McFarland | Wrap-Up Post!

There are so many things that I've learned in Graphics this semester. First, I found out that I absolutely love Professor Taylor and Paul. That said, I feel that they've spread their typoholic nature to me, as one of the unexpected things I've gotten out of the course is paying attention to the typeface for pretty much every restaurant, store and company logo that I see! I never anticipated to learn so much about the different typefaces and their individual personalities. I felt this was portrayed perfectly in the short video that Professor Taylor showed during class. It was amazing to me that by changing the fonts in all of my projects they could take on an entirely different meaning and be perceived in a different way by my viewer. It was really interesting to search endlessly through Suitecase and find so many different typefaces that I loved. I never really thought that I would formulate a strong opinion concerning this subject matter.

Another thing that I was not expecting was to be so intrigued by Indesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. I consider myself fairly old fashioned, as you will walk into my apartment and see a 1922 typewriter, vintage record player and various pairs of large headphones. I have of course engaged in modern forms of technology but have a greater appreciation for simple things like pop-up toasters and bicycles with baskets on the front of them, as strange as it sounds. Having these strong interests gave me a great feeling of trepidation when entering the realm of these new design programs, however I found that the lab was extremely helpful and it wasn't that difficult to pick up on the programs with practice. I learned a great deal about visual gestalt and attempted to apply this in many of my design projects. One of my favorite things about the course was the variety of projects. In some courses, I feel as if I'm writing similar things or working on yet another empty shell of a Powerpoint presentation. In Graphics, however, I felt I was able to follow certain design guidelines, principles and courtesies while still being able to express who I am and the various topics that I am interested in. I loved that I was able to engage in a large amount of design freedom within certain guidelines.

I also appreciated all of the course feedback, such as our project evaluations both to Professor Taylor and to our fellow peers. I watched in awe as Stevie splashed her anchor, Fran's initial popped out from his business card, Lucy showcased a man's bare bottom and Melia gave a whole new meaning to the term robbins-egg blue. Everyone else in the class was fantastic so if I didn't mention the name it's because there isn't enough space on this blog. I learned so much from the professor, the TA and my classmates and will forever be addicted to these programs and to type. I will forever stay away from the widows and orphans of the world, as I am now.

Annie Leibovitz | Extra-Credit

Annie Leibovitz delivered a very memorable lecture this past Thursday evening. From someone who had heard about Ms. Leibovitz only months prior to her arrival in Syracuse—I was star stuck. I had no clue she was such a talented photographer until seeing some of her work online, many of which talked about in the lecture. My favorite photograph of hers by far is the re-creation of the “Double Fantasy” album featuring John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which made its way on the cover of Rolling Stones. I find this picture extremely provocative; yet intrinsically profound. The semiotics behind this photograph encapsulates a quality of human intimacy that perhaps cannot speak on a verbal level. Recently I have encountered many artists that emulate this similar idea of. Ruben Brulat, a French photographer I recently interviewed creates autoportraits of himself completely exposed in various exotic environments. He believes in the removal of all clothing, stripping down to his bare essentials to represent his inner humanity. His work often reminds me of the Lennon feature. What I find most gratifying about Ms. Leibovitz’s work is how versatile and distinct her collections are from each other. Often times I find photographers geared strictly towards a specific genre or style of subjects which I ultimately find very limiting. Ms. Leibovitz on the other hand has covered political movements from Richard Nixon’s resignation and Obama’s campaign to musicians such as B.B. King and even iconic celebrities (Kate Moss, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg). Regardless of who it is she is photographing, each picture contains such genuine ability that separates her work from the rest. When asked what her favorite photograph was, she did not have an answer. Instead she believes it is the “accumulation” of her body of work that gives her the most satisfaction.

Project 5:Interface Design | Lang

The non-for-profit event that I chose for my website is C.A.R. It stands for Champions are Readers and it is a philanthropy event that my sorority Pi Beta Phi is involved in to promote literacy. For my website, I have the home page, about us page, photos page, events page, contact us page, and the location page. For my event, I felt that having these particular pages would be most effective because the reader can learn about the event and the organization that supports it as well as all the details behind it.
The typeface I used for my header is Futura with different variations and the two other big text boxes, “a book today…” and “share the magic…” is in Franklin Gothic. The rest of the type is in Helvetica Neue, either in regular or light. I chose Helvetica Neue as my main typeface because I found it really easy to read and after watching Helvetica the movie, I really enjoy this typeface! I didn’t add any text for the photos page and just kept it really simple with pictures and for the user to scroll through them.
I tried to incorporate a lot of visuals and images in the pages, but I didn’t want to put too many pictures, so I also added a lot of color boxes. The color scheme I used was yellow and blue and I also played around with the opacity to change up the color use. I used a book and the color cyan to show the active state of the webpage. I tired to put a lot of information about C.A.R. but I also felt that it was important to mention first book, which is the organization that donates the books, and also mention Pi Beta Phi who participates in this event.

