Instant Print- research

I was researching the website examples of the design category by category to try to define the tone of voice of the designs. I was looking into the designing methods too, to be able to determine which method to use for my design.

I found the works that are available on the website very down-to- earth and quite straight forward. The design is simple without excessive sophistication. I could say that most of the designs is a vector work and  was created in an AI.

Instant Print brief

Today in the college we were presented with a new brief of an on line print company Instant Print. This company specialises in fast and easy printing for small to medium enterprises.

The presented project is to design a set of templates that focus on chosen category.

The presentation was very motivating and I got excited to crack on a new challenging project.   

The company promised a prize for the 3 best designs, that I found very challenging.

The goal for this week:

To research the Instant Print company and choose a category of my design.

InDesign exercise

As I expected the InDesign exercise was quite challenging for me, but despite many difficulties I managed to acquire some new skills, that will certainly make the work with InDesign a lot easier.

I made some evaluation of the new skills which helped me motivate myself to work hard to explore them more.

First of all I found the option of saving the paragraphs very useful and time saving.

Now I know that saving new paragraph styles can considerably simplify and  speed up the task of formatting a text.  The changes can be applied with just a click. It saves a lot of time when it comes to adjusting the font size and leading. It also gives an  variety of different styles options.  

With an on-line video tutorial it was easier for me to understand the option better.

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-indesign-cs5/gs07-creating-and-applying-paragraph-styles/

Janee Meadow

I mentioned the janeemeadow.com website before (when I was talking about Addobe tutorials) and I think it`s worth paying closer attention.
I`ve recently researched  the website a bit more and I came across very interesting pieces of art.
Janee Meadow is not only an excellent tutor but first and foremost she is a talented and prolific artist. She works as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. On her website I found examples of her work.
It`s not easy to pinpoint her style. In her work you can find different influences. She mixes freely different styles: from pop-art, through socialist realism to comic book style.
The piece of art which made the strongest impression on me was James Grundler`s band poster.
The composition and the style remind me a bit of Toulouse-Lautrec posters.
I like the idea of useing monochromatic colour scheme of different shades of grey with just accents of bright red. It creates strong contrast which attracts attention.
 The perspective makes the impression that the viewer looks at the picture from a ground level upward. The strong contrast of colours and the perspective make the viewer focuse the attention on the red stain of blood, where Janee placed all the information. I think that`s an interesting solution.
Janee skillfully manipulates and directs the attention of a viewer to a point she wants. Thanks to this she`s able to transmit the message of the poster easily.

Creative CV

One of the tasks for my PPD module was to create a creative CV. Before I approached to doing my own creative CV I went online and did a research. Browsing through the Internet I managed to find some information and tips on how to prepare a good CV of this kind. I also came across many interesting visual examples.
I followed the advice and get the content of the document right before focusing on the design.
I learned that the considerations for this kind of CVs aren`t much different to the ordinary ones. Because I had a CV before I just transformed the content a bit.
First of all I changed my personal statement. I wrote a few sentences about myself in consideration to graphic design work.
Obviously I left the parts about my previous employment and education unchanged.
In a section about my skills I put the technical skills (in computer programs like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign)
I remembered to inclose a link for my blog, where a prospective employer could check my design activities as well as examples of my work.
When I managed to prepare and organize the content of my CV, I focused on the aestetic part of it.
I created and fine tuned my CV in Adobe Illustrator. Because I was`t able to upload the original file to my blog I took a screenshot and attached it in this blog.

Starbucks menu.

Starbucks menu exercise.

The exercise presented today in the college showed the powerful possibilities that InDesign gives to stylize text.  We were introduced to Paragraph panel and learned how to create and save character style. We were also exploring the Character panel and practiced how to apply font style and adjust spacing between letters (spacing and kerning) to a selected text.  

The exercise gave us the opportunity to learn how to stylize text using different options, that are there to speed up the workflow and make the task easier.  

The goal for this week:

The InDesign was always the least favourite computer program that I am using to create my design, this week exercise will be a challenge for me to learn more about it and hopefully get to like it eventually.  

AI exercise

Exploring the appearance dialog box I`ve  learned that it allows for editing or changing the attributes of an object at any time. By clicking the blue, underlined name of the attribute you can edit an attribute and specify changes in the dialog box that appears. It is possible to add new effect or delete an attribute.  Thanks to the appearance dialog box you can quickly and easily manipulate the object`s attributes

For the last few days I was exercising the text styling in AI. I was discovering and practicing new options in the appearance panel to personalise a text.

 The appearance panel gives the excellent opportunity to create an original text, that certainly will add character to a design. The many options that lives in the panel need to be explored and practice in order to be used fluently

Exploring different options to create vector shapes in AI was a massive fun for me. I realised how easy is to create even the most elaborated shapes using basic tools in AI.

Digital exercises- AI and PS

Today in the college we were introduced to an AI exercise.  Using some simple options in AI we were creating very basic vector shapes.  We also learned about the appearance dialog in AI, which can be used for styling text.

In this exercise we combined the vector shapes and the text that was created in AI with an image in PS. This showed that different computer programs can be used to create one piece of work.

The goal for next week:

Explore and practice text styling and shape creation in AI.

Clipping mask- excercise.

With a little help of some on-line tutorials I managed to manipulate images using clipping mask.

At first I found this option a bit confusing, but then when I understand it better I realized how useful it can be in manipulating and combining images together. I went to numerous tutorials to get a full understanding of this option.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amyHCm3la5g

Addidas poster

 The Addidas poster exercise showed us the way of  transforming and arranging images into one piece of work.  It was an excuse to bring a layer mask option into the light.

Another interesting thing that came up in this tutorial was the way of giving a texture to the design by adding a new layer and changing its blending mode and opacity- in my opinion very simple but effective and useful  trick.

Layer mask is a very useful tool. Thanks to it is possible to make editable changes to an image. It is an non destructive way of manipulating an image.  Layer masks can be used to hide pixels.

By simply painting over the layer mask with black, you can hide unwanted elements of the picture.

The next week goal:

Practice the clipping mask.