Photography!!!

Now, this is a subject I really feel Im lacking in skills and will really love to understand the terminologies and techniques to take great photos and capture moods as well. An image can do all the talking in expressing a message to an audience. It sometimes limits the use of words and I think in my own view breaks all language barriers. It simply passes the message across. So, Im excited and keen on learning a whole lot on this subject. So join me as we go further.

Learning how to use an SLR camera. (Canon EOS 350D) 😉

Im liking it already.

Here are some free style shots below:

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Logo: Mandatory Assignment 02

In this assignment we(students) are asked to choose one of the following products, and create a name and a logo for this product:

1. A new cereal
2. A new chocolate bar
3. A new coffee

I chose (a) A new cereal, cant really say why but I guess it will be much more easier for me because I did something similar (A new rice packaging) recently. The only difference is that I didnt digitize it in adobe illustrator.

The brief goes as follows:

The requirements for the logo are:

1. It should be simple and easily recognizable.
2. Timeless, and preferably not more than 2-3 colors.
3. It Should contain a symbol / figure / ornament, and a title (name / brand)

As the brief suggest, simple and easily recognizable. ImmediatelyI tried to visualize the finished product in my mind and 3 things came to mind,

• a catchy name for the product
• readability
• vibrant colours

The later is important because of the target consumers being mostly kids and the youths. So it has to be attractive as well as easily recognizeable.

Research

So I did some research on the net and stores to get a feel of things.
Below are some images that inspired me.

In the past cereal packaging were not as vibrant as they are today. For example, Kellogg’s, a household brand has been producing cereal since 1906 continually improved its product line and packaging techniques to meet the needs of an ever-changing and evolving consumer base. The co-inventor of flaked cereal was Will Keith (W.K.) Kellogg along with his brother, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. At that time there was a shift in the eating habits of Americans rom heavy, fat-laden breakfasts to lighter, more grain-based meals. So my challenges were to create cereal product logo that should catch the eye of the target consumer, kids, youths and adults that love a light breakfast.

The name of the product:

I thought what I might call it and affter delibrating a some choices, I finally settled for “Chunkies” (at this point I dont think I have seen a cereal with that name). I think it is a catchy name for the product(exciting as well) and something kids wont find it hard pronounce.

The next thing was looking for a font/typeface that will best suit the purpose. I needed a bold, playful and italicised font. A sans-serif font.

I sampled Komika Axis(regular), Noteworthy(Bold), Japan(regular), Cooper Std.(Black italic) and others. I finaly decided to use Komika Axis(regular) in small caps to give more emphases.

I needed a symbol to blend with the name. I chose a wheat stalk. I did a few sketches of it. The next challenge is to digitize it in adobe illustrator. It took quite some time to put together. I realized that as I spent more time on perfecting the illustrations I got better and hence the final product. I hope you like it.

 

I hope you like my final product.

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Colour theory

Colours is the activity for this week. I find it very interesting and quite vast. The range of colours seem endless. Perception seems to be the key here. How we as individuals perceive colours and how we apply them as graphic artist to our work to achieve the desired effect or create an impact that gets noticed.

Back to the activities of the week:

1.

RGB: Stands for Red, Green and Blue. It is the colour system used on devices like monitors, digital cameras, scanners, inkjet printers and the web. It is also refered to as additive colours. That means they are colours created with light. It is said to be addictive in nature because we start with darker colours and end with white.It has a wide range of colours.

CMYK: Stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black respectively. The letter “K” here stands for “Key” where Black is the key colour of the group. It is the colour system used in printing and thus refered to as the printer’s colour. It is achieved when we mix colours using paint or pigment. As more colours are added it gets darker and moves towards black. It is said to be subtractive in nature because we start with white and end in black. Its colour range is less than RGB.

2.

Screen shots of four different colour schemes developed with Kuler.

(a.) Monochomatic

(b.) Complementary

(c.) Triadic

(d.) Analogous

Use a colour photo of your choice and create the following colour effects (as per Nigel French’s video) – you should hand in three separate works of the same photo with the following effects:

1. Create an “Andy Warhol” look
2. Apply a sepia look
3. Split toning of the image
4. Freestyle: a colour effect of your choice

Andy Warhol look

Serpia look

Split toning of the image

Free style

Original

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• Design a book cover for the following:
  a.) “To the Lighthouse” by Virginia Wolf: use complementary colours to express anguish and uncertainty.
  b.) “The Maiden’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood: use analogous colours with a contrasting accent to express disagreement and discontent.
  c.) “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery: express naivety, honesty and harmony.
• Each book cover must contain the title and the author’s name.
•  You must clearly make use of colour to express the desired effects.

 

 

CD the typos

Hip hop genre.

Finally!

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This activity gave me the opportunity to play with fonts in a whole different way.

I substituted the shadows and midtones of the image for the cover with text of the lyrics in the album. (I saw the effect on the net and decided to try my hands on it for this activity, I hope I nailed it.) I applied several Photoshop blending effects  to achieve this. I also added some grunge brush effects as well. I tried to be as minimalistic as possible with the actual images but realized that I had run out of time.

Fonts used: 08 underground (regular), Myriad pro (regular), Myriad pro (condensed bold).

Images sourced from Google and deviantART.

