us had issues understanding the difference between Illustrator and InDesign, we are confused when to save things as TIFF, JPEG, or PDF. We all had issues getting images the right size and resoultion without straching it or making it pixelated. I know I had a hell of a time with Photoshop. The only thing I really know how to do in photoshop is the magnetice lasso tool, and I have definately mastered it! hahah

FedEx.Kinkos.Headache Headache Headache!

Wow, I really did not think that printing a few projects this semester was going to be such a hassle. For the first project, I asked them to print my magazine layout and mount it. They printed it, and sold me poster board to paste it on myself. It started to look sloppy, so I had to get creative and spend an hour hot gluing popscicle sticks around the edge to make it go along with the theme of my pumpkin magazine. It was so time consuming, and I think that a properly mounded display would have looked more proffessional.

For the instabook project I learned to use the copier in the library. I feel like I was a lot more succesfful that on this project with printing.

The next project that I took to FedEx was the poster. As you can see from my previous blog posts, I printed 2 different posters. I went to a different FedEx this time. Unfortunately, they couldn't mount it there for me. The guy was super nice! His name was Justin. Justin pulled up my posters for me on dropbox and emailed the another fedex for me to pick up when I get there. They said that it would be done when I drove there. Mind you, I was already running late to get to my P.R. Writing class, so I was expecting them to be ready for me. NOPE! It took them about 15 minutes after I got there to print them, and mounth them. Then they had to cut the edges, and the guy cut off my white boarder on my one poster. I was so annoyed that it took so long, but all of the workers were extremely pleasent, so I thought maybe thats where I would get my brochure printed out.

So I go back to that Fedex for the most recent project, our brochure. I was again running late, because work kept me late again. All I need was my brochure printed, 2 copies, front and back. I gave them my flashdrive and they told me my files were corrupt so I couldnt print them there. So I emailed the files to them. After the guy spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to download the dropbox file, he printed it out WRONG! So I showed him what to do, and then his computer said those files wouldnt print either. I was like no way! I would have been able to print them at home but I had no INK! So I was already there for like 45 minutes, and one genius finally said that they have drop box on their do it yourself printers. I was like omg are you serious, so I printed the inside of the flyer and the outside of the flyer.....but it wouldnt print double sided. So after I spend 50 minutes and $2.08 I asked them to make it double sided for me. So he did and he put it on glossy paper and it looked terrible. I didnt have any time to have him fix it because I was already 30 minutes late for class. Since I had spent over a hour there, I was expecting him to make it double-sided for me for free. No he charged me for it AND THE GLOSSY PAPER I DIDN'T ASK FOR!

I am now ANTI-KINKOS! I just couldn't believe how idiotic these people were!

My Résumé

As you see, I did not want to settle with a boring, bland resume. Since I plan to go into a career in event planning, I figured it would be creative if I made my resume look like an invite. I have all of my text centered and I added a little color and a little formal design element to make it stand out from the stacks that companies recieve. One thing I was pround to add onto my resume was the fact that I have adobe creative suite under computer skills. I feel like I have learned enough about the programs like photoshop, InDesign, and Illusrator that I would be able to use these programs in the workplace.

Personally I really love how my resume turned out, and I am proud of how good my hard work looks on paper.

Christmas Cards!

'Tis the season for Christmas cards to be popping through our mail slot.
My dad hangs all of the cards we get on the wall in our dinning room.
Which looks pretty cool, but this post is not about other cards, its about the ones my family sends out!

We have an old Victorian style house, with big pillars on our front porch and dark oak wood in the interior. My dad is obsessed with our house, he is so obsessed, our Christmas cards that we send to our friends and family have an illustration of our house in the winter time! Yep, we aren't like any normal family that sends out cards with pictures of us on them, nope it has a picture of our house.

The only difference in our cards every year is the layout and colors that surround the illustration of our house. Usually its blue or green with a little saying like "Seasons Greetings from Brian and Family."

Well this year, I want to design the cards! Seeing as I have had a whole semester on design and all, I figured it would be fun. So recently, I have been hinting to my dad to let me do it so they aren't boring like they are every year! 

I will let you all know if he lets me do it, if he doesn't here is our card from last year!

 

Poster that I likeeeeee....

TREES.TREES.TREES

GO GREEN!GREEN!GREEN!

I have not really seen that many posters lately, and none that I really like. I have however found a great image that sends a message without words. This image relates to my poster. I found it when I first began my poster project, but it was not big enough to add it into my poster. I think that it is a creative and effective way of letting people know everything that is effected possitively by being eco-friendly, and what you can do do be eco-friendly.

Here we have a green tree with a mix of small images that make it "green". Obivously, having more trees, and planting trees keeps our environment clean and full of oxygen,

There is an image of a lightbulb. If we use more energy effecient lights and learn to turn them off when we leave the room, we will save tons of money.

There are a bunch of little green cars. Personally, I love my eco firendly car. I get 32-48 mpg. It not only saves me money, but I am burning less gasoline that pollutes the environment.

Next, you will see little liquid drops. I think these represent fuel. If we use biodeisel, or cut back on oil, we will stop polluting the air, and we will be reusing materials so we are not wasting everything.

There is a little nuclear energy sign too, Most people think that nuclear means bad, but it really means lots of energy!

People who are not familiar with nuclear energy may think the symbol is for wind energy. I think wind energy is great! Western New York has started building wind tourbines to harness wind energy. We have some righ in Lackawanna, and if you go out toward Warsaw. It not only allows you to get a tax break if you have it on your property, it is harnessing free energy for people to use.

Another image you can see, is the recycle arrows. Please everyone, learn to reduce, reuse, and recycle. It will help save our environment, our bodies, and the money in our pockets in the long run!

or Poster Two? YOU CHOOSE!

This here is poster number 2. After all of the struggle I had with poster one, I started this design. I feel like I have two different types of design perspective. I like somethings super bright, fun and girly, and I like somethings nice, neat, and formal. I think poster number one was my bright and fun , this is more neat and organized. 

I like that I did two different projects because they really show my versatility.

Personally I like this deign the most, but right now the verdict is 50/50! Tell me Which one you like!

Poster One.....

So  this is the first poster that I did. I actually started to do it in illustrator because I drawing lines and trying to bring so life and creativity to Planet Earth. I was pretty much finished and I was going to save it as a TIFF and place it into InDesign, Ms.Greenan told me I should and could do this same design in InDesign. So I stayed after class and every time I tried to replicate this design in InDesign, it was not coming out right. After an hour of aggravation  I just s.tarted an entire new poster (which you will see in my other post)

I didn't like the way it looked really so I went back to this design and just placed the illustrator > TIFF file into InDesign, and it was all pix-elated. I could not figure out why. I did it 300 resolution and it was 11x17 like the size of the InDesign document. I didn't stretch or alter anything. So I printed it out, and it was fine. Not pix-elated or anything.

Then I took it to FedEx/Kinkos to get it printed and dry mounted, and when the guy was trimming the ends, he cut off my white boarders! So it looked really long and skinny when I presented it in class.

E.L.