Web icons With Shadows

Origination of icons.

The word icon originates from a greek word meaning "image". Icons first where generally a flat painting depicting Jesus, Mary, saints and angels. Icons may be cast in metal, carved in stone, embroidered on cloth, painted on wood, done in mosaic or fresco work, printed on paper or metal, etc. back in the day every icon had a symbolic reference with the color and style.

Then after a long time of image icons, we now have this thing called a graphic icon or a Graphical User Interface Icon. and originally they had computerized image of floppy disks, folders, simple colors and words (made by Steve Jobs). 

Then once people everywhere started having computers they started making more user friendly, by adding more color, shadow, backgrounds, very visually friendly and easy to use. 

Why Put Shadows On Icons?

putting a shadow on icons make all the difference, it adds a lot of character and makes it stand out a lot more. shadows help make the logo stand up and be bolder. 

 and the best part is, putting a shadow on a logo is probably the easiest and quickest ways to make a log stand out. and i will show you how to put your own shadow on any logo you choose.

How To Put A Shadow On A Logo

 I have a tutorial of how to put a shadow on a mail logo. you can copy and paste my first box and follow along, or grab any of your logos you want a shadow on and follow along.

And Tada!!!!!! simple fast and easy, while adding a really cool effect that will make any logo look better.

Leadership Strengths

             Last week i took the Gallup strengths finder test, it cost $10 and took about 40min to complete but it was well worth it. it told me what my top 5 strengths where and a little about how they effect my everyday life. my top one was Achiever. 

Achiever (Executing)

     They say it describes a constant need for achievement. And i start out everyday at 0. by the end of the day i must achieve something tangible in order to feel good about myself. which i can totally see this is my life, every single day i have to do something, either workout, or go out to the range with my bow, or build something. it doesn't matter to much of what i do but i have to do something. being an achiever gives me the energy i need to work long hours without stoping, if i am doing something then i am going to do that until it is finished

Relator (Relationship Building)

     At first when i got this as one of my top five, i thought they were completely wrong, because i am not a touchy feely kind of person at all, i am not an emotional person at all either, and i strongly dislike being in areas with lots of people. but once Mrs.Knight started to explain a little more a bout it i could see my self as that person, she started to say that being a relator can also be, being aware of other people and what they are going through, and just putting myself in other peoples shoes trying to understand what they are feeling.

Responsibility (Executing)

     I have had a lot of responsibility since i was young, and that is mostly because of my dad, and him just making do a lot of things for my self and never quoting no matter what. it forces me to to take psychological ownership for anything i commit to, and whether large or small, i feel bound to follow it through to completion. and people look to me to do stuff because they know i get things done.  my willingness to volunteer may sometimes lead me to take on more than i should or can handle

Harmony (Relationship Building)

     For me harmony is one of those things that i hold close to my belief, i like to find common ground with people instead of finding out what is different, and proving to them why i am right. i find bickering and arguing very childish and unproductive, when other people are sounding off about their goals, their claims, and their greatly help opinions, i hold my peace. in my view we are all in the same boat, and we need this boat to get where we are going. it is a good boat. there is no need to rock it just to show that you can.

Belief (Executing)

     The belief theme causes me to be family-orianted, altruistic, and spiritual, also to value responsibility and high ethics. these core values affect my behavior in many ways. for me they give meaning and satisfaction. in my view, success is more than money or prestige. they guide me through all of lives temptations and distractions, and my belief keeps my lives core values consistent and set.

        those are my top 5 and three of them are in the Executive domain, and the other two are in the Relationship domain. now the activity everyone did with Mrs. Knight was really cool to see how each domain is truly different, like how all of the "companies" the relationship people made all dealt with people and pleasing everyone. the strategic made a law business because they are strategic thinkers and strategies like lawyers and judges, influencing people made a compony that was an everyday trend to get people to join them, and executives (me) we came up with the most detailed and best company because we are the best.

     Some aha! moments of mine was how each of the strengths really define how people think and how when each persons main domain shows there thinking process and how they will want to effect other people.