 

Anatomizing the Type

This activitity goes like this:

For this assignment, you need to explain the anatomy of type in a visual way. Use a single typeface or compare up to three different typefaces – enlarge or reduce, cut out sections or overlap parts – anything that helps explain the terms to the viewer. Use a maximum of three colours to full effect by using the second and third colours sparingly, and only to add emphasis. For instance, explanatory text could be in one colour, and the parts of the letterforms in the others. Show at least three terms on each of the sheets, for example x-height, cap height, body size, counter, serif, ascender, bowl, baseline, stress/axis, stroke weight and bracketed serif.

The explanatory copy can be taken from the textbook (pp. 66-68). The format should be a 210 x 210 mm square.

There are three stages to the design as well as a production stage, when you will produce your designs on the computer. The point of having different design stages is so that you will fully explore ideas before going to the computer to produce them.

When you hand this assignment in, please include copies of the different stages, so we can follow your thinking process.

 

 

 

And the scamps

 

Expressing meaning

As the title of this post suggests, the activities this week has to do with expressing meaning with typo.

The first of the activities goes like this.

Choose two words from the list below:

• Compression
• Transition
• Contraction
• Addition
• Subtraction
• Disruption
• Repetition
• Elimination
• Migration
• Expansion

Also, create a “new” word, which has no dictionary definition, and a meaning that only you know. For example, the word I came up with is “roleean”, it doesn’t appear in the dictionary, but it means, “round and leaning to the left”. You should decide on your own “word” with its own meaning. My typographic treatment of the word “roleean” might involve emphasising/dramatically enlarging the letter “o” within the word, and using italics to have that letter leaning to the side.

I chose “Compression” and “Elimination” and my “new” word is “Flabberwhelm“. It means “greatly overpowered”. I use it in converstions mostly with friends and they laugh(those that get it).

It is a combo of 2 expressive words, “Flabbergast” and “Overwhelm“

flabbergast: Verb – Surprise (someone) greatly; astonish

 Synonyms – astound – stupefy – amaze -dumbfound – stun

Overwhelm: Verb – Buried or drown beneath a huge mass, defeat completely

Synonyms – Overpower – Crush

Here are some scamps that led to the final product above:

Loose Juice Label!

Finally, I think I am satisfied with it.
I spent more time on the details( I can be sometimes).

I got a wake up call from the review of my first assignment.(I will make ammends) So I decided to kick it up a notch.

Adobe illuctrator! After watching the tutorials, I tried as much as I could to implement it into this label. I must say, I had to go back to the tutorials for references and guides. It took a lot of time. I had learnt so much from the tutorial that I forgot which tool to use at times. I was having a lot of conflicts with what I was used to and that made it more difficult.

During the building process, I decided to use elements of my scamps that I think best can be easily illustrated.

Process:

I scanned my scamps and traced elements that I liked. Fine tuned my lines with the tools in Adobe illustrator.

Tools:

Line segment tool, Shape builder tool, Reflect tool, Gradient tool, Selection tool, Eyedropper tool & Type tool.

I also made a pattern and applied Overlay transparency blending mode.

Presentation:

I saved the final illustration as jpeg transfered it to Photoshop and blended it with juice packaging images I downloaded from google.( A bottle and a tetrapak).
I hope you like them.

Conclusion:

I had fun making the label. I also realized that I need to do some more practicing and get used to illustrator. I wasted a lot of time making this label and will like to spend one tenth of the time spent it.

Illustrator…

This week started off on a good note. It seems as we progress in the course, time just gets shorter and the activities becomes more tedious and challenging.
The reason why I havent posted anything yet is because I have been going thruogh the Adobe illustrator tutorials on Linda.com. The more I watch the more I want to learn and before I knew it the week is almost over and my brain seems to be saturated with so much info that I am afraid it may affect my work. I need to cool down for a bit.

….ahh! that helped. Now back to business, I did some research on the juice labels and packaging on the net(Google) and found a lot of interesting ideas and images that help inspire my scamps. I had so much ideas but had to keep within the limits of my skills(if I have any) in adobe illustrator and time. Maybe my scamps will give a visual representation of my idea of what the label will look like.

….so here are my scamps, I hope to intereprete it illustratively in the final out that I will post later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, Week 02 is over!!!!

 

 

 

 

Applying Scamper method techniques on rice packaging

 

 

 

I was trying different forms and shapes.

 

 

Rice packaging.

 

 

SCAMPERING RICE!

I love rice, so when I was aked to design packaging for rice. The packaging has to be different from what is out there in the market and apply SCAMPER method techniques and do a write-up on my findings. Then choose the option that I think would work best and do a sketch of what the packaging would look like. I felt it will be a tough task because a lot of people all over the world eat rice and it has been packaged in many forms and with different materials.

I thought long and hard and came up with a solution that combines all SCAMPER method techniques then decided to go this way.

• Substitute something: Use a retangular box form with cut-outs on both broad sides.

• Combine it with something else: Add a transparent, plastic bag for hygiene and extra protection.

• Adapt something to it: Incorporated with grip gooves makes it slip-proof and easy to handle.

• Modify or Magnify it: The transparent plastic bag allows for the contents to be displayed and seen from both sides.

• Put it to some other use: The package can be used as a container for other things and the choice of paper and plastic means it is biodegradeable and can be recycled respectively.

• Eliminate something: The cut-out on the sides of the box reveals the content of the container.

• Reverse or Rearrange it: When stacking, the other rice package needs to reversed to form a pefect rectangle thereby making it sturdy and fit in a bigger rectangular box for delivery.

I ended up with this:

Side view with the opening pulled out and transparent sides for easy display of the content.