PHOTOSHOP
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Using Adobe Lightroom I was able to modify this photo to get a better final product. If you look at the pictures to the left it shows the edits made to the original picture.
The picture directly right shows a close up of the scales on the final picture. I started by increasing the exposure slightly to a +0.15 and bumping up the contrast to +52. The highlights were taken down to a -43. The temperature was increased slightly from 5250 to 5838 and the tint was taken up from +9 to +29.
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This is a picture I took for a Halloween photo spread. I used red corn syrup to look like blood. I thought the picture turned out cool, but I decided to take it a step further. Using Adobe Photoshop I made the image black and white but left the blood red. To do this I used the magic wand to select the red color on her lips. I then added a new layer with the black and white adjustment and created a layer mask. I selected "color" from the drop down menu and used the paintbrush to let the color from the original image show through. I added contrast to the entire picture at the end.
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This image was created using clipping masks, an image of a cityscape, and gradient opacity. I wanted to turn the original picture into a more creative version of itself. That's why I decided to keep a lot of the original detail in his face and blend together the cityscape into the rest of his silhouette.
Using that image I put together a promotional poster advertising a music and arts festival the band Ivouries was a part of. This band and festival are pretty eclectic so I wanted to create a poster with a lot of collage elements to it. I used the principles of alignment, proximity, and typography in this poster. Alignment is shown in the different groupings of texts. The band name Ivouries is aligned right instead of center. The date and location in the bottom right corner are aligned to the right. A total of three fonts were used for this to keep it simple. For the main font I tried to choose one that was bold but not overbearing because I wanted to use it for a lot of the text. The principle of proximity means grouping together related elements. I grouped together text in corners of the page according to what information I thought was related.
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USU STARS! GEAR UP is a program designed to help students prepare for and succeed in college. This digital display is designed to motivate and encourage students to reach for higher education. In creating this poster the first thing I did is choose my fonts. I used "Chasing Embers" for the main text and "A little sunshine" for the rest of the text. Download fonts here. When creating this poster I gave special thought to contrast, alignment, proximity, and typography. I used the white background to keep it simple and clean, as well as to add contrast with the text and designs. My design is pretty simple so I decided to add more visual appeal I would stagger the text instead of keeping it all aligned. I grouped together the parts of the text that were relative to each other. I created the hand holding the light bulb element using the pen tool in Adobe Photoshop. Using clipping masks I was able to make the "perhaps" and the gears using an image of the galaxy. You can get the galaxy image here from Ruby Artstyle.
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This year's UCET conference theme is YOU-cet. The conference focuses on how tech can help us build relationships, engage our students in collaboration, and take student innovations and ideas to the next level. Technology can do amazing things, but human's are what drive it!
I chose to stick with a fairly neutral color palette. I have varying shades of browns and purples in this poster along with a little bit of green and peach. I tried to pull from a triad of colors on the color wheel. I wanted to keep the colors natural looking because of the plants that are being held up in the hands. The idea of the plants is that they are being given life by the hands, just like technology is given life by people.
I focused on colors, typography, and simplicity for this project. In Photoshop I used quick selection tools, layers to keep track of everything, the pen tool, gradients, and a lot of masking.
The image of the hands holding the flowers is based on and used parts of this painting by Andrea Benson.
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For my business card I wanted to keep it simple and not overcrowd it at all. Instead of trying to fill space I maximized the use of empty space. I only needed my email and website on it so I didn't try to fill it with anything else. I used the rectangle element on both the front and the back to try and tie them together. I also pulled the purple color on the back of the card directly from the photo so they would tie together. I didn't use any extra fonts or elements, I really did my best to keep it simple and straight forward.
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This picture was edited in Photoshop with specific emphasis on learning the liquefy tools. I used the blemish tools, patching tools and the liquefy tool a little. I know those are very strong tools and I just wanted to try my hand at them a little more. In the edited photo her blemishes have been removed, her cheeks have been thinned, and her eyes have been enlarged. The photo was shot with basic composition rules. The frame is filled, her head in the top third with her eyes at eye level, and lots of light was used in this picture. In Photoshop I also made basic adjustments like brightness, contrast, and temperature.
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This project was made for Utah State University to inform students of tuition and fee payment deadlines. The requirement was to design a display that could go up on the campus digital displays and be read in 20 seconds. I put the basic information on the display as well as a URL that can help direct further questions.
For my design tools I focused on typography, alignment, and simplicity. Because the display only goes up for 20 seconds at a time I didn't want anything to distract from the message that the deadline is approaching. I center aligned all the type and tried to balance it with the image of the books to create a balanced display.
I used clipping masks, selection tools, and shape tools to create this display. I also used blending tools for the first time. I used blending on the books with the background as the blend layer.
I made this image once with a simpler background and a second time with a more fun colorful background. With the colorful background I also made the text colorful and changed the font to make it look more uniform.
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I used the two images above to create an 11 x 17 inch ad for a Nike tennis shoe. I wanted to work on an ad because that's an area I find graphic design very applicable in. I started by picking apart the shoe in Photoshop by creating many layers and layer masks. I added layers on top with a hue adjustment blend mode, which allowed me to change the color of the different sections of the shoe. To keep my file organized I made sure to name all my layers and put them in groups as I saw fit. I also created a layer mask around the picture of the runner so I could move her around and not have her background affecting the image. I added a light gray glossy background to make the image look less flat. I used alignment and typography when selecting where to put all the components onto the ad.
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This was an ad for Utah State University's play Much Ado About Nothing. The ad is very simple and I paid special attention to typography, alignment, and style. The title font (which you can get here) was chosen because it had a similar texture and delicacy as the flowers. The color was also pulled out of the flowers. The information at the bottom was put in a simple san-serif font. The background color was pulled from the leaves, and then slightly changed so none of the leaves blended into the background. Most of the design was pulled from the flower element to give the entire ad unity.
