FINAL PORTFOLIO

So, these are my final projects, and I'll explain them in another post :)

pics

FINAL OCTOBER

POSTER FOR SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS

MAILER SIDE OF SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS

RED BARN POSTER

INFORMATION ON MAILER

FRONT OF MAILER

RED BARN NEWSPAPER AD

RED BARN WEB BANNER

Final October, Red Barn, and Society of Illustrators

Ok, so we finalized the October spread last week, and now we've done our second revs of Society of Illustrators and Red Barn. I didn't have a first rev really of either of these things, and what I did have was SAD. So now I have some fun things. For the Society of Illustrators I've spent quite a bit of time looking for a picture and an illustrator, about 4 hours total. Then I took about 5 hours trying to make my big picture look right, since it came from quite a tiny picture. I eventually used a few filters to work it out. The layout took about 4 hours total, including the initial layout that I had. I am pretty happy with the way it looks at this point, and got all positive feedback. My concept is "we see you" and it's a bunch of sweet looking eyes, and the 2 color side is a dark blue and a pink. It's kinda cool.

For the Red Barn stuff, I went with a fun whimsical graphic feel instead of using photos. I wanted to use some fun colors and bold simplistic illustrations. Time-wise on this one, it took me about 1.5 hours to get all of my fun things drawn, and about 2 hours to lay out the mailer. The poster, magazine ad, and banner took about 15 minutes a piece, since I had the basic idea down. Comments were generally positive, but the graphics might need some tweaking.

Watch for pics!

Ok, time to blog some more.

We have a few new assignments. One is a Red Barn park pamphlet, one is the october spread, and we also have a society of illustrators assignment. I have some pics for the october spread, 2 so far. As far as the red barn pamphlet is concerned, I'm not sure yet how I want to approach it, besides having a bank of photos to work with. We have a society of illustrators thing to do as well, and for that we had to present concepts. Mine is a zombie type of thing, since there are some really sweet zombie and horror illustrations out there. I want the illustration to be one of those horror, bright color, heavy stroke types of deals, with a cool headline that relates, maybe something about infection, or "you're next" or something about brains. Something awesome. We have the october spread due for this coming week, and for that i need to work with the "october" part and the pictures. hopefully i can come up with something pretty decent :) We also had to turn in one of the three professional photo things, and i turned in my ad. See midterm portfolio below for a visual :) People like the new october spread, for the big photo and the fading, not as much the red text and its placement, but they like the headline also.

Here's the first go at october

Here's the second one:

MIDTERM

Ok I guess the midterm is finally here! I revised everything about 536 times so let's hope something's good!

I chose the Rapala ad, my three "choose your own photo" layouts, Shut Up and Dance, and How Safe.

How Safe:

Thoughts- I like this layout. It came pretty easily to me and I just had to tweak here and there. I think it's effective in grabbing attention and works well visually.

Production info: 4 color, 2 page spread, full bleed, 10x16, gilligan list

Rapala:

Thoughts-This one was kind of challenging for me because I'm not much of a fisher and there's a decent amount of copy. I tried incorporating some interesting typography and appealing imagery. This one took several revisions to get to the final point, but I think it turned out pretty well, and I worked hard to make the typesetting as good as possible.

Production info: 4 color, 2 page spread, full bleed, 11x17

Three photo layouts:

Ad:

Thoughts--I'm happy with this ad. I decided to go with anthropologie's look (and brand) as my inspiration, because these elephants are something one might find in the store. I went with the clean look often present in anthro ads, with some items on the side that might be interesting to the same viewer. I like the cleanliness of this ad and I think it works well with the audience. Out of the three photo layouts, this one took absolutely the most revising.

Production Info: 2 page, 11x17, full color, full bleed

Magazine Spread:

Thoughts--This spread is called "The Joy of Candles" and talks about candles and their history and how wonderful they are. I think the typesetting went well for this ad and I'm happy with the headline and graphics. It went much better than the original rainbow striped version.

Production info: 4 color, 2 page spread, 11x17, full bleed

Poster:

Thoughts--For the poster I chose to advertise for the International Ceramics Festival. My original layout looked nice but had no concept, so for my revision I had the challenge of coming up with the concept, and I chose finding inspiration, with a texture of words on either side that may be inspirations for people. I think it turned out well and it's visually interesting.

Production info: 13x19, full bleed, 4 color

Shut Up and Dance

Thoughts: I chose this poster because it looked decent and although it was just an exercise I actually spent a reasonable amount of time on it doing photoshop work and shooting photography. I thought it expressed the attitude of the event well.

Production info: 13x19, 2 color black and one PMS, no bleed, gilligan list.

fish revision

This is the revision for my baitshop walls thang, and I changed everything but the image. I like the typography, and how the circle/O surrounds the lure! get excited!

elephantastic

So we had to pic a neat looking pic from somewhere, and I picked a fun little pic of cute elephant candle votive thingies. We were then told to use it on three different layouts, which sucks because my image is 72 ppi. EW. SOOOO, I am just working with what I've got. I emailed the artist and asked her for a larger image and no responses yet :( These layouts kind of took me forever, because I had to figure out what each thing was going to be about then I had to find copy about it and THEN think of a flippin design and THEN execute it. anyway, here's what I have.

