Hierarchy in Dreamweaver

Here's my experiments with CSS for the hierarchy exercises.

There's some that are off in terms of leading and then there are some that I can't figure out how to make it work when it refreshes. It's too confusing to explain it here.

Project 5: Nat Geo

VERY late post but it's the last project for Image! It's also a group project and I'm paired up with Janna. We are doing a DVD cover/disk/menu and poster for a National Geographic movie "Six Degrees Could Change the World". It basically talks about global warming and how each time the temperature of the earth rises, something is affected. So we spent a ton of time just brainstorming ideas.

And then we chose a direction, which was to create an ideal scene with multiple images in a seamless way and then adding these black dots/smoke interweaving through the environment. In the movie, they used these dots to symbolize the CO2 and that's being emitted and we wanted to bring that into our cover/poster. So below are more sketches that are geared towards the idea.
And then we finally made it. I'm in charge of the dvd cover and inside disk. So below is the disk. There will be an image behind it, probably of water or sky, just so that it is still simple and since the cover/poster is already busy, we wanted a simple thing to counterbalance that.This is my cover for the dvd. There were more iterations but I keep forgetting to save another copy of it for the blog. :/ Anyways, I used digitize black dots but we made some marks using cotton balls and other round objects that I still need to try and put in here. I'm leaning towards the digitized version more simply because it is more clean, but I'll need to work in a texture on it so that it wouldn't be too boring looking.
Janna is doing the poster so maybe she has that on her blog. But this is what I've done so far since the beginning of the project. I'm also attempting the flash, which isn't going so well but I'll upload it once it's presentable.

Museum Application Round 1 and 2

So we are working on our museum exhibitions and I chose to stick with 3 different ideas: Central Park, Opposites, and Mine and Mines. These are some of the ideas that were due last Friday. I'm only posting the ones that were good but needs improvements.

These were due yesterday and it was just improvements on the top ones. Not a big fan of them but the idea is there. I'm sticking to the opposite direction but I need to work on making it look pretty and I need a new title for it. Right now it's "Price We Pay for Our Wants", which doesn't roll off the tongue nicely so it will be changed. Yupz.

Posters Round 2 and 3

Posters for Paula Scher lectures. These were due last Friday:

And these were due last Monday:

It is not as easy as it looks to put text in the way she does it. I just need to iterate more and maybe change my picture. There could probably be a better image and there's tons to improve on.

F+S

I know we are done with info graphs, but I just stumbled on this and its pretty amazing. Just felt like sharing it. :D

Axles and Poster

These were due for Monday. Axle exercises and poster ideas. >.< Very bas but there's something in them that I'll just tweak a bunch on. I also need to take new photos so that I can have more to work with.

Anchorage vs. Relay

Anchorage:

Relay:

Those are just some out of all 24 that I did. Um...they tend to be in the middle area, like they can go here or there. They aren't super good yet so I'll have to mess with the compositions a little bit. But yes. :D

Museum Exhibition Titles

Possible titles for museum exhibitions.

• Pursuit of Love
• Love Story
• Opposite Attracts: The Price We Pay for What We Want
• Mine and Mines: What it Takes to Make It Yours
• Central Park: Stroll Through Time
• Marriages Through Time
• Sweet Proposals
• Secrets to Love
• Central Park: Stories of Love
• Chasing Happiness
• From Park to Altar: Love Stories

Yup.

Patterns Round 2

These were just due today. The first 4 are the ones I'm sticking with and tweaking. This critique was definitely more helpful in defining where these should be headed and now I have a clearer understanding about drama vs. harmonious. Next up is pairing my icons with other images/words.

Patterns Round 1

These were due on Wednesday for critique with some seniors. None of them are really working. They are kind of out of order but it basically goes harmonious and then amplified drama, back and forth like that. I had to fix basically everything. It seemed better when I follow my icon's curve so that the placement dictates the form (like the scarf). So I took that and applied it for the set due today (Friday). I'll post that later but I think there's improvement for sure, even if it is just tiny steps.

Final Magazine Layout v.2

Edited layouts according to last week's critique.

Project 4: Designer Posters

New project! We got assigned designers and mine is Paula Scher. She's pretty well known. She does a lot of environmental graphics in NY and creates posters for The Public Theatre. First, we did a presentation (which has yet to be shown) and then we did some type experiments. Next, we are going to create promotional posters for the talk. I think I'm going to work more on my presentation over the weekend because it isn't as great as I want it to be.

