Spring Semester Reflection

This semester I have learned a lot of things. I learned about semiotics, image making, creating posters, magazine layouts, and many many more. Spring semesters tend to fly by quicker than fall semester but I have learned SO many things.

I feel comfortable where I am at design wise. I could improve in my designing skills and making things look pretty. I'm very systematic and tend to be stuck there. I'm also very stubborn with changing ideas, which I feel like if it isn't working, I should change ideas. But the thing is, I tend to want to make my original idea work so I try my best. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I think I'm good formally but not conceptually. I'm very literal and straight to the point. I need to be more witty and clever.

There were so many things from first semester that carried over to second semester. I'm sure that the things I learned this semester will carry on to my designing career. Semiotics will for sure play a big part since many seniors talked about it last semester at their review. Type will always play a big part to making or breaking any poster or info graphs. Images have to be well thought out and executed for the message to be clearly conveyed.

I'd say this semester was much better than the last. I was more time efficient and I made more work that I'm proud to present. I've been slacking lately but I'm going to make sure next year I will start the momentum up strong and keep it there for Junior year.

Final Nat Geo

Kind of late but here are the final DVD cover/disk and poster. I tried uploading other progress work but it never lets me no matter how many times I've tried (hence the late post).

I enjoyed this project. Working with someone was a bit more difficult because we had clashing ideas so working around that was hard sometimes, but I'm pleased with how it turned out. My photoshop skills improved as well as flash. Janna has the flash file but I will try to get it. I wish the texture on the disk and cover was more noticeable. We wanted it to be barely there but still visible but now it is just lost. There's some spots that needs to be fixed but otherwise, I like it.

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.

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

Book Covers Round 2

My book covers attempt according to my revise concepts.

They are working ok? I like them MUCH more than my old ones, which I knew were bad. I tried staying consistent with the type so hopefully it's not too much. I'm sure there's going to be adjustments made but yea, I'm quite proud of this as they are.

Book Covers Round 1

These were due last Wednesday for progress crit.

These are so bad. So so so bad. So I rethought my ideas and ways to approach it. Over the weekend, I got some new photos and I'm going with my "pair of..." idea now instead of location based. For the park, it's kind of the same idea but I'm going to have 2 cars, a park scene, with the city in the background. The relationship book is going to have 2 drinking glasses ('cause everyone needs a drink one time or another right?). The ring book is going to have some flowers and maybe some rings on there as well, this is my hardest book so far but I have faith in it. Last but not least the proposal book is going to have tons of things. I have a lot of ideas for that one but have yet to really nail one yet but it will work out. Yup. I have all my images, I just need to scan them in and put them together in class tomorrow.

Concept sketches

Concepts for book covers. I made a list of symbols/indexes but its quite lengthy/boring so I won't post it. It's reflective in my sketches anyways so....

I started by making a list about things that attributed with the books and then drew my concepts from there. According to class today, my directions are all good but I'm either going to do the pairing of an object or the environment...in a collage/montage thing. I'm leaning towards combining all 3 ideas but right now, I'm going to at least attempt the environment first. I'm excited to see how these turn out but I need to work on how my spine and back looks along with where my icons and everything goes. We shall see....>.>

Project 4: Book Covers

New project! So we have to choose 4 books based on our icon stories and these are the books I chose.

Urban parks and open space.

Describes how 15 derelict areas of the United States were developed into thriving new parks and offers advice to public agencies and private developers on how to go about revitalizing urban areas. The text includes information on financing techniques, design, management and programming.

Making it as a couple: prescription for a quality relationship

Making it as a Couple provides specific recipes, easy to follow prescriptions, and precise methods that have an immediate impact on relationships. Dr. Fay shows you how to avoid inflammatory reactions, how to circumvent power struggles, and how to phrase requests, suggestions, observations and objections so that they are understood and respected.

The world’s greatest proposals

In a recent Internet contest, Fred Cuellar (a.k.a. "The Diamond Guy") offered a beautiful, sparkling diamond in return for the most hilarious, creative or inspirational proposal story. As a result, he received thousands of wonderful engagement stories and has collected the best here in The World's Greatest Proposals. A perfect shower gift, this beautiful little book will bring tears of joy, love and laughter to everyone who knows what it means to find the love of their life.

Rings: jewelry of power, love, and loyalty

With ravishing reproductions of rings from many countries, this book presents rings through major themes: signets; rings associated with love, marriage, and friendship; devotional, protective, and ecclesiastical rings; memento mori and memorial rings; rings associated with famous people and great events; decorative rings; diamond rings; and rings as accessories. Rings of all periods are covered—from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome through the Middle Ages and Renaissance to the twentieth century. The examples come from great museums and from private collections, chiefly that of the noted gem dealer Benjamin Zucker. The author, one of the world's leading jewelry historians, draws on artistic and literary sources to make the rings' contexts come alive with paintings, drawings, and vivid quotations. 479 color photographs and illustrations.

Yup. I think they are good and they work together. It's like a how-to propose book set. The book covers are all so bad though so hopefully I can do a better job. :D

Final Sins

So this was a hard project for me. Maybe I was too ambitious in the beginning? I don't know, but I still had fun with it.

In no particular order:

In the end, I think I successfully conveyed the sins. The ones I had trouble with was gluttony and greed since they are similar with the idea of having too much. Wrath could probably be revised now that I see it with the whole set. Lighting wasn't such an issue since I just used natural lighting so it more or less came out to be what it is. I learned the thinking abstractly but still conveying the message is harder than it looks. During the process, the dot project was in the back of my mind so I tried to reference that. It was a little harder since its paper that I'm dealing with so there's really no way to make it look exactly like my thumbnails, so I kind of gave up on that. I tried to keep the circular paper consistent so that the book would flow better and only the composition and the color would change. In all though, I'm happy about how it came out. If it's not representing the sins, it would still be a nice book.

Failed Paper Pt.2

These are the ones I did over the weekend (besides the pride/purple one I did in class).

Most of the people I asked got them but I'm redoing them still. I think I know what direction to go so hopefully I will get it by tomorrow since it's due soon.

Failed Paper

Here are my pictures that I presented to class today.

No one could really tell what these were, besides sloth. Epic fail. Epic fail indeed. TOO abstract. :( I guess people didn't understand the composition but things that need to be worked on were cropping, lighting?, other shapes, and some other things I can't remember right now (I don't have my notes on me).

Colored Paper Attempt 1

So I started out with my initial thoughts and it looks like this:

Yeah. Bad right? I know. The virtue color shouts for attention and its conflicting with the sin so I decided to just use one color. Below is a picture of what a "set" looks like. It's quite small, about 8 inches.
Doesn't the all-one-color look better? These are just test shots so they kinda suck. I'll post the ones due for Wednesday sometime later, maybe tomorrow after class. These aren't the exact composition that I came up with so I can't really ask what sin do they look like but color should be telling a lot.