Article Summary
All in all, logos/symbols/marks/etc. have to be pretty compact, and yet easily recognizable; everything in it has to work well together, too.
Symbol or Logo?
A lot of people get these two confused; a symbol is a picture used to identify an organization, etc., while a logo only has to do with the actual name of it. Logos use type, symbols use graphics. When you combine these two, you get a combination mark!
What I Learned
Before reading this "article", I actually learned what I explained in the previous paragraph, that a logo and a symbol aren't the same thing. If I hadn't learned that, that probably would have caused a lot of confusion in the future. I also didn't know that Gestalt principles were used in graphic design ("close gestalt" and "open gestalt") in order to serve "as a magnet for the eye".
Picking Favorites
I feel like I'm being really repetitive with this, but believe it or not, my favorite thing that I got out of this article was that *gasp* logos and symbols aren't the same thing!!!!! No way!!!!!!! I already explained why it was valuable!!!!!!!!!!
All Together Now
Articles are usually pretty lengthy for me to read, even if this one was only two pages. However, most of what I learned from it was pretty important (like what I mentioned in the paragraphs above :> ).
- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ
Overview
Posters, viewed in the way consumers see it (not posters that you hang in your room), basically reflect the economic, social, cultural, and political state of everyday life. They can also suggest, unveil or remind the viewer of their personal "wishes". Most of all, a poster should inform its audience in stimulative way so that it is not forgotten and it is possibly dispersed to others. Today, posters have become common enough to the point that we see them everywhere.
Follow the Rules
The laws of designing a poster, as boring as they may sound, can actually make your product more noticeable to a passerby. Supposedly, it isn't very often that people stop to look at a poster, probably because they didn't "follow the rules". There are many factors in this, including:
- Color
- Proportion
- Contrast
- Rhythm
- Form
- etc.
The factor "color" can have multiple meanings; it can create a specific mood, "clarify situations", and is especially recognizable when having to do with politics (Democrat, Republican, etc).
Another factor, "lettering", is very important, but not as much as "color" might have. The fundamentals of this element incorporate its size, legibility [from a distance], and style.
Lastly, there's "shape", another one of the most significant principles of poster design. Some of its effects on the overall product include the shape being large in size, but not too dominating, obvious from a distance, "forceful presentation" to catch someone's attention, clarity, visual appeal, overlapping with other elements of the poster, and a dynamic display. Like other functions of the "laws", it won't work correctly if used improperly.
Key Points
The three main points I believe this article is trying to get across is that most posters aren't as publicly tasteful as they could be, they should be made to pop out, and most importantly, they recognize situation that are happening in real life. The first two are prominent because they both attempt to get the reader to not follow the crowd with boring posters, but make them influential in your own way. As for the last one, you may be so used to what's happening in the real world that you don't realize how important it is until you see it reflected on a poster.
Valuable Aspects
To me, the most interesting thing I read from this article was that, as said in the previous paragraph, there aren't many posters that strike people's aesthetics like there might have been before. By keeping this in mind, I will try my best to make my projects more optically appealing and study successful posters in the hopes of having the same effects of them.
Dumbed Down
In conclusion, posters are important and should be made with care.
- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ
Dreamweaver
Near the end of second semester, my class and I worked with a somewhat complicated application (all the button things were too hard to find) called Dreamweaver. This software made it so that you could create your own website!! Isn't that neat!! \ (•◡•) /
Making My Website
The whole point of this was to make an "about me" page, so I copied and pasted my elevator pitch, a swaggin' picture of my good looking face, and my mini bio. To make it look not-boring, I played around with the background colors to make it have a fun atmosphere even though there isn't that much to talk about. To make the text fit in with the colors, I made changed the font to make it look softer and made my descriptions pink. Afterwards, I added a project page where I could put my favorite projects from each section of e-Comm and made the colors the same as the home page.
ごめん！
I'm not going to apologize for acting like a huge weab when I did that, but I'm sorry for not finishing this before school ended!! I meant to do it over break but I kept forgetting to. I swear.
- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ
To start off, this was made by typing my name and making the text layer into a normal layer. Then I started erasing my name bit by bit, starting from the end. After I was done erasing my entire name, I made the animation using layers as frames, switching the order to make it start from the beginning. This made it look like my name was being handwritten (sorry it's really slow btw).
- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ
Color Psychology
My logo (right) is supposed to convey a fun and happy message with all the bright colors used in it. I was wanting to make it space themed, so I used some of the colors you could find in nebulas, like the Orion Nebula or the Eagle Nebula. The bright colors also represent wonder (to me anyways), which is what we do whenever we see stars in the sky.
Shape Symbolism
The shapes I mostly used in my logo were squares and a star, though the colors make it look like the star is made up of lots of triangles. I made it look like this because, like I said in the previous paragraph, I wanted it to have something to do with space, since my dream when I was four/five was to be an astronaut. I'm still really interested in astronomy, so I wanted it to look like how you would see a star from Earth, but a little more detailed and colorful than it usually would be.
Font Personality
I obviously didn't use the same font as I got in the quiz from the previous post, but in my second choice for my logo (left), there is a slight variation, since I added text to it. I used the font Century Gothic, since it looked modern-ish and had a space feel to it. I chose the name "WORMHOLE" for it because it kind of looked like a portal, and since it is supposed to be space-like, a portal in space usually comes to mind as a wormhole (again, to me anyways).
- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ
Pentagram
Today (or maybe yesterday), I went here to find out what font I am. A guy with a Russian(???) accent asked me four questions to find out what my personality is like, which were:
1. Are you emotional, or are you rational?
2. Are you understated, or are you assertive?
3. Are you traditional, or are you progressive?
4. Are you relaxed, or are you disciplined?
I answered emotional, understated, progressive, and relaxed. They fit into my "personal brand of 'me'" (I'm assuming that means font) because the font isn't too complicated; it's literally made out of dots.