Website | Wong

Design Strategy
    For my design strategy, I wanted to make a website that was both pleasing to look at, but easy enough for someone in elementary school to use. I’m not used to making websites through Photoshop – I prefer using Dreamweaver and actually writing out the HTML for the website to design it. But overall this was a great experience.
    For the banner on top, I wanted to make the title look like a book, but I think it looks more like a random blue rectangle. I was trying to figure out how to make either a gradient or a silver/gold color but overall I think I knew it would be difficult to make it look like a book’s spine. I also made the navigation bar horizontal instead of vertical because I knew I wanted to have drop down menus, and a horizontal bar looks cleaner than a vertical bar (for my purposes).
    I used elements from my poster project for the homepage, like my “Book America” and I redid the “Cat in the Hat” ribbon, so it had the allusion of having movement and being more flowing and less stiff. For the buttons in my navigation bar, I added the book images because the event is National Read Across America Day, which happened on March 2, Dr. Seuss’ birthday. This time, I didn’t focus on the Dr. Seuss aspect because it really is hard to design without running into copyright issues. But I chose to have an open book when the links aren’t clicked, and to have a book flipping pages when they are clicked. I chose to have a book flipping pages instead of a closed book because each time I designed a closed book, it seemed more like a rectangle than a book.
    I also added a picture of children reading for the other pages, as well as a stack of books because I thought that it added a nice touch to the website. Users could also scroll down for some of the pages. For the drop down menus, the link that is highlighted in a lighter color is the page that the user is at, so for “ideas,” the user is at the “elementary schools” page. I also kept the same frame for all of the pages because it made the website seem cleaner and more accessible and usable for users. In terms of hierarchy, I tried to make the baby blue stand out the most so that it would be what users saw first. I also made the books on the bottom large so that users would look at that, and then see the text next to the books and read the information given.

Choice of Typefaces
I chose to use Apple Casual for the homepage because I liked the playfulness of the font, and also because it was what I used for the poster project. I chose to use Chalkduster because it was also a fun font, and I thought it was appropriate because this website focused on students. I chose to use Georgia for the main text because it was a nice and clean serif font, but still playful enough to complement the other fonts I used. And Georgia is also very easy to read.

Color
I originally wanted to use a Red-White-Blue scheme because the event is Read Across America, but then I thought it would be too cliché. So I chose to do a red and blue scheme, and add images. I also wanted to do a red and white scheme for Dr. Seuss, but when I left the background white, the website seemed a little too boring – especially since it was more of an informative website that linked to pages that had materials that could be used or pages with more information about the organizations involved. Even when I added the graphics, the white seemed to be too boring so I made the background a baby blue to complement the navy blue I used for the header and the footer. The RBG colors can be seen on the markups.

Images
Most of the images used were found on Google Images or on the NEA Read Across America website. All of the information used was also taken from either the Read Across America website or from my own information – the Onondaga County Literary Coalition was a client of Hill Communications, Newhouse’s PR firm, and I was a member of the team in charge of the client. The scrollbar was created from making a screenshot of my current screen and then cutting & pasting together parts of a scrollbar into Photoshop.  

Project 5: Interface Design | Paterson

Design Strategy and Client Information:

My client is the same nonprofit organization for which I designed a poster; however, I designed an interface for a different event that they sponsor each year. This event is the 5th Annual Narrow River Turnaround Swim, which will take place on June 19 in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. The swim is open to all ages, but it is strongly recommended that the participants have swam at least one mile in open water or a pool prior to the race. The swim promotes open water swimming for the locals, raises money and awareness for the Narrow River Preservation process.
I wanted to make the interface fun while maintaining a professional format, so I included many cartoon-like graphics and photographs, but provided enough information to convey the message of the organization and event. The title of the website (the event title) includes an ‘S’ that has been “turned around” just to add a little fun to the header. I used blues and a green pulled from the swim caps in the photographs. I wanted the design to be as easy to use as possible because it is an event that attracts many different people from all over the state of Rhode Island. I used a swimmer to indicate the active page and waves to outline the containers holding information. I think the design provides plenty of information and links while maintaining a fun, attractive environment for the actual event.

