Week 1: Learning and exercise

This week:

 

This last week was the first of our graphic design class. During the week we got to learn about the photoshop basics and got to dabble in the topic of the different meanings and forms colors come in, both on a digital level, but also in more psychological stand-point.

 Towards the end of the week we got to work on a project revolving around drafting up our own business cards, here we were given a few limitations and the opportunity to explore the various tools within photoshop!

Project 1- A

  This was the first iteration of the project where we were asked to create a simple black and white design, using 1 type of font, while also utilizing the various weights the font has. Additionally we were shown to add logos/images to help emphasize the implied shape the bodies of text may create. Here I chose a stag, as antlers are always fun to work with in design, the unique shape makes it easy to get cluttered, so I wanted to find a way around this issue.

Project 1- B

Here is the second version I did of my project, this one includes color, background, slight changes to the font, and a slightly edited version of the last logo. With this edition I had a lot of issues getting the photoshop "paths" to work with me, but after reviewing the teachers video and some personal research into a few of the tools- I was able to get around these problems. One thing that bothered me about this version was the outlines around my fonts, trying to get them to become not so muddy with the background was quite a learning curve.

Project 1- C

This is the final product of my first project, after the last design we had to go in and add another type of font to add some more variety, so on this version I added one of my favorite fonts, called Lemonmilk, which is a blocky more bold typeface which fixed my previous issue of having the words muddle into the background, it also helped me take away the stroke edges- I also went and scaled the logo to be a little larger to take away some of that emptiness throughout the rest of the card.

-Creativity Exercise- 

While researching into different ways to exercise my creativity, I came across a list online that had a good amount of fun ideas! 

Click here to read!

The site is called Readymag, which centers their content around bettering graphic designers creativity and building specialty websites.

On their list they recommended collaborating with others to get out of your comfort zone- so I reached out to one of my fellow art friends to help me think of an idea we could work on. Immediately we decided to collaborate on a piece of music merchandise of a smaller music artist we both follow.

The artist we chose is a country song writer, named Dale Hollow, who is from Nashville Tennessee and an upcoming star in the southern music industry. 

After brainstorming a few songs (shown below) we finally decided to go with one of his lesser known songs "High Horse". My friend gave me his rough storyboard idea and I got to work on the program I often work in, Autodesk Sketchbook.

I will link each song to the storyboards incase anyone is interested in seeing our though process behind the ideas.

Don't Wanna Do Anything- Dale Hollow

This was supposed to be a more broad design that only related to the song a little and focused more on the singers brand as a whole. I decided not to render this one as it seemed a little to plain to have any challenge.

I'm a Lover but I'll Still Fight- Dale Hollow

In this design we wanted to do a merch design more similar to how Coors markets their shirts, this song is also his more popular one, but again, the reason in not choosing this design was because it lacked creative challenge, additionally the song we did choose inspired me much more.   

High Horse- Dale Hollow

Notorious in the art world horses are incredibly difficult to draw, and as someone that primarily draws humans- I was inspired by this challenge to try and tackle it, not only in a way to draw the horse but to be able to simplify it enough to where it makes a good merch design- for the sake of this assignment and time, we decided a shirt would be a good enough start. Looking at this little storyboard my friend whipped up for me- he gave me fun font shapes to try and replicate around the focus of the bucking bronco, then added off to the side what lyric from the song would best be replicated onto this subject.

In the end I took creative liberty and didn't go with the horse head for the front design and rather went with a more text based logo that could be used interchangeably on different pieces of merchandise.   

-Final Design Mockup/What I learned-

Working on this exercise was a lot of fun, it's intresting getting feedback from an outside prospective, sometimes when working on a piece too long you start to not see your mistakes, while fresh eyes are able to point them out immediately. I chose this exercise because it really pushes the fact that on a industry level most of your work will likely be collaborative, which I feel is a very good thing to get used to- being able to communicate with a client can save lots of time and hassle when it comes to delivering what they're looking for. While not all will be able to storyboard what they would want like we did in this case, it's a good practice to try and see a project not from your own lens but rather as an outsider looking in. I would absolutely recommend this exercise to any designer, as it is a nice middle ground of both fun and challenging, to get out of your comfort zone.