lbordenarts245-03

[lbordenarts245-03]

Course Reflection

12-01-21

While taking this class I could see that I seem to be the least skilled out of everyone and that was in the back of my mind the entire semester, I know it’s not good to compare your skills with others because you have no clue how long the people around you have been designing or drawing etc.… but overall this was a fun class, it was a little stressful but we were just learning how to become real designers and we all got to  experience what real designers go through with the designing process. My favorite project was the redesigning letters, I did have some issues here and there, but it was just the most entertaining for me, I think it was a very creative and fun project. My least favorite project would probably have to be the climate design one, because I had a lot of ideas, but I didn’t think mine were really being put into the project, I just am not too fond of group projects, but I know designers sometimes have to work in groups and it can be more beneficial to work in groups at times. Overall, this was a great class with a fantastic professor, and I am glad I got to learn new skills and further my knowledge in designing with Professor Khalili and the rest of the class. 

Thank you :) 

[lbordenarts245-03]

Ch.15 & 17 Readings and Project 6 Logo Redesign Final Week

11-18-21

While reading chapters 15 and 17 I learned some interesting things from some people in these chapters. Something that really interested me from chapter 15 was when Frederique Krupa was talking about the visuals and if they play a small part of the equation when creating a “good game” It seems that as time goes on companies shift from technological achievement to aesthetic experiences according to Mr. Krupa. Overall, if the game is “ugly” or just not aesthetically pleasing it most likely won’t sell well. This made me think of Animal Crossing New Horizons, I love the game because I like task-based, adventure games, but I would have to say what really drew me towards the game was the designs. All the characters and even the items are adorable and aesthetically pleasing throughout the entire game. Matthew Stadler interview in the book interested me from chapter 17, he has a company that prints, binds, and publishes books. The book covers from his section is what really caught my eye, I’m not sure what it is about them, but I think they look cool and interesting, it makes me want to read them!

This week we finalized our projects and made presentations, I wish I could’ve spent more time on my presentation, I do not think it is the best I could’ve done, and I realized I missed the ‘Should Haves’ section from the MSCW… I have already seen nine amazing presentations so far and I cannot wait for Monday to see the rest! I am so proud of everyone in the class, you can really tell each person put in a lot of time and effort into these logo redesign projects, they are all fantastic, and I hope everyone has seen exactly how capable they are in creating anything they put their minds to.

[lbordenarts245-03]

Ch.2&11 and Project 6 Logo, Pattern & Swatches

11-12-21

Erik Adigard des Gautries work... 

While reading chapters 2 and 11 I read about many interesting designers, and I learned some things on running your own design business and I was inspired by a ton of designer’s masterpieces. While reading chapter 2 I realized I would love to be my own boss but there is a lot of responsibility and time that goes into maintaining a successful company. I read about Lynda Decker and she talks about how her style of her work has matured over the years and has become more simplified, she can look at her work and realize what is essential to the piece and what is not. She also mentioned that she tries to reflect her clients personality as well as her own in the work, which I think is very important cause you see a lot of designers making things in their style but they might not be really considering their clients visions if they are “in the zone” I feel like I may have that issue as I progress, I think it could be difficult sometimes to completely meet the client’s needs if you as a designer do not really agree with the kind of design that they want. Moving on to chapter 11, I really enjoyed looking through Erik Adigard des Gautries work. The pieces of his that were displayed in this chapter really caught my eye, I love that edgy VHS abstract type of designs that are shown I just find it so interesting and kind of rebelling in a way? If that makes sense? I just love the colors and the thinking that goes behind his work. I posted a couple of his pieces that I really liked to the thread!

While working on project 6 I realized that I was kind of reusing the logo for everything which frustrated me, but I just couldn’t really think of what else to use. Receiving my critique on my logo, pattern and mockups really helped me figure out what I need to do moving forward to finalize my project for next week. I think my final logo design is very simple which I love but kind of hate, once again I feel that my technology skills with illustrator really limit me, I feel as if I just cannot get a grasp on the things I should already know by now because (as you said in class) technology is constantly changing. Then again, I believe that the simplistic redesign of the logo works well, and I don’t think it is a bad design I just wish I could really but my true ideas into my work.

