End of Year Reflection

Human Faces

Our goal for this project was to create a company based on factors that other people in our class decided for us, and I created a primate sanctuary from it. It took a few months to make, and I had a bit of a hard time figuring out what I would use for my logo, but after that it was a pretty smooth ride. People loved one logo that looked like both a monkey and a human, so that was what I used. I really like how it turned out. However, I had to learn a lot about using Photoshop to edit the lighting of a picture, since I had to use it to put monkeys in a picture.

Magazine Spread

For this project, we had to interview a local illustrator/graphic designer/etc and learn about their job; my interviewee's name was Madison Crabtree. It took a long time to finish, considering I had never made a magazine spread before, and the server crashed in the middle of making it. I almost had to start all over! I learned a lot about spacing in this project and how to make a magazine spread "my own." There was one page that didn't really fit in with the rest in terms of color, and that was one thing people didn't like, but I changed it. I think it turned out pretty well, even though I later realized that I made a couple mistakes long after I posted it to Bēhance.

Prom

The Junior Committee at our school wanted us to create poster and ticket designs for prom, which was 1920's themed. It only took (I think) a couple weeks to do, and I had lots of difficulties trying to figure out what my design would even look like. During this process, I learned how to use the mesh tool in Illustrator! That was exciting for me. My classmates only got to see the version I made before I switched concepts, and they didn't really like it, but then again neither did I. Even though the committee didn't choose my design, I still like how it turned out! It's a bit simple, but still nice.

Eyed Tattoo

We started working on this project at the very beginning of the quarter, and just finished it a couple days ago! We had a free choice to pick whatever sort of company we wanted to and design a logo, poster, etc for it; I chose a tattoo parlor and named it EYED TATTOO. I think the biggest difficulty I had was in the beginning, when I couldn't even think about the specifics of my logo; I thought a squid logo would be neat, but I also liked the concept of a skull. Thankfully, my classmates really liked what I was doing with it, especially the fact that I gave detailed backstory to the founders. I ended up changing the entire concept of the infographic we were supposed to make, creating a safety poster instead of my original plan of a flow chart. My favorite thing about this was definitely the color scheme, and I thought it was really fun to make, but I think I could have done a better job on the billboard and web ads.

Time Spent in Class

I admit I have gotten pretty distracted during class, but for the most part I think I've done really well! At the very least, I tried to stay on task :>. If I didn't have any specific work I needed to be doing, I would usually be messing around on Illustrator trying to create a new drawing or something like that. I enjoy doing this at home too, but I don't always have the time for it, so sometimes I'll just doodle on regular paper if I don't have the time.

Strengths

I love (but also kind of hate) how detailed I make my work; I don't want anyone to be disappointed with how little I have, so I try to add a lot while trying to make sure I'm not adding too much. In order to make this happen, I sometimes work at home to finish something up if I'm sure that I won't have time to finish it in class.

Improvements
I take a really long time to finish my work, and that's not just in this class. It's not that I'm getting distracted (though that does happen sometimes), but just that I don't want anything to look sloppy. That can sometimes make me late when turning things in, but, even though I'm kind of busy outside of school, I try to work on big projects like these outside of school if I don't think I'll have enough in school (I know I just said this, but that's just me).

To Summarize the Semester...
I really like how laid back this semester has been, but I miss Burdolski. The sub was nice, but it's not often you have a long term sub, and it can be a bit tough. However, I think we've gotten closer as a class and have gotten better at critiquing each other without being outright rude. I have definitely learned from this semester that some projects take a reallyyyyyy long time to finish, but just because you're tired of it doesn't mean you can just slack off. Next semester—or should I say school year—I would like to get be able to make friends with the incoming juniors and give them valuable feedback, and I hope they will do the same for me.

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Semester One Final - Graphic Design

What We Did During the Semester

Adding Personality to My Name

For this project, our goal was to think about what made ourselves unique (hobbies, interests, etc.) and to write our names twelve different times, incorporating one of these interests into each twelve. We were only allowed to use type in this project, no graphics.
Overall, this process took about a month in all, from sketching out our ideas to uploading them to Behance.
There were some roadblocks along the way, especially when it came to the part where I wanted to put something travel-related into my name; there weren't very many things I could think of that had to do with travel other than postcards (which, when I put into effect, looked only vaguely recognizable) and landmarks. I settled on landmarks, as that ended up being the only thing you would really think about when it came to travel.

