Audio to Visual

This assignment was different than most of the other assignments that we get. We had listened to a song and jot things down on what we visualized when hearing the song. Then we had to make a picture based on what we wrote down. We didn't know at first, but the song was from the soundtrack of the movie Moon. I visualized someone scared walking in the forest with scary silhouettes following them and eventually chasing them when the music's tempo picked up. I found some silhouettes of Zombies and put them into a creepy photo of a dark and gloomy forest. Then I thought of the idea to put that image and make it a reflection in someone's eye. So that's what I did. I used a grungy texture and overlayed it on the picture to top off the creepy theme of the picture.

Special Event Posters

This assignment was to design posters for 3 different Special Events happeningin Winnipeg. I chose The Central Canada Comic Con, The Teddy Bear's Picnic, and Safeway's Boo at the Zoo.

The Comic Con poster I did first. The major guest this year was Ray Park who played Darth Maul in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, and it's a Comic convention, so I put the two together and found a picture of Darth Maul from a Star Wars comic. Then I just tried to fit that image in with the rest of the text info. I used a comic looking font (don't worry, not Comic Sans MS) to keep with that theme. Darth Maul is Black and Red so I used that color scheme for the entire poster.

The Teddy Bear's Picnic is obviously geared towards kids so I made it fun looking with lots of colors and big lettering. It took a while to find a good picture of a Teddy Bear for the poster but I managed to get one that worked.

Safeway's Boo at the Zoo is also geared towards kids but it's also supposed to be somewhat scary. So I used the Halloween theme for the poster. Black and Orange is the general color scheme for Halloween. I used the silhouette of a zombie to occupy the empty space because there wasn't a lot of information.

KEC Info Handbook

This is the First assignment that we were given for Grade 12 Graphic Design. We were to design a new cover for the Kildonan-East Information Handbook. I went with a vectored look that I started in photoshop, then I re-vectored everything over in Illustrator. Our school is very proud of our football team and other sports teams so I thought I would theme it accordingly. We had to include that horrible KEC logo in it so I managed to fit it in nicely on both the front and the back covers. Then I added all the text in InDesign.

Vinyl Decal

This assignment was to design a vinyl decal. It was just supposed to be a simple black and white vector. I vectored the logo of the metal band Demon Hunter that they use on each of their album covers in various innovative ways. I love the way this logo looks. It's a cool demonic looking head of some sort of creature. I just vectored the picture in Adobe Illustrator. I made it as simple as possible with as little lines that could be used.

Portfolio Cover

Since I am making a portfolio for all the graphics work I've done this year, I thought I'd post the cover that I made for said portfolio. I think it's probably my best work yet. I love the way it turned out. I put in and arranged the text to look as it does, then I made two shapes on the top and bottom of the page. One orange the other blue. Then I duplicated each one and moved the orange on up more and the blue duplicate down more and then overlayed them so they'd look darker. Then I brought in my own artwork. The picture was of a superhero character of mine, I originally didn't mean to make it look like me but everyone started saying it did, so I just used it here now that I agree on how much it does look like me. Except now I have shorter hair. Then I made the drawing layer a 'Pin Light' layer mode. Then at the top orange part of the page, I made some spiky shapes with the pen tool. Then I found a stock picture of a grimy cement wall from deviantART here. I made that layer a 'Color Burn' layer mode to finish off the cool effect I was going for.

Graphics Poster

This assignment was to make a poster for graphic design. We were supposed to get a quote about graphic design and incorporate it into the design of the poster. I went with the grungey and rugged look again because I think it looks really good. I found the quote by Alexander Isley: "Good design encourages a viewer to want to learn more." I 100% agree with this quote so I chose it and brought it into the poster. I played around a lot with colors, I was originally going to go with red black and white, but I've done that so many times before. Then I thought of making it purple instead of red, but purple doesn't fit as well with the gruney look I was going for. I eventually just settled on orange. The large rectangles were just blown up letters from the font 'Capture It'. As was the rest of the text.
To complete the look of grunge, I found a picture of bark from a tree and copied it into the file. Then I made the picture 'Multiply' and decreased the opacity to 55% so it would effect the picture perfectly.

Magazine Page Layout

This assignment was to design a layout for a magazine spread. We had to find an article and make it look like it's from a magazine by using InDesign. I, again, couldn't think of anything to look for. So I just went with Hockey again. The article was from Chicago's Daily Herald and was written by Tim Sassone. It was about the Blackhawks winning their series and moving on to play the Vancouver Canucks.
I took the article and pasted it into the pages. We learned how to make columns and how to properly make a layout for a magazine article. Then I Made up a title, and used the previous title as a deck (tag line). I brought in some pictures from the Chicago vs Nashville playoff games and moved the test around to fit said pictures. I made some rectangles for either above or below the pictures. The color scheme there was partly for the Blackhawks black and red but then I made the long rectangle for the bottom of the pages yellow to go with the red lines o look like the boards on the sides of a hockey rink. Then I put the Blackhawks logo in the background with a very low opacity of about 8%. The pull quote I made blue to stand out from everything else so that it caught the eye. I fought to get the text to fit perfectly so it could actually look good and professional. But in the end it turned out great, for my first magazine spread layout that is.

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.