[lbordenarts245-03]

Ch.9 Branding and Packaging & Project 6 Logo design

11-04-21

I was really intrigued by this chapter because I have been interested in branding and packaging design for a while, I’ve always wanted to see my work being displayed in that way and help others display their brand or product on the package in a way that makes them proud to send off to their consumers. I commend Ms. Werner for maintaining a successful small business for so long, I could only imagine the time and effort her and her team have been doing to make this company so well known. I think that is an amazing accomplishment and I am not surprised because the designs that are shown in this chapter are fantastic! While reading this chapter I never even thought about how some clients would be hesitant to stay with a small company. I also did not know that Meyer’s was the creator of “Meyers Clean Day” I actually use the cleaners and dish soap in my own home, and I think it’s really cool to be learning about the creator of some of the things I use every day. One specific thing I took from this reading was that you need to involve the clients into the design process and that ‘clients need to take ownership of the brand…’ I think overall it is very important that the client trusts you with their ideas and trusts that as a designer you will do your absolute best to bring their ideas for their brand to life.

This week was critiques on project 6, I received useful critiques on my logo and plan to change my logo based on the feedback. I need to darken my red and add a cool color to balance out the warm colors, so I plan on adding a blue for a fourth color, I’m not sure how I want to go about adding the blue into my logo quite yet. I chose blue because I know hotter flames can be blue and I wanted to keep that fiery theme, I might just add the blue in as accents here and there when I need it like you suggested. I am conflicted on what shade of blue will look the best, so I am going to try and figure that out over the weekend as well as update my design for next week. I was told to get rid of the paint-like stroke lines on my design, I added that because I want my design to look like spray paint to incorporate the history of street art into my logo. I am still unsure how to do that with the entire logo so I am going to see if I can research how, if I cannot manage to do that my next plan is to do a gradient theme for my logo but I really hope I can put what’s in my head into this design, I am excited to see what I can create with this and how I can challenge myself in the process!

[lbordenarts245-03]

Ch.10 Illustration Design & Project 6 Logo Sketches

10-28-21

While reading this chapter I read about many famous and amazing illustrators/Art Directors but someone who caught my eye was Mirko Ilic. He interested me because he drew comics and illustrations, ever since I was a kid, I have always been interested in drawing cartoon characters and making my own little comics. While reading about Mirko Ilic I related to his transition from pen and paper to digital design, I really love digital design, but it has always seemed to be more difficult for me to grasp than others around me. I feel like it takes me double the amount of time than most people to create something fairly simple… I’d say I also agree with Ilic about how being a designer is “much more restrictive than being an illustrator” because it is just limited more than physically illustrating, only because you have to know exactly what is available to you and how to use them (in my opinion) But I feel that Design can also open up more possibilities in a way, with all the effects and limitless colors you can add which can make something breathtaking. 

This week we showed our sketches for feedback and going in I was expecting more critiques on my sketches, but I was happy to hear that you really liked one of my sketches! I got my fonts that I couldn’t choose from narrowed down to two which is, Darknight and Flipper…so now I am just deciding on which one will look the overall best with my logo. My plan for my logo is to put it into illustrator and somehow make the lines look like spray paint with the colors giving a more ombre effect; to shadow the street art that is almost everywhere in Atlanta, and I plan on using 3-5 colors from these color pallets. I might adjust them a little and not have as many reds, I plan on having red’s, orange’s and yellow’s to embody that fiery phoenix spirit in the logo.