I ended up learning in the end that, even though we were only doing black-and-white versions of these, which color you set as the background does matter. I used a black background for the one with my name as a constellation, which made sense, but I did the same with ones that didn't need black backgrounds, like writing to my pen pals.
Most of the feedback I got on this project was very positive, that it looked very nice and clean. There were a couple, though, that needed to be changed a little bit; for example, the "B" in the one I had for reading looked more like an "o" for the first time that I had made it, so I had to change that to make it look more recognizable. I was also told that I should change the one for traveling since it's graphic based, but then I would have had nothing making up the words.
Other than the mistake I made with the black backgrounds, I think it turned out very nicely, and it was also a very fun project to do! I'm pretty selfish and like to talk about myself, so it was nice to be able to do that with no judgement haha.

Holiday Card

Our goal for this project was to create a holiday card (any holiday, even National Donut Day, which is what I did!) that was, again, type based, but we had to do it mostly by hand; we could only use the computer for fine-tuning our work, but it couldn't be too much.
This project, once more, took another month to do, but most of it was the sketching part. I did mine a little

differently: I created my layout, then got an actual donut and sprinkles and shaped them into what I wanted for the card, which took some extra time to do before and after school.
Right off the bat, I messed up, thinking that we could just make a sketch and upload it into the computer to edit; most of my editing was in Illustrator, but the main thing about this project was to get all the details done on paper. For this card, I was going to do Pride Month, but since I messed up so bad, I changed my mind and decided to do National Donut Day instead.
During this project, I learned that it really takes a lot of work to be able to do hand typography well, and that even when you think something is done, it's not. Photoshop also helped me to learn that lighting is always very important when it comes to holiday cards with photos on them.
The feedback I got on my sketch was pretty well, but I got a lot of criticism for the photos I took of the donut. The lighting was always too bright/dark, the kerning of the sprinkle letters was off, but overall people liked it!
About midway through this was when Mrs. Burdolski helped me to decide that photos, instead of vectors, would be better and way cooler looking. This was pretty much the only thing that really changed about my project, other than that first failure.
I think, other than the fact that I forgot to fix the kerning and some of the lighting, that this project went really well. I could have been a lot more attentive when it came to details like the ones mentioned above, but, to me, it seems like something that would actually show up at Hallmark.

Company Branding

At the very beginning of this project, we had to write down any animal, any number, any mineral, and any two-letter combination. We then put all of these slips of paper in specific jars, and went around the room picking up random animals, numbers, minerals, and letter combos (I had a monkey, 420, iron, and AB). We then had to create a company that integrated all of these things into it, along with a logo, product, uniform, app thumbnail, interior, exterior, and stationary for that company. I ended up creating Human Faces, a primate sanctuary based in Amtali, Bangladesh, with its address being 420 Iron Drive.
This project took about two months to complete in all, having to create logo sketches and many layouts for all of the things above and uploading all of it to Behance.
The biggest challenge here, as I'm gonna keep talking about, was that it went on for so long and I was getting impatient and lazy with it. For as long as this project went on for, I learned that it's really crucial to not get lazy with what you're doing, even if it lasts a while. I constantly had to keep pushing myself to stay with the game and not let my work get sloppy.
I was proud of the feedback I got on this project, and especially so when it came to the logo sketches. I wasn't even really thinking about it when I made it, but the group I was with noticed that one of the logos I made looked like both a monkey and the profile of a person, so we were all freaking out about that (of course I chose that one lol).
There were only a few things that I ended up changing with this project, and they only really had to do with the stationary. All I really needed to do was add a little border to the envelope and letterhead to make it look really "organic." I also had to remove the lines I originally had on my letterhead, but that was no problem.
I really don't like how long it took to do this project; it seemed to drag on for forever. However, I think that all that time allowed me to really get picky about my project, which is what I like to do. I feel like my logo and the idea I came up with for my company were kind of boring, but I'm still happy about how things turned out.

Time in Class

Most of the time, I thought I was pretty productive. I would sometimes get distracted watching videos or looking up that weird theory that people have about Avril Lavigne, but I got just about everything done on time (I get very stressed if I don't).

