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 Paula Scher

Round 4:

Round 5:

Round 6:

Final:

I really enjoyed this project. Working like Paula Scher was difficult to balance everything well. As you can see, there were many titles floating around as well as colors. I like the final product from where I was previously. The title seems more strong and her name with the roof cut out has this magical thing happening that I like a lot. It came from me just messing around trying to integrate the image and the text better and it worked! :D

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Magazine Layouts Round 2, 3, and 4

VERY VERY behind on updating type. So here's a mass post. This was due last Monday:

Due last Friday:
And just due yesterday:
Yup. It's going well I guess. I was in the right direction with a few tweaks, not many. I like how it's turning out so far but I'll need to readjust it according to my info graphs as well. The Konica doesn't like to print the colors that I want. So you can see in the last picture, I printed the pink one for class but on my computer screen, its actually a cream color. Therefore, the cream color reprint you see is actually greenish yellow on my screen. Very weird and hard to control what they look like so I printed out different swatches hoping I hit the right one somewhere in there. Yeah, we'll see how this finalizes.

Project 3: Magazine Layout

Magazine layouts!!~! These were the first attempt that was due last Friday.
I'm real excited to see the end products of these along with the info graphs. I'll keep trying to upload the newest ones but with the critique today, we are going with the article about marriage proposal etiquette since my graphs will be better suited for that.

The Principles of the New Typography

This article was an interesting read. I learned a lot about how magazine layouts should work. Some notes I took:

• we no longer read quietly line by line, but glance quickly over the whole, and only if our interest is awakened do we study it in detail
• both nature and technology teach us that "form" is not independent, but grows out of function, out of materials used, and out of how they are used
• the essence of the new typography is clarity
• "form" must be created out of function
• function of printed text is communication, emphasis, and the logical sequence of the contents

It really revolves around how we can convey the message to the readers in a clear way but present it with a bang so that they would take interest and continue reading. I'm starting to work on my layouts and it's a lot harder than it looks. There's so many elements that needs to be balanced but it also needs to flow smoothly. This was a good read to see a little background and how text should work.

Final Weather

This was a fun project. Challenging at times but still fun.

So my weather was dawn, wind, rain, and thunder. I wanted to create a sense of a calm morning but I don't think it turned out that way. I did experimentations with set type, which in some way I like but I felt like I should've tried other things as well. Composition wise, I think it's dramatic with the sweeping motion so it looks violent and hectic. It was hard to integrate it into one sweeping motion. From previous posts, you can see my transitions were the hardest part but I think I achieved it. For each phenomena, I used set type but then they are expressive in their own way. For example, wind has a wind effect to it and rain looks wet and dawn has those shadows like the sun is rising. Throughout all three pieces, I kept with that sweeping motion with few adjustments so that it still made sense but still cohesive with each other. I didn't want the ABC logo and tag line to be TOO significant so it's a bit smaller but still has the attention since it's on white and nothing is really "surrounding" it. I have my flash but not uploaded yet. So I'll post that once it's done.

Bus and Billboard Attempt 4

Yup. Attempt number 4. I got the transitions down I think. So all I really have to do left is tweaks here and there. It's not so bad. Most of my time will be spent doing the interstitial, which I'll upload here once I'm done (and maybe, MAYBE, my rough ones).

Only the bottom side needs help, where thunder and rain is.
And I need to fix the ascending line so it's not so straight edged...

Bus and Billboard Attempt 2 and 3

Kind of late but these are the ones for Monday.

I tried to split the billboards into 2 and not just one. I think I like it being one more than having it separated.
I didn't find the bus template until later. :(

The following are the ones for Friday, revised according to Monday's critique.
I forgot to take out the "weather at your fingertips" on here, but I fixed it already. Imagine it not there. >.>
The only side I'm having trouble with is thunder and rain because both are so busy that its hard to make it not busy. I tried though.

Expressive Type Attempt 2

These were for today based on Monday's critique.

And then I thought we were suppose to start putting them on the bus and the billboard so I attempted to. I don't think they are very successful yet but I kind of have an idea on what I want to do.

Yah...

Expressive Type Attempt 1

These are for Monday, where we aim to create a cohesive set of expressive weather. I aimed at bringing the characteristic of the weather into the composition. So like dawn is in more of a horizon shape and its font is lighter. Rain seems wet (not as good as the scan in my opinion but it was worth a try right?). Thunder is stronger and more "in your face". And wind has a sweeping motion.

I tried 2 versions for wind, just to mess with the type and filters. I'm starting to like the one where it was blurry but maybe it's too much? I was thinking that I could possible print these out, warp the paper some how so that it reinforces the weather and then take pictures/scan them. But for now, I'm going to stick with digital and see where that takes me. :D

Project 2: Expressive Type

So we started our 2nd project Friday and we had to bring in experiments of our expressive type. We were suppose to choose 4 types of weather and represent them expressively but they were suppose to kind of make a story. Therefore, I chose dawn, rain, wind, and thunder. Below are several of my experiments for last Friday. I did a lot of scanner work because I liked how it looked but also did digital setting of type (which is something I'm leaning towards).

Dawn didn't really work out....>.>

I really like rain and how it came out. Making it in digital type didn't work as well so maybe I'll stick with the scanner this time.

I didn't show the crumbled one in class because the word thunder wasn't dominate enough, but I like the idea.

Yup yup. I like where wind is going so I'm going to push that a little bit more.