[lbordenarts245-03]

Ch.5 Reading, R&D Synthesis, Moodboard & Project 5 Final Spreads

10-21-21

Going through the R&D sheet we found the history behind the Atlanta Brave team. A piece of their history that stood out to me was Atlanta’s symbol which is a phoenix, it represents the city literally rising from the ashes which it did after General Sherman burned it down during the Civil War. Only 400 building survived, but as time went on the city rebuilt and has progressed tremendously. Our marketing objective is inclusivity, welcoming to all baseball fans, drive traffic with positive feedback from steering the braves towards inclusivity and to a narrative of new hope and ‘rising from the ashes’ I would say that success would be receiving positive feedback and reactions to the new logo/design of the team when created. Personally, I am choosing for environmental products banners, for gear products athletic gear for fan purchase and for good measure I would want to put the logo I design on stickers (who doesn’t love stickers?) I would prefer that the brand tone be welcoming to the fans, encouraging (‘rising from the ashes’) and positive since this is a MLB team and fans push a lot of positivity to their favorite team to encourage them to win and do their best. Finally, the MSCW; the must haves would be a new logo, new mascot, new name, archetype and address the history and controversy surrounding the Braves old mascot in order to respect our audience and those affected by it. We will have no derogatory names or language and will not recycle any old font or imagery. I would also like to somehow incorporate the heavy use of street art in Atlanta. For a team name I was thinking along the lines of “The rising falcons” I am not 100% on that but I think it is a step in the right direction since it is positive and incorporates the history. 

(I hope I did this correctly and I apologize if I didn’t)

While reading Chapter 5 ‘Making Logos and Marks’ I was very interested in Mark Fox’s interview… I learned that a logo must appeal to the client on cognitive and emotional levels, which also ties to what he said about whether logos should be more text or more image. He said that images have the advantage of being translingual, which is true. If I were to design something that the majority was text than how can I guarantee that my logo will appeal to other people who cannot read the same language as me? That is why I also agree that it is better to have more image than text in a logo, and by looking at some of Mark’s logos he does use some text but not much and if he does it seems to be mostly just a few letters, but the whole logo is tied together with a nice engaging and eye-catching design which still gets the point across. This also makes me think more of how I will design my logo for project 6, I plan on using mostly an image I will design and maybe one word, but I want my design to appeal to more of an audience.  

I am also going to add my 3 final spreads from project 5 into the since it falls under this week’s blog post… I am content with my final spreads, but I wish I would’ve done more for it, I feel like I need to really work on branching out and getting out of my comfort zone and work with more things that I am not very skilled at, I just feel scared to try even though I know practice makes perfect.

I also added a photo of my mood board, I added inspiration from the street art in various places in Atlanta relating to ’rising from the ashes’ with the phoenix in some of them…

[lbordenarts245-03]

Ch.3 & Remaking Language Part 2 Project

10-14-21

What I have learned from Chapter 3 “Partners and Partnering” is that it can be better to work with a group or have a partner. I think this opens more creative and captivating ideas that one person alone may not be able to do. I’m not saying designers aren’t creative when they are alone, but your art and designs could maybe be even more extravagant if you form a team where each person has a role to play in the design process that is best accustomed to their individual skills. I also learned that what people look for in designers is “personality and character” others will want to work with you if you match their same "energy and drive", which makes sense because they would be spending a lot of time together! It is always best to keep your mind open to new possibilities and ideas even if that means stepping out of your comfort zone, which I believe I need to do more.

For the remaking language project part 2 I was happy to hear that Professor Khalili liked my project so far :) I will definitely be making the changes she suggested to my project. I am still getting the history on my fonts and will be adding that in hopefully sometime this weekend as well. So far, I have really enjoyed this project and I would say that my favorite part was the first part when designing the letters.

[lbordenarts245-03]

Ch.7 & Remaking Language Part 1 Project

09-29-21

(Idk why the other letter is huge and Idk how to fix it, only when I export as jpg)

While reading this chapter on editorial design I learned about different design positions within a magazine or newspaper infrastructure. There are multiple tasks for certain people to complete, and everyone works together to get the job done. I know that designers sometimes work in groups/teams to divide the work in which job best suits each designer best, so I know that it is crucial to be able to work in teams and alone as well. I’d say I have a lot of issues working in groups mostly because of my social anxiety, it’s very difficult for me to share my input on things when I am in a group, because I do not believe my answers or ideas are good enough. So, after reading this chapter I realized I need to focus a lot more on the social aspect of design and make myself move away from my comfort zone if I want to learn more and thrive in the design field.

