Semester Reflection

Graphic Design

4 Quotes Project

The Project

During this semester of e-Communication, my personal favorite project had been the 4 Quotes Project. The project centered around choosing four quotes and then using them to create visually pleasing typography. After finding one quote we would choose which words are the more important ones and make them have a serif font or cursive font, then put the rest of the words in a sans serif font. The point of the project was us to show off what we've learned from our other typography project, where we tool a font and remodeled it to look different for a card. 

The project itself took a long while to complete. Choosing quotes out of hundreds and thousands takes a long while. Although, it did not take as long as it did for choosing and editing a font for it. This process would have to be repeated four times and took me about 2 weeks to accomplish. 

Challenges

When I first started this project I had actually expected it to be very easy. We would pick four quotes and just design them. It seems like such a simple concept, but there really is more to it. I was already aware this would take a quite some time to actually complete and I did end up having some problems along the way. For starters, I had forgotten the hierarchy rule, that is the more important words would be seen as large and the less important would be small. In a way, I got excited when first starting the project and ended up using way too many fonts. For a long quote, at most what would be used is 3 fonts. For my long quote, I had used five. When it came time for us to review with seniors, I realized my very obvious flaw in the design. Choosing fonts becomes hard when there's a large variety of them.

What I Learned 

For this project, I learned how important using the hierarchy was when it came to designing. It's critical to not go overboard with the font or with size. I also learned that when it comes to designing typography it's a good idea to use your own designs rather than fonts. 

Feedback and Change

As priorly mentioned in 'Challenges', I had been struggling with making my quotes fit the hierarchy and using many fonts. With that in mind when it came to revising and editing with seniors I was mostly told to start again from scratch as the designs I had created were nowhere near as good as they should be.  So, starting with the long quote I began with shortening the amount of font I used. I kept two of the fonts I had originally used because I liked them and I thought they would suit in each other in the final product. I then choose another one, a much simpler sans-serif font, and added it into the mix. It ended up looking well as the new fonts didn't make it look as crazy as it had beforehand. 

Conclusion

I admit although the finished product does look nice, there a still many different mall details I want to fix. I believe that one of the quotes I chose is more suited for just simple sans serif font and not being turned into typography. The design process had taken a while and did get a little setback, but that's my own fault. My overall opinion how I had done was the designs had come out mostly just like how I wanted them to.

The Design History Project 

The Project

For our design history, we were randomly given a design topic or person to look up and study on. I randomly selected 'Futurism', a kind of design that was invented in the early 1900's by Filippo Marinetti in Italy. His new design was far different from any traditional design. It was insanely designed, made with words going everywhere on typography pieces, including upsizing or suddenly changing color and font midway through a sentence. The paintings are just as insane, focused on geometric shapes and color. 

The Challenges

I didn't have very many challenges concerning this project. it was easy to do a lot of research on the creator. It took a while to get everything down though. The biggest challenge I had concerning the project was keeping everything on time. We had a due date and I was mostly scrambling to keep up with everything that I do have accomplished by then. Marinetti had a lot to say about futurism and what it was, where he wanted it to go, how it was going to be revolutionary, and how he wanted it to evolve and become the main type of art used in Italy. 

What I learned 

Throughout this project, the first thing I learned was how important it was to be able to take noted and keep them well organized when researching an artist who made a new type of work. I also learned how important it is to set little goals. Rather than thinking, 'I want this whole thing done in 3 weeks', think ' I want to have the first three slides completely don't by the end of the first week'. This way it becomes easier to keep up with dates. 

Feedback and change

After creating the initial poster on paper with multiple different ideas I presented them to the seniors who come to help and encourage us with our projects. With my multiple designs, it was quickly decided which one was the favorite and I made that sketch the basis for my project poster. I didn't;t have a lot changes to make at all. Futurism is meant to be random and loud. So even mistakes would be considered part of the design in total. 

Conclusion 

The project was fun to make and research on. It took me a lot of time to get all the information in my head, but overall I think the project came out very well. The poster was made with the design basis I intended for it and the slides we also ha to create had a futurism look to them, just as how I wanted them to be. 

