Calendar

This assignment was a small personal calendar about a company, event or organization. It took me forever to finally choose what to do. I originally was going to do something about Drama but I honestly could not find a single thing of info on when the drama team practices. So I chose to do something else. I'm not a huge sports fan but I have been following the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs lately. My favorite team right now is the Chicago Blackhawks so I chose to do a calendar with the schedule of the Blackhawk's games against the Nashville Predators. I found a couple pictures of the Blackhawks and put them on a picture in Photoshop. Then I placed the pictures together in an InDesign file. I put the text in with InDesign. The Calendar part was arranged with tabs. Then I put the yellow circles around the days that games were scheduled. The text at the top was colored the colors of the Blackhawks, Black and Red. Then I took all of the layers and put them in a certain template so I could print it out and fold it accordingly.

Technical Illustration

This assignment was to vector a picture of something artificially manufactured. I chose to do a picture of the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo's ship from Star Wars. I wanted to challenge myself. I originally was going to do something much, much simpler, but then I saw what some other students were doing and I changed my mind. Instead of going with photo realism I decided to make the picture look like it was kind of cartoony. Solid colored shapes with outlines. It took quite a while to complete. I started with the cockpit, then went on to do the satellite, then I did the main body (which was the biggest layer of them all) and then I did the front two parts (whatever they're called).

Cure-A-Thon poster

This assignment was a poster for the Cure-A-Thon at my school. It's put on every year by the Hairstyling program.

The one used the previous year was hideous, so we were assigned to make a good one for this year. They wanted it to be simple. I took a photo of holding hands and vectored them so it was just silhouettes of arms. I made one arm black and one arm white for contrast. All the info was given so I pieced it all together the way I thought it looked good with most of the text black and then the title white so it would pop out more.

Vector Landscape

This assignment was to make a vector picture of a landscape. So we were supposed to use Adobe Illustrator. I originally started with a city landscape, but it didn't turn out like I planned so I chose a different picture. I chose an ice ridge to vector.

Most of the shapes that I made had only straight edges, no curves. Only the circle I used for the sun had curves. I made shapes for each change in color then I used the eyedropper tool to get the color from the picture into each individual shape. For the sky I put a Gaussian blur to make it look more like a real sky then for the rays of the sun, I used radial blur.

Drink Can

This assignment was to design a label for a Drink Can. I went with an energy drink. I came up with the name Ignite Energy because it sounds cool. I down loaded the font called 'Pulse sans virgin' from dafont.com.

The label design took a lot of playing around with to get quite right. I used Adobe Illustrator to design the label. I started with a green color and typed 'ignite' and 'energy' in separate text layers so I could make them different sizes and move them around easier than if it was in the same layer. Then I duplicated the logo and made the second set of words black and put them behind the green ones. I made the black letters have a slight stroke around them so the words on top of them were more legible. I put a white rectangle behind the word 'energy' for some extra design. I colored the background black because I like the combination of black and green. Then I found a picture of cartoony fire and made my own custom vector for it so the background could have a little flare to it. Then I added the rectangle at the top which has the slogan 'Ignite the feeling' in it, in the font '28 Days Later'. Then I added the flavor name at the bottom in the lighter part of the fire. I made the flavor Lime because I already had it green. Then I made two other variations of the design for two other flavors. Purple for Grape and Orange for, well... Orange.

Then I took the can picture that was provided for us. I brought the label design into photoshop after warping it in Illustrator to make it fit a 3D can better. In Photoshop I took the label design and set it's layer mode to overlay and fit it onto the can. Then I repeated this for each flavor.

Career Bridge Logo

This assignment was to design a new logo for the Career Bridge at our school. This was mostly an assignment focusing on typography. We needed to make 2 different logos. One is colored close to the school color and the other is yellow and purple.

The first logo I made used the font called 'Crazy Loop in Paris' from dafont.com. I made the 'C' white and the 'B' burgundy. Then I made a shape behind the letters which was the same color as the 'B' so the 'C' would show up. Then I made the words 'Career Bridge' underneath the logo in the font called 'Arial'. I aligned the text to the logo by putting extra spaces inbetween the letters.

The second logo used the font called 'Garamond'. I made the 'C' purple and the 'B' yellow. I put a white 51 point stroke on the C and moved it so it overlapped the 'B' so there was negative space around the 'C'. Then I spelled out 'Career Bridge' underneath the Logo and made the word 'Career' yellow and the word 'Bridge' purple.

School Play Poster

The latest assignment was to design the poster for the school play. It's called Suds and it's about the staff of a Car Wash. I found a Picture of a Volkswagen Beetle and put it into a 11x17 document in photoshop with a blue background. I went to Image - Adjustments - Gradient Map and made the gradient go from blue to whit with hardly any transition between the two colors. Then I found a picture of a hand print and overlayed the same blue as in the background. (A part in the play is when the characters are on a television show competition where they have to keep their hand on a car, if they take it off the lose and are out. The winner wins the car. Thus, the hand prints on the car) I duplicated the hand prints and warped each one to make them look slightly different from one another. Then I used a font I downloaded from dafont.com called '28 Days Later'. I spelled out the word 'SUDS', and I made an assortments of various circles to signify bubbles behind the title. I made the word 'SUDS' have a stroke of the same blue as the background so it had more contrast. I added the rest of the text to fit in the pictures. Then I made sevral variants of the poster each with a different color. Blue, Green, Red, Orange, and Purple.

CD Cover

This assignment was a CD cover. I made up a band called 'Crooked Soul' because I couldn't decide on a band to do a cover for. I found the picture of the eye here. Then I found the picture of the hurricane here. I cut out the eyeball part and inserted the hurricane into the hole that was left in the eye socket. I then took a picture of the grime for an effect from here. I erased parts of that picture so the eye could show through, then I went to Image - Adjustments - Hue and Saturation, and changed the hue to a more blue color. Then I took that layer and made it's layer mode 'Overlay'. Then I made a new layer and used the paint bucket to fill the whole canvas with a blue color and set that layer to 'Overlay' as well. I downloaded the fonts from dafont.com. The words 'Crooked Soul' are the font called 'Base 02', and the words 'Eye of the Storm' are the font called 'Defused'. Then I put the text all together. I gave the text an inner shadow and set all text layers to 'Overlay'. Then I added a slight white shape behind 'Crooked Soul' to make it a little more legible.

The band 'Crooked Soul' doesn't actually exist. It's just a band name I made up a while ago and so I thought i'd use it now. It originally comes from lyrics of a song by the band Switchfoot. "We are crooked souls trying to stay up straight." 'Eye of the Storm' just sounded cool so I used it as the Album title. There's blue because of the picture of the hurricane had mostly blue so I made it all fit together. I like the worn out look so I made it look old, grungey, and beat up. It's supposed to be like a metal CD so that's why it looks grimy and gritty. As you may be able to tell I like to use the layer mode 'Overlay'.

New Banner

My first assignment in Graphic Design 30s was to make the banner graphic for my blog. 

The whole idea was to play with layer modes on photoshop. I took this picture of myself, added a picture of fire to the background from Google Image Search, and played around with things. I generally experiment a lot when it comes to layer modes.

I love the way fire looks and the way it makes things look evil or hardcore, so i used it for the background. I also love grungey, messy text like the font I used. It doesn't signify me all that much, just the fact that I love those aspects of it.

Test Post

This blog will be me showcasing my graphic art. I will post my projects that I do in Grade 11 Graphic Design.

This picture was an assignment I did last semester. It is a movie poster. I made the ship in Cinema 4D, then I put it into photoshop and added the planets as well as the text.