For the ‘Remaking Language Part 1’ project, the fonts I decided to use for this project was the Cormorant Garamond font and the Raleway font. While I was sketching I kind of forgot that we could remove pieces of the letters, so we didn’t have to use the entire letter so most of my sketches are whole letters combined but I did a few that I used pieces of letters for and not the entire thing. I decided to choose the ‘KJJ’ for my serif letter and ‘LT’ for my san serif letter, those were the two that looked the best to me… While putting the letters into AI I had some issues with the path separating and creating a little white line gap in pieces of my letters, I managed to fix it, but I had to recut the J again and line it up more precise than before which fixed the issue. Referring back to my reading response, once again I believe I need to step out of my comfort zone and talk to my classmates and professor more especially if I have an issue like this, in the moment when I can’t do something I feel like I know nothing and I couldn’t possibly ever thrive as a designer, but thinking rationally, it is not wrong to ask questions when you don’t understand something and I learned that I should ask more questions so I can learn more and be able to fix simple mistakes I may make while designing. 

Still deciding on the names of my letters!

[lbordenarts245-03]

Ch.6 & Flowering Typography Project

09-23-21

While reading this chapter I found out what a books and books jacket designer was, this ‘job’ interested me and got me thinking… Is it possible to be a book/book jacket designer for manga? I was always interested in drawing anime/cartoons and comic style readings and one of my skills (there aren’t many) are writing, so I think I would enjoy doing something like that. Surprisingly I never knew there was an actual title for this kind of work. It makes me appreciate design even more, it seems like in almost everything in this world there are multiple kinds of designers behind it, creating new and interesting things to improve and enlighten the world.

Moving on to the flowering typography project, I must admit I did struggle with that pen tool plenty of times while designing my Letter. I ran into the issue of my letter, let me explain… I wish I would’ve chosen a more ‘interesting’ letter so maybe one with more space to work with, I felt somewhat limited with what I wanted to do because of the letter I chose ‘L’. Overall I think I fit the Lotus in an appropriate spot that worked well with the ‘L’, I wanted to cover more of the ‘L’ but I couldn’t really do that too well with the flower I chose to go with it. I also ran into the issue of trying to make my flower look like an actual flower, I kept changing things until I realized it was 4am .__. But designers overcome plenty of obstacles harder than this, so I hope I am on the right track in becoming an amazing designer some day!

[lbordenarts245-03]

Ch.8 & Climate Change Project/Marc O’Brien

09-16-21

While attending the virtual meeting with the design classes and speaker Marc O’Brien, I found it very insightful. He taught me that we can create change as image makers, we influence society and the future. When he mentioned that designers couldn’t necessarily change the world, I sort of agree with him but for different reasons… I believe that designers most certainly cannot change the world ON OUR OWN, the world is a mess, and we need not only designers but everyone to contribute their skills and ideas to help at least start a change to better this world for the future. This world needs designers’ creativity, talents, passion, and perspective. When Mr. O’Brien shared his screen and I saw our group project on there I was ecstatic (at first) in all honesty I was a little upset that he didn’t really have anything positive to say about it, I know we didn’t really cover the ‘bloom’ aspect of the project but personally I think people need to be worried about what the future will look like if we do not start change right now… In my opinion I think the ‘doom’ side would be more effective and we made the decision as a group to show more of the ‘doom’ side; but we also showed the ‘restoration’ of the sites to show people what it can be if we start taking care of the world now, so I kind of think that he used our group project to say what not to do? But besides that, he did give us a lot of useful advice and feedback to help improve and further our ideas, I wish he would have talked about more topics in our project or chose a different one other than just the photos but once again we still got good feedback. I also really enjoyed the ‘Save Tango’ game idea, I found it very interesting; the gorilla marketing tactic with the old game machines was a great and creative idea. I would love to see it, and it also made me think of creating a game similar to Pokémon Go but instead of catching Pokémon you would ‘catch pollution’ and track all of the ‘trash’ you recycled and instead of Pokéstops there would be stops for logging anything you recycled to reuse to create something new and useful with a list of what you used and how you made it, to encourage others to do the same (just thought I’d throw messy idea in there before I forget it) Overall I was thrilled to attend the meeting!