The Re-Branding Project

The Project

We were to choose any company of our choice and make re-make their trademark. The more unknown the place was, the better it was for us to design. While some people did go for famous brands, I ended up going for 'The Sunflower Cafe'. The cafe is mostly unknown to the public and I decided it would be a fun idea to try and rebrand ti. I started with sketching a lot of designs of fit. After I was done I choose my favorites and designed them in black and white on Adobe Illustrator.

Challenges

After making six designs in black and white, I had a hard time choosing one out of the six. I liked them a lot and ended up only narrowing down to four before becoming stuck on where I should go from there. Thankfully, during where the seniors came to check up on us I got a few new ideas and thoughts on what I wanted the final product to be. Eventually, I narrowed it down to two. From there I started to create the mockups using those two. After deciding which one looked better I kept that one to be the official logo for my project.

What I learned

When I was creating my black and white designs one of them was a cursive font on a coffee cup. The problem with this is that the lines connecting the letters came off after curving them. I had to change the font for it. I didn't really learn a lot about this project as I was just using what I'd already learned from previous projects. Examples would be, how to edit a poster onto a billboard in photoshop.

Feedback and change 

Other than the off disconnected cursive, the most feedback I got was to continue experimenting with different fonts. Of course, I did do this, and it hiked me decide which one would be my final product.

Conclusion 

This was a fun project to work on. I did the most I could do and I had.a lot of fun designing the black and white logos and adding color to the final one. There are few things that I Ould change to this given the chance to ever do so. I personally like how this project came out, much better than I do the other two projects mentioned in this paper. 

Time

Staying focused on what I'm doing at first is very easy but eventually, I get tired of looking at the computer and I have to take a break. it doesn't help that before Graphic Design I've had my brain mostly fried from doing the math. Overall, I use my time in class to work on my projects. If I eve had finished early I would look through what I'd done and ask if there was anything that could be better. Outside of class I actually would sometimes look up typography on Pinterest to see what more professional graphic designers did.

Strength 

My biggest strength is my usage of Adobe Illustrator. For the past two years I have worked a lot with this program and is has become one of my favorites to use. I know all the commands for it and where to find more options to use on my designs. It is such a good tool to use for all types of design being done. 

Improvement

I did imporve a lot this semester. I faced a lot of challenges and I worked hard in order to complete everything I could. I struggled with font hierarchy, keeping time management and choosing designs from many options. I used Adobe Photoshop more, something of which I hadn't used in a while. And with practice comes improvement. I improved in using both Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I now know how to keep time of things and more of an idea of what's good for desings and whats bad.

Conclusion 

The e-Com program offers a lot to me and I have used the most of it this past semester. I've leanred more abour Adobe Phtoshop and Illustrator. I've re-Branded a company and researched about Futurism. I've learned better methods of reaserching and I've done a lot of designing concerning typography and more. It's been a fun go this semster at e-Com. I have to say my favorite project was the 4 Quotes project and I wish I could have improved on ome of the desings for it. Of course I also did enjoy re-branding and reading more about futurism. I think that overall this semester has been a great learning experience and that I did well.

Final

2nd Semester

What is 1 valuable takeaway I learned? 

   
     Coming into this class, I didn't know a lot about what I was doing concerning the programs we were using and what we'd be doing. I knew the basics, but I didn't know everything there was. I had a background of Adobe Photoshop,  After Effects and Illustrator.

My biggest takeaway in technology was getting a deeper understanding of multiple different programs. These programs included, Adobe Photoshop and Maya. We used both of these programs in just about all of our projects. usually just working with one was more common.

For collaboration, my most valuable takeaway was learning how to be quick when doing projects. It's important to keep up with the people I'm collaborating with. In our most recent project we worked in a team to accomplish a short film involving all that we learned in e-Com this year. While we were collaborating we decided what each of us should take on and all of us tried to work at the same pace so no one gets to far ahead and help each other out if someone were to get behind.

For communication my most valuable takeaway was that I learned that when talking its important to pick out the roles and decide who will perform them. Like I mentioned in the last paragraph, we worked on a project that involved collaboration. The main topic at the beginning was about what roles should each of us take on. These roles would of course have to suit our skills and I got put into the Maya role.

