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.

Typography

          so we took this little game and found out what our type is. they asked us four questions and we would answer which one fit us best. so my answers came out to be Rational, Understated, Traditional, and Disciplined. I was "Rational" because i prefer to say there is a one in two chance of something being right than just going off feeling. I'm "Understated" think the best word is the word in my ear and not shouted for everyone to know. Im "Traditional" for the style of traditional is just elegant. i am "Disciplined" because with discipline great things are achieved, and with the things you have to work for you will care for a lot more. so with those, i received the type Perpetua Tilting Light

this type was designed in 1928. it was influenced by roman stone cutting, it has a very measured differentiation between thick and thin strokes. so the picture below has the anatomy that i created for this type face. there really is not a lot of different things for this type , because its all in capital letters, and there aren't any things like tails, shoulders, terminals, loops, or descenders. but there are quite a few serifs and bars, lots of arms and overshoots.

Cubes

this picture is an orthogonal cube made out of orthogonal cubes. it really was an amazing project that we did by following directions off of lynda.com. it was amazing to use some of the tools that we did use to make this creation. the only hard/tedious part was coloring every single square three times but was still amazing. cubes really are interesting and attention grabbing because if you make them right, it will look like they pop out at you. 

thats why i made a logo out of a cube, it uses shading to give the pop-out look, and then it has a shadow of to the side to show 3-D characteristics. i really believe its a good looking logo and would really love to use this in an everyday compony logo. 

this box with transparent sides is an idea that i got from Jessica Eaton. she does a lot of work with boxes/cubes and making the sides transparent and different colors. So the cube above, is my representation of the work that Jessica does except i made it look like light is coming out of the box. 

What is Graphic Design?

Graphic Design is a great class to take to really learn and explore with photoshop and illistartor. the class teaches you how to design logos, banners, t-shirts and hoodies, and  also how to tell stories in just a simple looking picture. Graphic Design to me is telling the whole product through a logo or picture. the picture should tell you everything about the product you are trying to sell or an opinion you are trying to share. for instance just looking at the google logo, The graphic designer who developed the now famous Google logo, said "We ended up with the primary colors, but instead of having the pattern go in order we put a sundry color on the L, which brought back the idea that google doesn't follow the rules. so you get all of that from just a very simple looking logo. trying to accomplish a logo like that is every Graphic designers purpose and goal. to tell a story or a even a statement through just a logo.

Brochure

I made a brochure for the e-Comm program i am in. It shows the Olathe Northwest school i attend, and it mentions all the strands for the e-Communications program at our school. I got to make a brochure in my graphic design class.

This brochure has the raven logo on top and the e-Comm logo glowing halfway through. Then very vibrant colors around all the strands. 

Logos are always telling stories. they are made to represent so much with just one simple design, and thats when it starts getting hard. when you present an entire company with a logo there is a lot of thought and decisions made to get the most out of the least. i really like logo design because it is fun, creative, and challenging. creating a good logo is a must have skill for every graphic artist. and thats a skill thats not easily obtained, therefor there are only so many really good logos. i really liked my final logo i picked out. it can easily be put on a shirt, and is a very versatile logo.

Kerning

Kerning is basically about evenly spacing letters in a word. Kerning is a pert of typography that every graphic designer needs to know, kerning is adjusting the space between characters on a proportional font. The picture above shows my score that i got on a  kerning game (http://type.method.ac/)  that i played. it starts you out with a word that is not evenly spaced.

and then you grab the middle letters and move them to the best you can to evenly space everything. so on the picture below its the exact same word above without any movement between the letters. so the blue is where i should of moved the letters.

and so with the picture at the very top is what i got.

e-magine

e-magine was great this year, there were so many good art pieces and i was just astounded. Colton Gibbs helped so much to give an extra umph to all of the still pictures.

Colton really added a lot to e-magine and he is a great guitarist.  and through out the entire e-magine show. My Kawasaki Ninja that i entered into e-magine got second place but was hoping get first.

this motorcycle took about three weeks to make and really got me started into vectoring. Colton Gibbs the guy who played guitar, also taught me everything i know about vectoring and almost everything i know about Graphic Design. the basic vector took two and a half weeks straight with two hours everyday. means that i spent 26 hours on this bike to create the outline. 

then i spent another 8 hours to color and shade everything to the bike it is now. 

Movie Poster

       Movie posters are very tricky and hard to make. to make a really good poster that will leave people amazed you have to make an understory behind it all, so not only do you have to make it very appealing from just quickly looking at the poster you need to make an even more attracting story/image come from negative space. Saul Bass is probably the best person in the world to make movie posters from vectors.

this is a Bonnie and Clyde poster made by Saul Bass, it only uses 3 colors but yet tells so much. it shows the car and the bullets which are the obvious images we can see but he also shows the money sign with the streaks the car made and the bullets ( $ ). he shows so much of the entire story of Bonnie and Clyde through so little. now i'm trying to do what he did with my poster called 

i only used 2-3 colors just a lot of shading, but as you can see, the deer is in its forest/woods, but i also made a mil-dot scope of what hunters look through when aiming their rifle. it shows the hunters main goal through the hunters perspective. and its all about perspective when trying to make a good poster. now my poster is no where near close to as good as Saul's but i"m trying to get the same concept.

Google

           The Google logo is probably the best and most important logo of them all. It shows great concept and really appeals to everything. Now the current logo was designed by an artist called ruth Kedar, and its a word mark based on the Catull typeface.

          Google also does little modifications and just funny additions on special dates, like holidays, birthdays of famous people, and even major events like the olympics. The special logos are known as Google doodles.
         
         In one of the older versions Google had an exclamation mark at the end of it to mimic the Yahoo! logo. The graphic designer who developed the now famous Google logo, said "We ended up with the primary colors, but instead of having the pattern go in order, we put a secondary color on the L, which brought back the idea that google doesn't follow the rules."

How do things i value reveal my personal story

The things i value reveal my personal story by showing what i love to do and my passion. just like my limited edition Esteban Amber ice Acoustic electric guitar. i love that guitar so much but not only that but just music. it helps me express what every other thing cant. and just gives me peace. i play guitar all the time and its a lot of fun. sometimes i even walk to the park and play guitar out in the woods. another thing that i just cannot live without is the military. it has been my dream since i was 10 years old. Im wanting to be in the military because i felt god has called me to be there. although i have not set my heart on one particular branch in the military but i do have my heart set on being apart of it. so overall all the things that i value (10 things i cant live without) reveals who i am and my personality because i dream of the life i will have and all of those things are in it.

Miles Neidinger

Miles Neidinger has a recent piece that is just magnificent. it is entirely made up of straws and ropes. the piece is called "the anatomy of the palace of wisdom" the say "it comes close to showing us, the place of wisdom, glimpsed in the William blake poem. "the marriage of heaven and hell" which Neidinger references. "the road of excess leads to the place of wisdom. this quote is verry interesting and has so much meaning to it. basically the quote means, once you consume an excess amount of something (like for me it would be ammunition for guns) i will be in a place of wisdom and relize i could of done something else.

i am a huge gun nut and love getting ammo. so i was just at a gun show at the topeka gun show. and i bought (with help of my parents) 500 rounds of ammo. at the time i thought it was great. i saved about $60 and it came with a container. but once i got home i relized that i cant use the ammo, because my shooting range that i go to only allows brass cased ammo. and the 500 rounds i bout was steel cased. so at the very end i have to go shoot that ammo somewhere else and i know not to buy that kind anymore.