If I got done with something early in class or had nothing really specific to work on [that was graphic design related], I would usually work on the t-shirt project for Girls Who Code Club or try to get caught up on my outside vector portrait of Academy Award nominee Rooney Mara. I also wanted to learn how to do shading in Illustrator, so I did a bit of research on that, too.

Illustrator is a lot of fun to work with, so sometimes at home I like to mess around with it and see what kinds of things it has, and if there's something there that I haven't learned (but would like to) yet.

Strengths

I'm very detail-oriented when it comes to design, so I try my best to not make anything look poorly made. I also often try to see if there's any variations I could do on some portions of my projects to make them look better.

Improvements

Unfortunately, being detail-oriented is also a bad thing, since it makes my design process very slow. I have been a very slow worker my whole life, so I think that in order to get better as a designer, I need to learn to work faster without sacrificing the beauty in my project.

Summary

I really love being able to have graphic design for two whole hours!! Even though it's a bit of a stressful work environment, I'd still rather be designing something than taking notes in other classes (the way the room looks also helps, along with being able to sit next to my girlfriend ◕‿◕✿).

Of course, if I could change how fast things go in this class and some of the projects we work on, I would, but I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon haha. I know we're being prepared for the graphic design world, but I just really like being able to work on projects like the ones I work on outside of class.

Most of what I learned this semester had to do with time management, as I'm a pretty slow worker, and really had to keep things going in order to keep up with people (but not the Kardashians).

Next semester, I would like to not be as easily distractible, as it happens a lot. Also, again, I would like to teach myself to be a faster (but not lazier) worker.

Lastly, even though this has nothing to do with what I'm talking about, I'd like to thank Mrs. Burdolski for being such a great teacher (I'm totally not trying to suck up)!!

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Godzilla Goes to McDonald's

The Scope

This, I'm pretty sure, is our final project. For this, we were put into randomly generated groups to come up with a short story to create using VFX and some of the concepts we learned throughout our year in animation.

Production
My team started off filming the scene where Godzilla (Ashlee) is taking the food from the worker (Josh). The rest was just making models in Maya, which was what I was doing for a lot of the time. After all the models were made, I created the title card using Illustrator. After a LONG time, everything was done, and Gabe and James put it all together in After Effects.

If Things Had Been Different

I know it's not something that I did, but I wish Rowan had decided to make the spaceships in Maya, since it would have been a lot easier to combine everything into one Maya file. That's my only real criticism, but he did do a really, really good job when it came to making them.
Oh, I guess another one would be that we didn't follow the storyboard at all (and I didn't know about it)??? So...maybe we should've followed the storyboard?? There were also so many editing errors made in the story (that I didn't know about) that I don't care to mention them all.

Same Things

I mean, I thought it was pretty funny, and so did everyone else, so I guess I'd keep the humor aspects in it. I also think that the greenscreen effects were dealt with pretty well, even if we couldn't exactly get our hands on believable costumes.

Making Future Projects Better

TALKING TO EACH OTHER MORE IN THE GROUP WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY HELPFUL!! You know, just so everyone knows what's happening!! We should have done that more often. :>

The End

All and all, this project was pretty fun to make (and watch), even if it was made pretty poorly. I don't regret it!

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Semester Reflection - Graphic Design

Semester in Review

•  Raccoon

• This project took us a few weeks, but not too many. For it, we created a raccoon using a tutorial (through it, we learned the basics of Illustrator), and afterwards put it in a "fall picture" (mine didn't look very good) and a postcard. A huge setback for me during this project was that we also had to put some fall leaves in our fall picture, but I had the idea that we had to make all the leaves in the tutorial when we actually just had to make a few. However, I'm pretty proud of the postcard I made; it was around Halloween time when we made ours, so I gave mine a Halloween theme. I never got any feedback for my fall raccoon, but I did receive some compliments on my postcard. :> I didn't really like these projects as much as the ones we did later on, since we weren't able to be as creative with them.