For project management I learned that it's just as important to set dates of when you want a specific part finished. In my last project we were in teams and this proved to be very useful. I was to finish all the objects we were going to need to be using by the end of our third day of working.

For Leadership I learned that having good control of what's going in in a team project is incredibly important if everything is to go well. Depending how big and what the project is depends if a leader is actually necessary, however. In my last project with only three of us working we didn't assign a leader of sorts, but rather kept reporting to each other where we were at so that we wouldn't get lost at any point.

Strengths / Weaknesses

     For my strength I've learned a lot about Maya and I believe the program is a big strength of mine as I've done well on the projects concerning it. Maya was a hard program to learn, it dealt wit 3-D objects that had to be manipulated precisely. The animating part of Maya was slightly easier, depending on how exactly the object had to be moved. The more complex the objects motion the more difficult it would prove to animate. Another strength would be Adobe After Effects. I like how I did on he explosion projects. I thought they came out well for a novice.

     As a weakness, I didn't do so good with Adobe Photoshop. I often confused layers and forgot to name the layers different in general. This made animating in Adobe After Effects difficult. Since then I've improved by checking the layers I'm in much more often. But I still need to fix that up more as I continue to make repeated mistakes of putting the wrong thing into the wrong layer.

What will I do with what I learned?

    After learning everything that I have from this class, I am interested in learning more. I will continue to apply what I learned into any situation or assignment that is necessary. What I'm hoping to do is to actually get the adobe programs for personal use and continue to use it for experimentation with I have learned from this class. Animation has been very useful for teaching me how to create and use original characters. With that in mind, I want to create more characters ad go on with animating them. I also want to continue working with Maya as it's very hard to use and I'm hoping I might be able to apply what I learned from there into a new program.

What would I change? 

     Given the chance to change anything, I would've put more effort into my photoshop projects. In these projects it was common for me to mix up layers and forget to name them. I didn't think it was important but that was a large fault of mine. In Adobe After Effects there are many different ways to command a composition to move or change opacity, etc. When using a lot of compositions it can get messy to work with. if I could change anything about that I would've liked to try to memorize all the short cut commands to only access one command at a time rather than all of them at once. In Maya I would want to change small things. In one project I didn't align the walls perfectly to the project so I'd want to change that. Also I never did a lot of grouping in Maya, so I'd like to change that too, to see whether it would affect my projects in a good or bad way.

Conclusion

     I've learned a lot in this class from when I first started it. I've gained a lot of valuable information concerning the many types of guarantee's. Through the projects we did to complete everything I gained a lot of new information about how to make different shapes in Maya and how to use green screens in Adobe Photoshop. My favorite project was the snowflake project, where we used Maya to make snowflakes, which was very fun to do. Of course, this is all thanks to my teacher, Mr. Olsen.


Maya projects:

Adobe After Effects:

     

The Bounce

        To make an animated version based off of real life is not easy. After bouncing  balls and video taping it, we took measurements based on the video and used it to create an animated version of it. The tennis ball and golfball were smaller than the bowling ball so they mostly bounced higher. They were all dropped at 5ft. Mine turned out as well as it can get. The times were calculated using Microsoft excel and it came out okay. I would change it a bit on how I took times to make it more accurate then it is now.

Container

     
      Animation has so far proven to be a fun course and this project that we worked on recently is certainly interesting. All companies that sell food have a certain type of braining on it, to prove it is there. The font and colors along with the same of the company and actual product name is all oaths. We were to choose a good of our choice and make a label for it and then put the actual label on the container. In this case, I chose popcorn. Popcorn was simple and easy to do. We designed the label in photoshop before actually adding it into Maya. I believe mine turned out well, however I would like to change the Nutrition Facts to be more realistic.