Visible Signs and Two Symbols in One

These were good readings to kick off the next phase of the project, which I'm thinking that will be to pair our icons with a sign. I found the Two Symbols in One to be more inspirational since the images that went along with that article were really good examples. It really showed that if you take 2 things and list out all the possible symbols for them, and then combine those symbols, you have a whole new meaning to it. Along with that, it won't be predictable and it makes it interesting. In Visible Signs, Crow defines text and image having 2 possible functions, anchorage and relay. Anchorage directs the beholder through a number of possible readings of an image or a "floating chain of signifiers". Relay is much less common, it advances the reading of the images by supplying meanings which are not to be found in the images themselves. Both these readings helped define what we are doing in the next phase. It simply comes down to icons + image/text/other icons = powerful message.

Patterns

This reading from The New Basics helped me think about pattern making. Reading this before diving into pattern making helped a lot. I learned that patterns can be made in various ways. I can repeat, rotate, color, etc. with my icons to make interesting patterns. Patterns don't even necessarily need to be "repeated". The last example in the reading showed a tiled version of a random pattern. At first glance, it seems chaotic but then you realize it is a repeated tile (and plus they put a light white box around the part that is repeated). Nearly all patterns come from three basic forms: isolated (dots), linear (stripes), and criss-crossing/interaction of the two (grids). "Interesting pattern designs often result from a mix of regular and irregular forces as well as abstract and recognizable imagery." Since we are just starting to make patterns, this was a good reading to kick it off with.

Final Book Covers

Final book covers!

Or at least some photos I took of them. At first, I was really excited and then that excitement quickly died down and I wasn't enjoying it much. I think majority of it was that I knew it wouldn't turn out the way I want it to because of the guidelines set. Like, I would've like to use full colors and not just my color palette of my icons. But in general, they are something I am proud of. The biggest challenge for me was coming up with concepts. I think that's my weakest point in many projects. I get stuck on one idea and it doesn't take me any where. I learned that I just need a lot (A LOT) of time to think about it. For the final concept, I spent like 3 days just thinking and thinking about it. The bad thing is, there's never enough time to think or do anything so it just turns out to be not what I expect. I sorta kinda like the having to find images not on the internet. It really got me to look through tons of books and magazines. Sometimes I couldn't find exactly what I wanted so I had to make some sacrifices. For example, my coffee cups for the relationship book, I wanted a typical round coffee cup but I couldn't find any in the magazines I had so I gave in to a less typical shape. Um...learning how to use duotone/tritone was interesting. I figured that it takes A LOT of adjusting to get the "perfect" color balance. Craft wise, my craft sucks. The mock up book with the foam core wasn't hard to make or anything, it's just the cutting that got to me. I somehow can't cut everything the same size and i always cut it at an angle even though I hold my knife straight. So I don't know what's up. Just something I could improve on. Like I said, I still like how it turned out. :D

Final Magazine Layout

Final info graphs:

So these are my final 2. We left the Central Park out. You can find my linear process throughout the blog. I updated every time we had something due so you should be able to see progression. I started off with paper prototypes that had only one or two icons on each and as I progressed, the Central Park timeline came to have four icons? They each represented something that happened during the parks development. My marriage stats falls under the numerical comparison category as well as my diamonds, but that one also includes location. My Central Park timeline would've fit under the time based category. As for type and color, I stuck with my 3 color and integrated it with the text. On the diamonds, I chose to color each diamond depending on where it was found.

I really enjoyed this part of the project. At first I was really scientific because that's just the way I am and I think very structurally so to incorporate design in there was challenging, especially when applying text. I think it's there? Hopefully it is there. But that's something I need to improve on.

Final magazine spreads:

Yup. I quite like it. My spreads are open (as in not cramped) since its for a wedding magazine and those tend to be pretty open. At first I had cheesy images (which you can maybe see from previous posts) and then I changed them into more classy, general images. Definitely better. Magazine layout was fun. I think I enjoy it because it's structured like I tend to be. At first it was hard to break away from columns and place images or other text at a random place but I got used to it. I liked how the 2 classes interweave because it made me think of how its going to work together and to see our info graphs put into use is cool. Yup yup. :D

Diagrams Round 4

These were for Wednesday.

I needed to fix mainly the type and change out my icons for the stats. But otherwise it was on track I think.

Redrawn Icons

I redid some of my icons since last critique on color. So my ring is in a ring box and my characters have more grown up shoes.

Yup. My 2 colors is now just simple where the "details" is highlighted. My 3 color is having a peach/coral (which i changed from the dark pink) as a background offset without variation. Much better yea? I'm sure there could be more improvements but I say these are much better than the old set I had.