Typeface:
Because web design is limited in which fonts are available, I used one typeface throughout the entire interface. I used several different variations of the font Gill Sans throughout the design. I wanted to use a sans serif because they are easier to read on the web, but it had to be diverse and interesting. The typeface merely serves as a legible device for conveying the information about the event. I used bold and italic do differentiate parts of the information in order to form visual hierarchy throughout the website. The navigation bar was Gill Sans Bold, but I had to make it into an image in order to add the wave effect. The links within the body text are underlined and green.

Visuals & Graphics:
I made all of the graphics including the waves, swimmer, bubbles, and bubble arrows by bringing in clip art from Google Images and redesigning them in Photoshop. I added the goggles, swim cap and bubbles to the swimmers and I matched the event’s logo to the color scheme of the website. I also changed the colors of the seaweed that appears in the bottom navigation bar to provide the feel of the river/ocean environment. I also designed the bubble arrows that appear on the ‘Results’ page in Photoshop. I retrieved all of the photographs from the Narrow River Preservation Fund website, so they all have a resolution of 72 dpi.

Color:
The colors are very reflective of the poster I designed for the NRPA run. However, there are three different shades of blue and two shades of green that I picked up from the photographs with the eyedropper. The darkest blue has values of R=8, G=37 and B=66. The water and wave blue is R=11, G=46 and B=101. The lightest “sky” blue is R=188, G=219 and B=249. The green of the logo has values of R=132, G=253 and B=126 and the green of the seaweed has values of R=95, G=161 and B=78. All of the body text uses three of these colors and white throughout the design.

Project 5: Interface Design | Shaer

Design Strategy:

The Demographics for The Alzheimer’s Association Chocolate Symphony Spring Sensation and After Party is males and females ages 21 and older. I chose to create the background and side bar that I did because they are gender neutral and fun yet sophisticated. I chose to play off of the chocolate idea for my website because of the name Chocolate Symphony and the fact that event prides itself on having desserts from premier pastry chefs and chocolatiers. With this in mind, I used a chocolate flower to emphasize spring and the tuxedo chocolate covered strawberries because it is a black tie event. I chose the color scheme that I did because it compliments the colors of chocolate, but still has a bright essence.

 

Choice of Typefaces:

I chose the typefaces that I did (Charcoal CY, Apple Chancery, Helvetica, Silom, and Tahoma) because they are blunt and legible. I wanted one whimsical font to capture the attitude of the event. Though the event benefits a very serious organization I wanted to add an element of light heartedness and fun to represent the event. I liked the font Charcoal CY because something about its structure reminded me of a candy bar with its smooth lines and sans serif character. I wanted to use Helvetica for my factual and interactive pages so that viewers of all ages would be able to easily read the font. I used Tahoma on my home page and bottom contact information, only, because I wanted them to stand out and be different from the rest of the website.

 

Visuals:

My visuals are a combination of images from the Alzheimer’s website, marquees, and the pen tool. My colors were all RGB. I used seven different font colors throughout my website: black, white, R=93 G=45 B=9, R=233 G=128 B=18, R= 93 G= 45 B=9, R= 107 G=104 B=104, and R=70 G=38 B=32 .The background pattern was manipulated using the opacity option to add contrast, interest, and look as though it were a watermark. The three colors I used for my background were white, R=211 G=240 B=233, and R=169 G=158 B=158. The boxes around my text are R= 245 G=242 B=242. I altered the active page strawberries by using drop shadow, smart filters, and fresco.  The non-active strawberries are enhanced with a drop shadow. My answer boxes and bubbles contain gradients, inner shadows, and inner glows. My continue boxes were created using a grey and white gradient with a black boarder outlining it. I used a 960 grid with twelve columns as the foundation in constructing my webpage. 

Berk | Web Site Project

The non-for-profit I made my site for is Our Time Theatre Company, which is an organization for children who stutter. As someone who has a stutter, it has a personal connection to me. Our Time puts on shows, plays, and allows to kids to learn and interact without fear of mockery. The event is their annual gala where they invite a celebrity and they perform and speak before mingling with the children and guests.

I used Helvetica for all of my typefaces, because it is so versatile and easy to read. Plus, the movie we watched really made it seem awesome. I used mostly regular, with bold in some of the headers as well as one Oblique Bold to make an important paragraph stand out.

I got all my pictures either from the Our Time web site or from a press release about an earlier Our Time event.

I pulled the logo from the Our Time web site and based my color scheme, namely the background and color of the navigation bar at the top on it. The orange background comes from the bottom left corner of the logo.

I found the location on Mapquest and just took a screenshot of it to put on the Directions page.

The logo is somewhat blurry, especially the black text along the bottom. I tried to find a better copy of the logo but was unable to. I didn’t want to stretch the logo that much but I had to or else it would have been completely unreadable. At least now, you can see ‘Our Time Theatre Company’ which is the main point.