Designing With Digital Images (Blog #5)

Assignment #1: Cropping Digital Images

Cropping photos, or adjusting photos in any way is always fun.  I tend to do a lot of size adjusting when I am taking the picture rather than with photo enhancing software, so most of the images I had to work with did not require much cropping.  I do agree though that any image can take on a whole new look when the focal point is altered or changed entirely after photo enhancing.  This activity was very helpful since it forced me to crop images in a different way; changing the meaning of some of the photos was difficult, but the results were worth it.  The photos were edited using Pixlr Express and the video was made with iMovie, including the voice over.

This video is 2 minutes.

Assignment #2:  Color Echo

Working with color this time was easier.  After selecting a custom hue, I decreased the saturation of the image colors and adjusted using the value bars.  I used the analogous palette of yellow, green and yellow green taken from my image.  I notice now with the three images together that the stem and leaves appear to be different colors in the left picture with the green background as opposed to the other two that have yellow or yellow and green backgrounds.  The striped background gives the image a 3D look, but the left stands out the most because it has a crisper look.  It did have a difficult time matching the yellows, which may be part of why they don't stand out as much.  I also used Photoflexer.com to cut the white background away from the image.  It was as easy as Katie said in her screencast, so I highly recommend this tool for photo adjustments.  The posters themselves were created in Google Drive: Drawings.

Assignment #3: Typographic Conveyance

With this assignment we had to convey the meaning of the words through typography.  I started off by looking at a slew of photos and graphic images to see if any made me think of the word.  Then I tried to make the font or image within the font match that image.  This required some playing around with styles, sizes, colors and spacing.  I applied the technique of kerning to all but the top two. With shred I initially think of skateboarding and taking a nasty fall off the board, but realized that is not how most people would think of the word so I changed the look, to make it recognizable to a wider audience. I also used Fotoflexer to achieve the lines in the text.  Atom was the one I like the best because using part of the image within the word was new for me and it was actually easy.  I made a total of three separate text boxes. On a previous assignment I had done a dropcase letter in the same fashion, separate from the other text.  Because you are trying to convey one message with typography alone, this was a difficult assignment.

Krause, Jim (2004) Design Basics Index. Cincinnati: HOW Design Books

Images in Activities 2 & 3 courtesy of stock.xchng

Designing Disasters (Blog #4)

What have I learned this week...I am a designing disaster.  Every time I create something new, I learn the following week all that I have done wrong!  Luckily, I won't let that stop me.  This week I decided to push myself and do both Design Basics Index activities.  With the MMP right around the corner and my extreme (but luckily decreasing) lack of designing knowledge, I feel there is no time like the present to try to develop these skills.  I put the first into a video slideshow to make the presentation have a little zing.

Shapes Workshop:  

Using Google Drive: Drawing and vector drawing enhancements for Google Chrome I created some shapes.  Using the enhancements and the entire creative process was completely new to me and took a bit of getting use to.  I especially enjoyed the size variation activity and the movement the shapes created. 

The video is less than one minute.

http://www.masher.com/player.jsp?key=d8881ea3-7045-25bb-ee23-0000704d89a7&adscheme=0

Fonts:

For the next activity I focused on fonts and creating words that matched (the first two) and contrasted (third one).  The final column is the name of the font.  Originally I selected mainly decorative fonts, but as the readings progressed I realized that I need to put in some Old Style and Serif fonts since I will primarily be working with these from now on.  Again I used Google Drive: Drawing.  There is the option to add a wide variety of fonts so I was able to choose from quite an assortment.  To me the words "thin" and "scientific" had the most impact in terms of adding more emphasis to the word; in the case of scientific it was a great juxtaposition.  "Tense" was the least effective in that the font selection is such an opposite of the term it diffused the intensity of the word itself.  This activity shows how important font choice is in terms of adding to or taking away from a headline.

I created this before reading about the importance of grids, so I realized too late that I should have put this into four columns rather than 12 rows.  

Krause, Jim (2004) Design Basics Index. Cincinnati: HOW Design Books

Mini Arts School: Week 1

London Creative+ Website

Example of Design:  London Creative+ Website

How is it that a website can be classic and structured, yet bold and disjointed at the same time? This website is filled with opposites and while the bright yet simple colors help to grab the viewer, the photographic images are the strongest force.  These images rotate and each is very unique, but contained within each is an opposite.  In the image above it is the unknown photographer that is the focus with the pictures in the shadows.  The soft face of a women framed by sharply angled bangs and fringe, the extremely glossy metal of a sports car in the woods, the textured and weathered face that steals the attention from the intense starring all make you forget you are looking at an advertisement and instead make you stare longer.  I use to think that the photography itself would be the only reason I enjoy this graphic design, but after this week's reading I see there is so much more going on....

