Surrealist Design

So far, I've really enjoyed working with photoshop.  All of the different tools available are really fun to experiment with, and end up making the designs look very realistic. I really like all of the options that you're given, and the different ways you can transform the pictures. I don't think that there is anything that I don't like about photoshop, except that it took a little getting used to. Once I got the hang of it though, I had a lot of fun with it. I think that I'm going to find photoshop beneficial in order to add and take away things from pictures that I otherwise wouldn't be able to remove. It will be really cool to experiment with all of the ways that I can change pictures around to look exactly the way I want, and touch them up.

Graphic Designer Poster

For my graphic design poster I chose a company called Landor Associates. Landor Associates is a design consultancy that was started in San Francisco by Walter Landor in 1941. LA is a company specifically for brand consulting, that helps clients create unique brands for their companies all around the world. Landor's designs are often text based, in order to create logos, but are very colorful and visually appealing to draw peoples attention. The text usual creates a shape with negative space, or is surrounded by a shape to make it stand out. You can check out some of the work done by Landor Associates here. I was drawn to this designer because I really liked all of the different colors and styles of text, so it was really interesting to me. The work that Landor Associates does is really appealing to look at and beneficial for anyone to see specifically because of the way they use text, yet still manage to create a logo that draws attention and catches the eye.

Quote Design

For this quote design, I used a few different principles and elements of design. The first element I used was shape, by making a clipping mask of the picture and a text box, as well as making a clipping mask using the picture and an outlined phrase. I outlined the phrase in order to make it a shape, and then I stretched the words in the outlined phrase to fit it to the page. I also used space in this design, by letting the negative space between the words in the outlined phrase, as well as the actual phrase to create a full picture of Aslan. The elements of design i used were balance and variety. The assignment of this project was to make a unique and creative quote design that involved text as well as pictures.  I made it my own by using the text itself to make the picture, and putting different layers on it so that it looks almost three dimensional. In designing this poster, I mainly did trial and error. I had an idea in my head, so I tried a few different versions of it using a couple different techniques. I knew that I wanted to do some kind of quote by C.S. Lewis, so when I found the picture of Aslan, I decided that I would do a quote from his book "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe". Then I picked a quote and just went from there. Overall, I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Emotion Words

The four pictures on the left are the designs i created for our emotion word project. I think that the way a line is drawn effects the mood of a design because it can allow emotions to come through by different styles. For example, when you want to convey an emotion, like being happy, drawing lines so that they are sort of swirled makes it look exciting and almost lively rather than dull and boring. In order to portray the feelings in my designs I used different types of lines like swirly lines for happy, jagged lines for frustrated, large and bold lines for loud, and tiny opaque lines for quiet. I think that knowing the way different lines effect the mood of a design will help me with my future projects because I can give all of my designs more character and emotion to make them unique and interesting.

Logo Design

For this logo design we were supposed to use negative space to create words or pictures. For mine i used the negative space to create a word in one logo design, and to create a shape as part of a letter in my other one. In my name logo i used a white star shape and put it on top of a black circle to that it would look like the circle was partially cut out to make the star. I also used the space between three of the letters in my name to make the eyes for a smiley face. In the second logo design i used the word save to make the general shape of a cross as an advertisement for a movie. I made the logo design project my own by being creative in making my own shapes and using words to make some of the shapes so that it would be unique. Designing the artwork took a long time because I drew it out first, and then I made multiple different designs for each project before I finally decided which one I wanted to use. It is original because I created them completely from scratch and didn't use anything else to base them off of. Overall it was really fun to design the two logos.

Duoh!

Duoh! is a graphic design company created by Geert Leyseele and Veerle Pieters in 1992. Their design blog is famous all around the world for their tutorials and creative designs. One of their designs was actually created for a Mac computer starter page in one of the programs. Check it out! The designs are very original and unique, they're fun to look at!

Gradient Design

This is my second page design for the four design book. In my design I incorporated value, shape, and variety. Since it is a gradient design, the value element was very important. Each shape has many different shades of dark and light, as well as various shades in between. For the element of shape, I used a wide range of different objects that I either left the way they were or transformed and changed them to enhance the design. For variety, I used multiple different values and shapes to make it unique and creative. The assignment for the design was to use only gradient and not line or color. I made it my own by adding different transformations to each of the shapes, as well as modifying the gradients and changing the appearance of some of the shapes. In order to design this I mainly experimented with a bunch of different shapes, values and transformations until  I found ones that I thought made the piece balanced and complete.  Its original because I designed it all myself and tried to make it unique without taking ideas from anything else.

Line Design

This is my first official post for my Electronic Design class. It focused on using line and grayscale for different kinds of designs.