What is Graphic Design

Graphic design has always been about selling a product or getting your idea across in some visual form. Graphic design is still that way even though it has been hundreds of thousands of years more, the main focus is to make an object or story or something more appealing to your audience to either sell a product or just get more people informed and on your side. Creativity is a huge part in graphic design, because if nothing stands out and is original than who wants it. being a graphic designer is a major way for me to show my creativity and originality for all to see, it has given me so many amazing opportunities to meet with clients and deliver them a product (ex. logo, banner, statement, and or image) that they want to use to get their idea, product, or message out there for other people to see and use. Graphic design is an extremely complicated system and design made look as simple as possible. i have been working on making my own Graphic Design t-shirt, and it has taken me a while to find a design that i really like.

this has been my art board, i have my actual designs in the top left quadrant, the designs on 4 differently colored shirts on the bottom 2 quadrants, and then just some random ideas and work on the top left quadrant. Then i narrowed down my design to one that just stood out the most for me.

I am putting this design on a black t-shirt, and will be buying it to wear around and be all cool like and when people ask me "dude where did u get that sick shirt" ill be all like "bruh i made it".

Info-graphics

       I am very new to info-graphics. but through what i see all around they are a very key and powerful way of propaganda. and some of them look really cool and are really interesting. i enjoyed making mine even though they are okay it was still a project i thoroughly enjoyed. i started off with creating 9 sketches. and narrowed down three of them, one for each category. my main focus was the just imaged based category with all vectored images and no words.

 this is my all picture no words infographic that can easily explain how to tie a tie but yet to me it is still missing that pizazz a lot of other goo infographics have. then i hand drew another one the main focal point is in the center strip. all of the bubbles flow down the strip. the tie has the point going down. it is shaded all around to get the attention in the center and it has a simple title up top which is my only problem.

after that one i used a real image of someone with a tie on. and had each step explained word by word. this is easily my worst one that i made and i am taking the criticism i received during a critic and will change some of the stuff

it needs a lot more pizazz. so infographics are huge in the graphic design world for companies and big business. it was defiantly a fun project and i will continue to work on that field in my travels.

Painting in Photoshop

 I absolutely loved this whole assignment. we started out creating a custom paint brush which is the first thing that gives a paint effect. then we would mess with the settings of the brush to change it from dry to wet, to hard mix, or light mix. which gave the the simple paint brush look and act like a real paint brush.

Now the first painting i did ( the one above) is not the best. but it is suppose to be a light house. but the concept was fun and scince it did not turn out verry well i made a really cool sunset

this one looks a lot like its picture. and both these painting had an original image underneath it. and then i painted on top of it. but the next painting (below) is one that i made totally on my own and without an original image, granted it doesn't look the best still.

but throughout the entire process and and experience i totally loved it and it was defiantly something completely new to me.

Field Trip

On Monday October 27th my Graphic Design class and i went on a tour to go visit the "Plug Project" it is a really cool organization that will go across the U.S. to find artists they want in their display. The huge thing that i took away from our meeting we had with them, was that they will have a room filled with the same theme but not all the same topic. So they could have a a theme of free and spirited, and they would get paintings with horses because they can represent freedom and just set free, but there could also be a painting about someone dancing, because when people dance you feel free and its very spirited. The idea is so that they can show a room with all of the same feelings but interpreted into so many different ways, instead of having 6 paintings of all horses or all dancers. The picture to the left is showing the plug projects thought board, this collects all of their ideas on one wall and they will discuss throughout time.

Then we went and visited the Bill Brady museum, that was an interesting museum because everything they had displayed was in the middle of the room hanging from the ceiling. And normal art displays put there art on the walls around the room. And they also hung plasma TV's with digital art from the ceiling as well, so it was cool to see something different. As far as I could see the art that was displayed at that time all had a very earthy and beachy feeling to it. Like they had the glass little globes and it was filled with sand and choral stuff, also had stones on the ground, and lots of water like art.

Project Presentation

 i have been working on lower thirds for ONW now. The initial Idea was to have just a lower third showing the topic/the names of the people talking, but then they also wanted a logo of all the sports to go with the lower third. First I went and googled designs for lower thirds, sketched some of my own, then brought my sketches to Mr.Allem and Joe, they both liked the pointy one but wanted a hexagon with it to present the logo. Some complications came from miscommunication, because now I am told to do it differently than what I have been working on, so instead of making it how I already have it, I need to change it to make it more rounded and flow. 

this is the first completed lower third with the fake gradient on the text panels, but there really as not enough room for the words on this one so i made one a bit bigger with a totally different feel to it

this one would cover the entire bottom of the lower third of the screen, and have lots of room for words, but then shortly realized there is just to much going on in this one so i scalled it down a little and changed a few colors

this is hopefully the las one i will be making of this, the gray and black box represent the T.V. screen and then i have my lower third down in the lower third portion of the screen with an example of what it would like with type on it.