Final Exam Project

For my final exam I was given the task of taking a piece of art and making it into graphic design.  The way I decided to go about this was by using photo-manipulation.  I thought that I would take several pictures (the art) and put them together into a poster, while using many effects, to make a piece of graphic design which would convay a message to those who see it.

But first I had to get an idea.  I began by searching Photomanipulation Tutorials in Google.  I wanted to convay a school realated message, so that made it a little more difficult.  After a lot of searching, I found the following tutorial and it hit me on what I could do: Magical Book and Playground Scene.  I then thought about a library and how very few kids do their summer reading, so I thought this would be a good project to do. 

Above is my final product (it didn't come the same when I brought it into Blogger-it is blurry), I changed a few things from the orginal tutorial, but I like how it turned out, it could have been better in some areas had I had more time.  I also used some tools and effects that I had never used or had not used in a while.  For example, I had not used the burn or dodge tools in a while and I used them to create shadows and light spots on the objects in the picture.  I also used the skew tool to create shadows, too (that tool I have oftenly used before).  I also learned a new skill: lens flare.  I learned how to create a lens flare and found it very interesting and cool. However, I didn't like how it looked in my project so I ended up removing it.  All that was left was to finalize my message.  I thought of growing your imagination and other ideas along those lines.  In the end I decided on: Let your imagination run wild, read a book. Hopefully when a person reads this poster they get the feeling to read the book rather than a summary of it.  This would also be a good poster to hang in a library.

Design Show Posters

For my next project I did two posters that could have been printed and desplayed at the design show.  I wasn't able to finsish them in time as I was working to meet the deadline for my Elite Logo's project (see previous post).  However, even though they couldn't make it in the design show, I still decided to do them because I thought it would be a good experience to have. 

The first one that I did was for the Elite Logos.  In this design I have showed the final and some of the alternate versions of the logo.  I also described the process of working with my coach to produce a final result that we are both proud of.  Some of these logos will appear on next falls t-shirts and sweatshirts replacing the old logos that the club has had for over 10 years. 

The final poster that I did was to show the science adademy poster that I designed for Thomas Rominski's science fair.  Once again, I explained the requirements and process that I went through working with Thomas.  We worked very well together and his poster came together very nicely.  In the end, Thomas entered a fair and placed third winning $50. 

Elite Logo Update

After talking with my coach and a few assistant coaches I was given a few revisions to make on the logos.  They were very impressed with the work that I did. 

Some of the changes that I made are pictured below:

In the logo above I changed out the old water and replaced it with the "Elite Wave." 

 These two logos above are the new circle logos.  Both my coach and I really like these logos and will probably become one of two main team logos.  We prefer the one on the right more because it gives the feeling that the swimmer is swimming on the wave.

The logos above are the updated Elite logo.  I don't like how these turned out at all, but I did them to see how they would turn out.  In the logos I took out the blue water that I made and replaced it with the "Elite Wave."   The old version of this logo will be used over these versions. 

The final logo pictured above is completely new.  One of the assistant coaches thought it would look cool and asked me to try and create it.  Personally I really like how it turned out.

In conclusion, I am very pleased with how most of the logos.  My coach is in the process now of making designs for the shirts and sweatshirts using my logos on them.  They will be ready for the fall season which begins in September.

Science Academy Poster - Updated

At the start of the project when I heard what we would have to do I spent some time looking up infographics on the internet.  I got some great ideas on how I wanted to layout and design the poster for Tommy.  I then sketched out a few ideas.  I got some ideas so when I found out my partner and his project, at once I thought of a cool way to use a theme.  Then once I got this theme, I did 2 more sketches with a road for a border (both of which are on the left).  I thought it would be an interesting way to include the bike theme into what is normally a plan poster and I think it turned out well.  Below you will see two examples of my brainstorming ideas on the computer (for the entire project I was using Adobe Illustrator).  I did these two designs just to try and get my ideas on the computer-nothing final.  The one on the left is the first one and I didn't like how it turned out.  I then did the one on the right.  The green boxes represent where the text and information will go.  To the right of that is my color scheme that I want to use for the poster.  I got the color scheme off a website called Kuler.

Then I started to recieve some of his information.  I then began to enter his information into text boxes and played around with the layout some more.  I have had some problems with the spacing between the text words and the border of the rectangle around the text box.  However, I have fixed that, despite it being very annoying, but it looks much better than it did before.

I currently have the first two columns filled with the text that I want there (background, hypothesis, methods, etc.)  Today, Tommy e-mailed me his results so upon completion of this post I will begin adding his results, conclusions, graphs, etc. in the other two columns.  There will be pictures added to the columns once I finish the text part.  I plan on finishing within the next week.  Then I will have a bunch of people from Tommy to Mr. Boothby to Mrs. Colfax take a look at the poster to get feedback on how to improve it.  Then I will make the changes and have it printed and given to Tommy for his upcoming science fairs.  Below is what I have done so far, and there will be a follow up post at the completion of the project with the final version.

Below is the first final computer generated version. 

                 

This was then e-mailed to both Tommy and Mrs. Colfax and both of them had revisions (both of their revision sheets are below-Tommy's is on the left and Mrs. Colfax's is on the right).

Once receiving each of their revisions I then went to work on making the required changes.  Tommy and I met on a few occasions to discuss the progress of the poster and make some other changes.  Below show progressions of how the poster evolved.  

Then I checked back in with Tommy and Mrs. Colfax and made some last second changes.  Tommy and I met one last time and I was given the ok to print.  I then printed the final version pictured below and delivered it to the Science Academy.  Tommy will be entering fairs within the next few weeks.