Second Semester

Man oh man, has it been a year! Sophomore Graphic Design has taught me so much. I've learned the essentials of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and even a little bit of InDesign. This year has also taught me how much I love and care for graphic design in general, and how it's a possible career choice I'd like to pursue. I've done so many projects, but there were three specific ones I'd like to talk about.

Vector Illustrated Portrait

This project was super fun! The basis of it was to choose a subject be it yourself, a family member, or even a family pet and make a vector illustration out of them/yourself. You could either choose to do a regular vector illustration or a geometric vector illustration. I chose to do the regular version, since I thought it would look the best with my subject and I love the simplicity of it. This project took me a few weeks to complete, since there were a couple of snow days in the mix and I had to redo it three times since I was doing it wrong the first two. While creating this project, I learned a lot about the pen tool and the do's and don'ts are. For instance, I would try to connect a shape I made with said tool to a new shape while on the first shape's vector. This was a huge mistake, since when I tried to fill in the shapes the fill tool didn't understand that I tried to make two separate shapes, not an extended version of the first shape. I also learned how to mesh different hues of a color together fo a semi seamless vector. Some challenges I faced aside from redoing it multiple times was what exactly I wanted to outline and what feature I wanted to leave out. The subject I chose had a lot of shadows on her face, so I didn't know how much of the shadows I should incorporate. Also, I didn't know what exact shades of brown I wanted to use on her since there wasn't a fine line between the browns and pinks. My teacher said that I did a beautiful job overall and that my main concern would be to have smoother value transitions on the forehead, which was another challenge I had. I genuinely didn't make any changes aside from not adding as much shadows. Overall, I feel like this project came out pretty nicely!

Greeting Card Design

This project was also a blast to do. When this was assigned, I was hosting a student from Japan and hanging out with other visitors, so I decided to make a card for them. The outline for this project was to first hand write what you words you want for your greeting card, then transfer that onto Illustrator using the pen tool. This project was the quickest project I've done out of all three projects, since it only took me two weeks to complete. Not only did I learn how to really perfect the pen tool when it comes to tracing, but I also learned how to make angled lines curvy. Some challenges I faced with this project was what colors choices I wanted to do, since I knew that I wanted my background to be a collage of sunflowers, which is the Kansas state flower, and sakura, which is the national flower of Japan. I also knew that I wanted my lettering to be compound pathed onto the background I made so that when I printed it the lettering would be the same color as the paper I printed it on. It took a while to figure out how to do so, but after I got help from my teacher it worked out and looked nice. Some feedback I got back from her was that my design was great; my friends reassured me that they could read my lettering on top the background I made, which made me happy. Overall, I'm really delighted with how this turned to and am glad that I chose to this design rather than my initial design, which was a big 50 for my dad's birthday.

Logo Design

My third favorite project was the last project I did, which was the logo design project. The basis of this project was to first create over 30 logo ideas for yourself, then to choose a top five and actually make them on Illustrator. This project took me around two and a half weeks to complete. Some new skills I acquired during this project was how to simplify detailed things, like how I did a simple outline of a lion and put my name in its open mouth. I also learned how crucial it is to try out multiple colors, since your initial color choice might not be as cool as your other color choice. Some feedback I got from my peers was to create more contrast between the colors I chose and how to improvise when something wouldn't work, like how to fill something in when it refused to or how to sharpen shapes and such. I honestly didn't make any changes compared to my original idea, since I really like the top choices I made. Some challenges I faced with this project was how to outline my signature, which I needed for two of my designs. I decided to just use the Wacom provided to me by my teacher. I also didn't know how to make my initial logo pop out, but my peer Julia helped me by encouraging me to try out different fonts and font sizes. Overall, I'm super stoked about how all my logos turned out! I'm happy I got another chance to do a logo for myself, since my logos I did last year were absolutely atrocious. 

Second Semester

During this semester, I was able to be productive with my time and tried to turn my projects in on time. Though it didn't happen all the time, I loved how most of my projects turned out this semester since I was even more passionate about what I was doing. If I finished a project early, I would try to work on the next project if it was uploaded and if not I would try to work on personal projects, like some app ideas I have. In my free time at home, I would look up graphic design tutorials and would try to better my photoshop and illustrator skills and I would try to apply these newfound skills in my eComm projects. I would always ask myself and my peers how to improve, and there were definitely moments where I asked my teacher how I could better myself.