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These pieces are collages put together in Photoshop. I used a variety of tools to combine different images into a single piece. Selection tools and masking tools were probably the most used tools. I also made a lot of color adjustments to different elements. Along with Photoshop tools I paid special attention to contrast, harmony, and color. I wanted these collages to look random but also have all the elements look like they belong together.
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I created posters with the same image and word but designed in four different ways. We learned about contrast this week and all the different ways you can use contrast. There's size, color, orientation, amount, etc. I tried to incorporate these things to play with different ways contrast could be created in a poster.
We also learned about different ways the brain processes messages. I wanted to see if I could evoke different emotions and different feelings by trying a variety of variations.
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Every week in The Utah Statesman they have a National holiday graphic for the day the paper prints. These are January's National holiday graphics. I tried to keep them simple because they're printed on a busy page. I used shape a lot for these projects. I wanted my text to go a long with the shapes I was using so I curved the text in the pie graphic and broke up the square for the vacation graphic. I also got to use a lot of fun fonts because the graphics had so little text I didn't find any of it overbearing or distracting.
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I'm working on a small collection of collages for my portfolio and wanted to incorporate a theme throughout the pages. I'm focusing it around the idea of art and the ability art has to spread a powerful message. This piece incorporates a lot of art that I've found powerful. These art piece's include Picasso's Les Demoiselle's d'Avignon, Duchamp's Le Fountaine, and one of Jackson Pollock's pieces.
Some of the design elements I used for this piece are typography, alignment, and message. I want these pieces to feel unified but not be perfectly consistent so I used a variety of fonts. I have two different fonts plus I used a collage of letters from magazines to spell art. I used alignment within different elements. I left-justified the "speaks volumes" because those were one unit and I wanted them to be read together. I wanted the message to be spread throughout the page. I wanted this page to be a little more difficult to read the title "art speaks volumes" so the reader would have to absorb all the information. This isn't meant to be simple or an ad with cognitive ease like we've been studying in our class. I wanted this to make the audience look hard and really take time to look at all the art that's been incorporated into this design.
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I used negative space to keep the design to the left light. The element on the left page is bold and heavy and I wanted to balance it out by keeping the rest of the page light. I used the same color scheme on both pages in the spread to give it unity. The type is a simple san-serif font. On the right page I used a series of boxes and rectangles that are all different sizes and types but keeps that shape consistent. I wanted to use a variety of elements but not overwhelm the page so I stuck to the rectangle and then I stuck to the shape cut out in the portrait to add another layer behind.
This info-graphic displays different statistics about women's lives in India and the patriarchal culture that exists there. Women lack a lot of rights and abuse and rape are all too common.
To create this info-graphic I read through a number of statistics from a survey done by the center of gender studies. I selected a few statistics that I thought would tell a story.
As far as the design of the info-graphic itself I used a picture I took of the Taj Mahal and used the content aware scale to extend the sky all the way up the graphic. I pulled the blue colors from the designs on the Taj Mahal and used those in all the text and graphics. I tried to add different sections of elements so it didn't all go straight down the center.
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I took this picture at a concert last week and due to the nature of concert lighting I had to shoot with a really high ISO. A high ISO can add a lot of grain (or noise) to an image.
When editing pictures from the concert I used Lightroom for noise reduction and color correction. You can see in the boxes that have zoomed in on a segment of the before and after picture that the one on the left has significantly less noise.
I color corrected the image so his skin looked closer to a normal skin color. I also cropped the image so there wasn't so much negative space around him and he better filled the frame.
This is an ad done for Aggie Radio. I kept all the elements black and white and used a lot of contrast to make this ad visually appealing.
I chose to use graphics that were simplified and lacked realism to keep the ad easy to look at. More realism than is shown wasn't necessary and more simplified graphics are shown to do better in advertisements.
I used the black circle as an anchor on the page and then grouped items together that were related to each other. The title, presenter, and catch-phrase were grouped together and the date, time, location and who it features were grouped together.
Alignment was probably the trickiest part of this. I had a lot of elements and information I knew I wanted on the ad and I just had to find ways to group and align them to make a clean and well organized ad.
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This was created using an image I took at Logan City Limits, a local music festival. I started by creating a layer mask of the guitarist and then duplicated the image so there were three. I set the opacity on the back two images to be more transparent and kept the middle image at full opacity. I thought this helped make the overall look less harsh. I wanted to include a little bit more of a design element to this so I added triangles between the layers of the guitarist. I chose a dense text for their name to draw attention and add weight to the bottom of the page so it felt more grounded.
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This poster is made up of pictures I took in India over the summer on a humanitarian trip with the company HELP International. I wanted to make a poster that used a lot of pictures because I think they show a lot of emotion and a lot of the appeal in humanitarian work. There's pictures of the Taj Mahal, of the children we worked with, of the team, etc. Pictures do a lot to express emotions and show experiences. I wanted to put together the pictures in an interesting way so I decided to make a grid out of hexagons. I left white space in between each picture and I also left white space at the bottom to put the company name. I used a font that I thought matched the theme and mood of the poster. I didn't put other things on the poster because I wanted the focus on the name of the company and the pictures. We've learned that it's important to only put on the most important information so people will actually absorb it so I thought the company name would be enough for people to look them up and learn more.
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This graphic was done to go with an article in the Utah Statesman about study tips and preparing for finals week. I used the step and repeat tool to create equally spaced lines to look like notebook paper to go along with the theme of studying.
One of the biggest things I focused on was alignment. I wanted to make sure the text was spaced out and fit in between the lines. I used leading to get the type to be the right space apart.