bloggages

I haven't been on the blog in a while I miss it! I don't have a couple of the layouts that should have been on here because I already revised them without saving my old drafts, so we'll just have to go with what I have now. I put up my final stress layout which pretty much sucks. I'll be sure and change that before portfolio review. I also have my two final food layouts, both of which I am actually pretty happy about! I decided to go in a somewhat different direction with the donuts and make cute illustrations instead of finding crappy photos. I think it turned out well, and i like my little crumbs and small touches like that. The how safe was pretty decent from the beginning but just needed some tweaking here and there. My final touch was to lead the main body copy to match with the height of the sidebar. Overall, I think they turned out well. For my fish one, The first draft was a drawing that was AWFUL and basically had to be completely trashed. We won't count that one. For the second one I found a badass fish picture and I wanted it to be big because it was so cool. I don't think that the headline is probably fully resolved yet but we can always fix that :D Overall, I think things are actually going pretty well as of now. Working hard, staying up late.

food

For these posts I felt a little better because of the imagery available. On How Safe I went for a really big graphic (obviously) of lettuce and I photoshopped it to be sort of dark and looming lettuce rather than light airy fresh lettuce. I like the color scheme of this layout--it looks earthy and organic but still kind of dark. It didn't take me too long really because I sort of instantly got the idea, I just had to execute it and tweak the headline and photoshop the lettuce. I guess the Secret of Feeling Full is not really good enough yet; I am working on it. The printout wasn't quite as bold and fun as the computer version, but that may have just been the paper I used. I like the headline but apparently it isn't convincing enough. I think it kind of looks like a book cover or something.

STRESS!!!

I haven't blogged in a while, I miss this little page. I have been working on everything in the entire world, including my stress layout. I'm not sure what all to do with it but I think it at least looks decent. I still need photography for it, though, which is not good. I'll have to do that tonight at some point. I'm currently working on the other spreads as well, and I've just about finished the first draft of the food safety article. So yay! I spent most of my time with the stress article with typesetting stuff, making sure everything is fitting well and all that jazz, so we'll see how it goes. The food safety article has been a challenge because there is so little type! AGH! O well, I at least thought of SOMEthing.

Okay, I am finally considering myself done with the NAHM poster. I tried to make it more bold and visually appealing, so hopefully it's better than it was. I added more black and a little river of the brown/gold to add interest. My slogan is: In a braid of tradition, strands of heritage intertwine. And I'm STICKING WITH IT!

For the stress thang, I wasn't sure where to go with it for a while, but I decided that since it was a showdown, I'd have to people kind of staring at each other (with bags under their eyes) like they were thinking, "oh ya? I can top that." It didn't take too long, probably about two hours to do a little editing and such, but there is definitely more to go on that. I'll be shooting photos hopefully, and if not I'll have to make drawings to go with it. We'll see. I'm just glad to be done with the poster!

These are some more layouts for NAHM posters. I am getting pretty tired of this project I guess. The colors of the wind one was kind of a joke but who knows? Maybe people our age would relate since we grew up with Pocahontas, and maybe they would think it was fun :) These didn't take very long, just some tweaking of the words. I will finalize an illustration that's actually nice for these things, incorporating some of the color and hopefully some movement. Ready to be done.

These are the two posters I had for friday. The braid one had a braid illustration on it also. I was happy with the way the dance poster turned out, although it took about twice as long as I would have anticipated. I spent about six hours with all the photographing and photoshopping and picking out different stuff. So that took forever but that's okay. The native american one needs work I guess, because the idea is sort of confusing. I do feel like it at least looks better though. I'll be changing up the catch phrase up a little bit but keeping the same basic idea I suppose. At least that one is coming a little faster! And I DID manage to only use my gilligan fonts on the dance poster (I just used helvetica).

The Gilligan List

I want you all to think about this... If you were stuck on a desert island, what five typefaces would you want to have with you. This list of five, should not include any display or specialty typefaces. Think this over. What typefaces (serif and sans serif) would you choose that would give you the most flexibility as a designer. Have this list ready for discussion on Wednesday.

Alright, here we go:

Arial Black because it's the best at getting attention of rescuers. If it was a container it would hold the most water.

Gill Sans Light just because I like it. I have to have one good thing in my life on a desert island right?

Times New Roman because it looks good in italics (and it's just as good of a serif as any). Maybe I'll use it if I decide to write a 300 page epic poem about my tribulations. It's good for body copy right?

Helvetica. I just feel like you're supposed to have it.

Comic Sans for when my life is over. Put it on my cactus headstone.

follow up on that...

So my Native American poster is done! yay! even MOUNTED! impressive, I know. I decided to use the orange as more of a beige, so it was at about 25% or so. I think it ended up turning out pretty nice! Just did some vertical and horizontal type, used somewhat of a grid, and lots of the elements on the checklist! Yes, I actually looked at it for the first time. We'll see what happens tomorrow!

native american heritage

For this poster, we have to use the ugliest orange ever plus black, and make a sweet poster with a ton of information on it. My idea came to me immediately, and I am currently in the midst of making it. I am using an Indian braid as a part of the N (the left part, I forgot the technical terms!) and it will hang down basically. That's the illustration part of it, and that's actually about as far as I have gotten on the whole thing :-P After that I'll just have to try to use my ninja typography skills to make something decent out of this mess. We'll see.

salsa on the rocks

for the last two layouts we did, we had to do one about latin dance parties and rock climbing club. These were both a little difficult, since rocks are kind of boring and salsa dancing stuff can be cliche. I thought of the climbing idea as I was doing it; it was sort of a continuous work in progress and at the end the phrase "Take a climb on the wild side" ended up making a cliff face with an ever-so-original silhouette man hanging from it. It looked decent I suppose, but the man was unclear. So then for the other one, I came up with a clever phrase, but it looks like that's where the creativity and goodness ended :( Oh well, there is always a next time! At least one design got hired. I'm going to try to look at that list of stuff and really work harder on my stuff, so we'll see what happens. So far, so goodish/mediocre.