Strengths

Now that I've been in eComm for two years, my eye for creativity has improved vastly. I have learned  how less is more and how to work Photoshop and Illustrator. I used to despise Illustrator and loved Photoshop, but now that's reversed. I love the pen tool on Illustrator and how it refines everything you do. I still love Photoshop, especially because I know how to really use it thanks to semester one of sophomore year. I also have a better eye for color.

Improvement

Though I have improved a lot, there's still a bunch of things I need to work on! I still need to improve on trying out different variations and being less stubborn. I also need to learn how to really use the other tools in Illustrator and Photoshop, and how to overall refine all of my projects.

Conclusion

 In conclusion, I loved a lot of things in this class. I had an awesome teacher that always helped me, I learned essential programs and tools that I need if I were to actually become a Graphic designer, and I especially loved the projects that we were assigned. Be it the vector, logo, or even the raccoon, I had a blast everyday and wouldn't change it for the world. One goal I have for myself for next year is to better my photoshop skills and to pursue even more outside of class projects. 

Vector Illustration

Pre-Production
For this assignment, I instantly knew that I wanted to pay homage to my dear sister Ruth; I even knew what picture I wanted use! I chose a radiant picture of her smiling while the hot Chicago sun bouncing off of expose her rich melanin. I decided to go with the more organic approach rather than a geometric one. Because of my need for detail, I decided to posterize the image to the point where lines could be made but a variety of colors were present. In stead of going back and forth through Photoshop and Illustrator, I was advised to make two art boards: one with a lower opacity and the other with full opacity.

Production
I had to redo this project 3 times for multiple reasons. The first time around, I didn't connect a single line, which would later lead to the fill tool having a mental breakdown since there were no shapes to fill. The second time around I created some shapes, however, I connected my new shapes with old shapes aka didn't really make complete shapes. This also led to my fill tool having a mental breakdown. After going through these failures, I was determined to complete all of my shapes and color as I go instead of coloring after I finish creating my shapes. Because I was more skilled with the pen tool, this project didn't really take as much time as I thought it would. I knew exactly what shapes I wanted to create. One of my main problems aside from the shape incidents was figuring out how much the colors should contrast, what colors I should use, and exactly how much detail I wanted in the end. Some design elements I used for this are color, value, and shape.

Conclusion
At first I wasn't, but now I'm very pleased with the final product! I love the amount of flow shapes there are, how the work with each other, and how the illustration genuinely looks like the original. I learned the importance of creating a full shape, and how to balance (skin tone) colors together. If I were to do this project again with this picture, I would experiment and try to see what a more simplistic approach would look like, then I would try to see what a geometric version would look like.

Typography Project

This project was super fun to do! I loved the whole process, from picking out the quotes to figuring out what hue of color to add onto a word. Picking out the quotes was easy at first, but got harder (especially when I had to pick my final four quotes). I wanted my quotes to reflect me in some way. One example is the first quote, "Masterpiece of God". This quote is the meaning behind my name (Yabsira). Another quote that reflected me was "The eyes are useless when the mind is blind." I resonated with this because I strive to live a life full of perspective and wisdom. 

The next step was to choose what fonts to use. This was a tad difficult, because it felt like it took 472834720 different font pages to find what I was looking for. This was especially difficult with this font: "Doubt kills more dreams than failure will." During the production it was also tough figuring out how to arrange the words. Should it be heavier on the vertical or horizontal alignment? Should it be stacked or more free? Should it feel like the words are interacting with each other? I thought about all these questions, and tried to answer them throughout the project. 

Working in color was very different than working in black and white because I had to really think of which color correlated with which word. Color is important in the sense that it could change the meaning or tone of a word. Though there was a little bit of stress when working with colors, I did enjoy working in it than I did with black and white because it really helped portray what I was going for and looked less boring/bland. I'm very pleased with how my project came out! Though I think they aren't the best they could be (perhaps because of the lack of framing and graphics), I like the fonts I chose and how it turned out in general.