Margins: This website allows for proper margin spacing and though everything is boxed in there is an appropriate amount of space. The margins exist as a box holding the images in place, with the smaller images having smaller margins than the main rectangle.

Colors: There are three colors (yellow, black and white) the colors are bold, but there is a limited amount of colors to not overpower the main design. Colors are reminiscent of a highway and give an impression of movement or drive.

Visuals: The images are attention catchers and immediately draw the viewer in.  Some images are controversial, though they cannot be seen through this screenshot. Each picture has an intriguing aspect to it that makes the viewer want to see more.

Font: There are two fonts used, the same two that are within the company logo. The normal and bold juxtapose each other subtly.

Line: The wide yellow line is not connected, though it appears so at first glance. The line helps draw the viewer into the center, but also adds to the highway image as it looks like a caution banner. The yellow banner lines also go directly against the rest of the lines created by the margins which a very strict: right angels, vertical and horizontal.

Shape: All of the shapes within the site are rectangles of various sizes. Again this gives a very contained and orderly feel. The Graphic Design Basics describes this type of shape as being "masculine, stable, and secure"which contrast nicely with the yellow disjointed banner.

Reversing: Their is some reverse writing, which can be a sin, if not done correctly. The font size however is large and bold enough that there is no visual distortion and the viewer can clearly read the text.

Scale and Size: The pictures are of different sizes (not just the ones in the screenshot, but throughout the main site page.) All of the top images rotate so the emphasized photo will differ but there is still emphasis on the main top photo.  

Two Column Design: Though this is not apparent in the screenshot above, the actual website utilizes the "Works-Every-Time layout" seen in White Space is Not Your Enemy in that is has the large image on top and a two column layout below. The cutlines are right and left justified and the paragraphs are small. (Golombisky & Hagen, 2010)

Value: The value within the site is actually in the top image. The shadows to light focuses the viewers eye to the center of the picture. However, this value exists in this image, but not in the others.

Texture: All of the images have a texture that the viewer can almost feel; from the pores in the man's face to the sleek body of the car. The 3D quality is noticeable instantly and also helps to draw the viewer in. This balances the very clean two dimensional feel of the rest of the website.

Harmony Exercise: Visual Echo

I love color and the use of, so I opted to create three music festival posters using visual echo.  Visual echo requires the creator to use repetition of an element within the design such as color or font family.  These exercises were my first attempts at creating a visually stunning graphic design and I had to explore and learn new tools as well as the new concepts we have learned in our readings this week.  For these reasons, and that I am much better at building off of an idea than creating everything from scratch, I used the lay out formats within 'Design Basics Index' for two of the three examples.  Below each image there is a brief description of which echo is utilized in the layout.

Color Echo:  The colors in the image are repeated in the font and background (the protest sign and the stripes on the sleeve of the raised arm).

Content Echo: A piece of the image is repeated in the text area and the bottom headline with the image bridges the two pieces together.  Also contains color echo.

Typography Echo: Three fonts within the same family are used.  Again, also contains color echo.


Loosened Alignment Exercise

Alignment refers to the framing of the elements within the piece.  For example, with an alined design one could connect an imaginary line from a right angle within an image to the beginning or ending of a text line.  This assignment called for a strict and then a loosened alignment.  Again for this activity I followed the layout format within Design Basics Index and focused on finding images with angles and lines and connecting them to text beginnings and endings.

Strict Alignment:

Loosened Alignment:

All images taken from http://www.sxc.hu/

Golombisky, Kim, & Hagen, Rebecca (2010). White Space is Not Your Enemy. New York: Focal Press.

Krause, Jim (2004) Design Basics Index. Cincinnati: HOW Design Books

Lynch, Brittany (2012, June 4) Graphic Design Basics. Retrieved from http://www.brittanylynch.com/graphic-design-basics/

Penner, Eli (2009, June 17) 10 Web Design Rules That Your Can Break. Retrieved from http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/10-web-design-rules-that-you-can-break/