Marks

Trademarks

     All companies of each sort have a trademark, of which is designed by a Graphic Designer. This last week in e-Com we have been learning more about trademarks and the many types that exist. types include: symbols, pictographs, letter marks, logos, and combination marks.
Symbols are marks that don't have any type and are used to identify corporations, agencies and institutions. They're very gestalt, however without any type, they can be hard to match with their company and also are very expensive to promote.
Pictographs are symbols that are international. Examples would be the no smoking sign and disables parking space sign. However they can be confused with marks from corporations.
Lettermarks have letters and numbers rather that pictures to form their trademark, always being an abbreviation of the name. These are usually very bold and outgoing making them expensive to promote.
Logos are word/s in type are the full name. They're easy to prove and give the full name but, have a complex gestalt.
Combination marks are a combo of symbols and logos, w word being pared with a graphic image. This is also known as a signature. While these are very easy to recognize they have a very complex gestalt.

Key Ideas

Marks are very important and come in all types, an important aspect about designing them is to first decide what kind of mark to design, whether it be a symbol or logo. Symbols should all be designed to be with a one color aesthetic, only adding another color when the symbols needs a certain part to be enhanced. Before making any kind of mark, what should first be considered is how much money is available, as some marks are more costly to make and promote than others.

I was taught a lot about marks and I believe the most valuable trait I learned was the difference between all the marks and the advantages/disadvantages that go a long with each of them. I hadn't very aware of the importance off which kind of mark to use until now.

Conclusion 

In graphic design the type of mark used when creating one is incredibly important. There are so many kinds of marks each of them with their own uniqueness and disadvantages.  Learning about them will improve my work when designing one.

Typography

Learning About Typography

In e-Com we focused on learning through a series of videos and an article given to us online. These all focused on the subject of typography, which we are currently learning. 

Videos

The videos taught us the importance of fonts and the feeling they give off depending on the one that was being used. More covey style and cursive fonts would be used to show off something luxurious and a loud capitalized font would be for something important. We also learned about serif and sans serif fonts. Serif being the fonts with the 'tails', such as the one I'm using writing this. Sans serif is just the opposite. Sans, meaning 'without' in French, is for fonts without the tails. All these aspects are very important to graphic design as typography does take up a good portion of it.

Article

Now knowing the importance and personalities of fonts, the article focused on combining the fonts. All fonts, having a given trait, can be combined usually if they have a similar trait among them. Of course this isn't for all fonts. A loud sign font could be paired with a more simple and neutral font. to fonts sharing a similar design of professional could be paired together as well as long as they didn't compete for attention too much. Oftenly paired would be a Serif font and  sans serif font. Of course this is also a very important aspect of graphic design as well, paring up font to the match the style is a a necessity to make good works of art.
My favorite part of this article was the part that talked bout context. It's important that smaller fonts are still legible, which is something that is very valuable for future purposes.

Take Away

From the videos I believe the most important part that I learned was learning about the voices that the fonts give off, whether it be swirly or simple. I never took fonts into so much consideration before this. I mostly thought that if it looked good, that's it. However this has opened my eyes to how important fonts are. The impression they give to the reader is important for a work of graphics design.

Key Points

1.) Pairing

In typography putting two fonts together or maybe even three it's important to have them match, as in having a similar theme and not over power each other. 

2.)Hierarchy of Fonts

This just means the fonts that stand out more are bigger, such as titles. More simpler fonts that are used for context would be smaller. 

3.)Complementary 

A lot like pairing, fonts have to complement each other as in if one is large and extravagant then the complimentary font should be small and simple. 

Conclusions

Learning about typography has been a good experience and will affect how I create my designs in the future for the better. The videos helped me think of the importance of how the typography looks ad the article taught me the necessities of pairing up fonts. 

Snowflakes

Snowflakes in e-Com 

his past few weeks in Animation, e-Com students have been occupying themselves with the snowflake animation. The goal of the project was to create multiple snowflakes and animate them to fall down. The animation would be posed in a way to look like the camera, or person, was looking out of a window.

Creating Snowflakes 

We started by creating polygons, which was very easy. These polygons would be about a 1/6th of the size of what the final snowflake would be. After drawing pattern of stripes, it was mirrored over the x-axis then we made 5 more copies and arranged the six in a perfect circle. After adding more details to the final product we would begin animating.

Animation

Animating was also simple.  We picked a starting point and an end point for each of the snowflakes on a timeline. When it was finished all the snowflakes would come down. Also making a wall with a window on it, to make the effect of looking out of a window. Positioning the camera and then rendering the short video went smoothly for me. This was the final product.

Final Product