While reading Chapter 8 I really enjoyed reading about Bob McKinnon’s interview, he is the president of GALEWiLL Design which I think is a great company because they address social issues including climate change and more… I think this quote of his should be on a plaque “…within almost any design choice we make, we could either move the world forward or set it back—in ways imperceptible or grand” I agree with that statement whole heartedly, but as I said earlier relating back to Mr. O’Brien I do not think designers can change this world ourselves we need more support from others in different communities to really get the ‘ball rolling’. I also think “If you want to change the world, design for one” was a good quote from Mr. McKinnon, you need to learn how to solve smaller issues before you can move on to a bigger issue, not only will that help you as a designer improve, but you will gain knowledge and skills to use for larger issues in the future.

To wrap things up I just want to give a shoutout to my group members, I think we did a great job on this project given the time frame, and no matter what any designer says I believe we did a great job, and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of designers. I am proud of everyone not only in my group but in the entire class as well, everyone worked very hard on these projects, and it shows! :)

[lbordenarts245-03]

Ch.1 and Flash Project

09-09-21

While making my 9/11 poster I had to find a good photo to use and while looking at some of the photos it was heartbreaking, but I think it was a good thing that we were assigned to create a poster about this day, so we can remember what everyone went through and what everyone overcame. Overall, this project was informative and interesting to create… My idea in my head was to use that photo taken after the twin towers fell with some of the smoke still visible. I then remembered that they have remembrance lights in NYC; they shine on the anniversary of 9/11, so I edited some light beams in the spots where the twin towers had fallen. I then edited in some extra smoke and made the image B&W and added my text. For the text I used drop shadows and the “Never Forgotten” I wrapped an image of an American flag around the words to add some more color and I knew I wanted to incorporate the flag in the poster somehow. This was also my first 24-hour project, it was stressful but I knew that I would have to do this in the future so I think it was a great experience.

While reading this chapter I found myself relating to a lot of the graphic artists that spoke about their journey through graphic design. I really enjoyed reading about Michael Bierut’s path to graphic design, they ask him some questions and two of the questions are asking about his strengths and weaknesses, he says his weaknesses are “…a short attention span and a low tolerance for ambiguity” which causes him to rush to a solution and settle for the first idea that he comes up with. I have similar issues and it reminds me that we are all human, each of us has strengths and weaknesses, but all of them are different so when designers come together and share their work its always such a vast variety of art which makes you appreciate our strengths and our weaknesses, I was always told that if you make a mistake on your artwork that’s okay, it’s yours so you can make it part of the piece. So far reading this textbook continues to inspire me in graphic design and I have been taking notes on advice said by some of the interviewed designers in the book.

[lbordenarts245-03]

Ch.4 and Project 1

09-02-21

While working on the first project I did face some issues with deciding what pieces would go where, and which part of the magazines I should use. I used pieces from about 20 magazine pages and made 5 grid outlines and chose 3 of them to use. Overall, I think my craftsmanship could’ve been better, I couldn’t get everything perfectly aligned but I think I did a good job with placement. I enjoyed this project.

While reading this chapter I learned about some job titles that don’t fall under any pre existing groups, one that interested me was a digital curator. I read more about that specific title and learned that a digital curator improves methods for preserving and providing access to digital materials, along with editing, research and they also integrate work of writers and designers to produce layouts that meet the required guidelines. I learned that designers must really keep up with the digital times, not only editing software but with the public, social media and what is trending at that point in time. Which can change every week almost, so my takeaway is to really stay on top of your work and to constantly write down any ideas that cross your mind, because you never know one of your ideas might be the thing everyone is waiting for. I am excited to keep learning new skills and information as the course continues to further my education on graphic design and typography.