•  Vector Portrait

• Our second project was creating vectorized portraits of ourselves in Illustrator. For me, this project, once again, took me longer than everyone else in making it. We had another few weeks to work on it, but I spent a great deal of time after school trying to make it more and more detailed. In the picture I was recreating, I had been wearing plaid, so I had to create a different shirt for the portrait so it wouldn't take as long. I don't ever remember getting feedback on it. My personal opinion on the finished portrait would be that it looks good and bad at the same time (good: lots of detail; bad: I'm really ugly).

• Infographic
• Out of all the projects we've done so far, this is the one I'm most proud of. Our assignment was to create an infographic based on something we're interested in, so for mine, I chose the ISS because of my dream to someday go to space. I know I'm being repetitive, but again, I don't know how long we had to work on these; I know it was at least a month. In the beginning, we mainly had to do a bunch of research, but I decided to do my graphics first, which set me back later when I had to do a ton of research. During the process of making it, I received a bit of critique from some of the "full-time" graphic design students, in which they recommended that the bar of information to the side have a background that complimented the rest of the image, soooo that's what I did. I think my infographic turned out pretty well, but maybe just a little too crowded in some areas. I spent several hours after school working on this and, even though it was very tiring, I love the final result.

Time Well Spent

Because of the fact that I'm super awkward when talking to people (and therefore almost never talk), I think I'm pretty good in terms of managing my time.
When I completed my work, some things I would do to utilize my time would be to: go through Behance, work on homework, or make other things in Illustrator.
To strengthen my work outside of class, I draw a lot and try to pay more attention to ads on television or anywhere else to see what professional graphic designers use in their work.

Strengths

I've always been pretty keen on art and design, so it wasn't hard at all for me to create visually appealing images and asking a few people if what I've made makes sense or not.

Areas of Improvement

Even though I can't really help that I'm a slow worker, I would like to become a faster worker and, as my brother says, "Work smarter, not harder." I'm sure that with enough time, I'll start to improve on that.

Overall Thoughts

As I said before, my favorite thing about this semester has been creating my ISS infographic, which I am so proud of. However, if I could go back in time to stop myself from doing something, I would tell myself not to make all the fall leaves (since no one else told me). I thoroughly enjoyed learning about all the tools in Illustrator, and I hope that next semester I can make something even more impressive than my infographic.

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

End of Year Project

BabyVac by Team 1
Nearing the end of the school year, finals are bound to come up. For e-Comm, our final was to present a made up product with a pre-assembled team. Our product was the BabyVac (the Baby Mop was already taken), which is basically a portable vacuum attached to a onesie. When the baby crawls around, it cleans your floors (amazing am I right????). Totally original.

Team Work
Overall, our group effort was alright; it wasn't good, but it wasn't bad. Distractions would come about every so often, but for the most part, we worked hard to make our presentation funny and well-designed.

Next Time...
I think that if I were to be put in a group like this again, I hope that I would try to get people more on track rather than just sitting there and watching a couple people in my group slack off. I don't want to have to work as much to get other people's parts done tbh!!

Improvements
Becca and I spent a lot of time working on the commercial, so I think I know a lot more about Final Cut than I did before (merging clips, etc.). I now also sort of know how to make a sphere in SketchUp, but since it didn't end up in the final animation, that doesn't really matter.

Commercial


Animation


"Official" BabyVac Website

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

My Logo

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

Color Psychology

Why is Color Psychology in Graphic Design so Important?
Well, color psychology has everything to do with graphic design! Graphic design is almost entirely composed of color psychology. Companies use certain colors to get target audiences to buy their products. Color can even make people feel certain emotions!

Emotional Colors
As said in the previous paragraph, some colors can make you feel a particular way. For example, seeing red on a product might make you feel angry or rushed. Another example could be blue, trying to make you feel sad or calm.

My Opinion...I Guess???
Sometimes I feel like producers aren't really trying to use color psychology; they're just trying to make their logo look cool. For example, take the 2014 Nintendo logo. A lot of people think that gray means peace and balance, but how exactly are they trying to make you feel calm when their games have the most frustrating puzzles ever?? Sorry if I'm getting off topic, but I don't think they really put any thought into their new logo, and I'm sure that a lot of companies have done the same thing. Don't get me wrong, a lot of companies do put a lot of thought into their logo. It just seems like some aren't using color psychology correctly.


- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ




did I do this right?? (⊙.⊙)