Viscom Dos Days

Joe 6 Pack Final

2009-12-12T16:31:00.000-08:00

This is how my final Joe 6 Pack turned out. I was pretty pleased with the final design. I was surprised to find that the template I created actually fit together and held up (for the most part!). If I would have done something differently, I probably would have covered the inside with the same argyle texture I used on the outside.

Audio Book Rev 2

2009-12-11T06:09:00.001-08:00

This is my second revision for the audiobook for To Kill A Mockingbird.

Audio Book Rev 1

2009-12-09T17:46:00.001-08:00

I chose to make an audiobook for To Kill A Mockingbird. My concept is to create CD packaging that when unfolded looks like a bird, and holds a CD that looks like a target. I will use my typographic illustration from Illustration class for the cover design. On the inside, I'm going to use different typography also, I believe, to match the cover somewhat. Also, I will probably have a little "blurb" about the book and some more information.

Joe 6 Pack In-the-Making

2009-12-09T17:14:00.000-08:00

I went through a lot of different names, themes, and design choices with this project. First off, I knew I wanted to make a 6-pack of beer. The next thing to decide on was a concept. My first thought was to base my beer around an Irish theme, because my birthday is on St. Patty's Day, and the project had to include our name in either the name of the company or the beer. My first name choices were the following:

Semple's St. Patty's Day Barley Pop

Erin-Go-Barley Pop (Erin Go Bragh)

Erin's Emerald Isle Barley Pop

Erin' Emerald Isle Brew

Erin's Emerald Isle Oat Soda

A Semple Ginger Ale

A Semple Solution

Erin Go Bragh's Ginger Haired Ale

and finally I decided to use my nickname and landed on...Stump's Ginger Shandygaff

My idea was to have Irish related things, such as shamrocks, pots of gold, lots of green, etc..., however I decided to completely turn my beer over to another concept...red-heads, or "gingers", hence the name "Ginger Shandygaff", with Ireland's flag colors: green, white and orange. I wanted to have argyle in the design somehow, and ended up making the label for the beer bottles in the shape of a diamond from the argyle pattern I created.

Viscom Final Portfolio

2009-12-07T12:51:00.000-08:00

For Joe 6-pack, I designed a 6-pack of beer (mixed with ginger ale), called Ginger Shandygaff. I was going for a textured, rough kind of look, and also used a red-headed young man to bring out the "ginger" in the ginger ale beer.

The entire design, laying out of, and crafting took approximately 11 hours.

To promote the Red Barn Arts & Crafts Festival, I used a picture I had taken of a young boy walking along a line of pumpkins. My concept was "follow the pumpkin trail", considering pumpkins were everywhere at the festival. I wanted the typography to be bold and have a modern feel, which I think came through well.

The entire design of the Red Barn campaign including the poster, web banner, newspaper ad, and brochure took approximately 18 hours.

We had to shoot our own photography for a magazine article titled "Time In the Woods". I wanted to do a one-column grid structure centered, just to try it, and I think it works pretty well for this article. The color scheme worked well also I believe, with all of the pictures being woodsy and warm colored.

To shoot the photography needed, design, and layout this spread, it took approximately 5 hours.

To promote Society of Illustrators' Call for Entries, I designed a mailer, which doubles as a poster. I went with the concept of illustrating your senses. Basically I wanted a "sensual" feeling, and I feel that the poster referring to PDA comes across this way to match the concept. The design, layout, and craft of Society of Illustrators took approximately 8.5 hours.

Using a professional photograph of our choice, we had to create a 2-page magazine spread. I chose a photograph of a golden lion tamarin, so I decided a National Geographic article would go well with the picture. I like the grid structure I used here because it's simple, yet it turned out looking somewhat professional.

This spread took 4 hours to design.

This was a magazine advertisement for Rapala Crankbait Lures. I used an image that I had in my own stock of photographs. I like this layout because of the text wrap on the main image and the graphic on the top right page. I think the graphic adds a little more of an "ad" feel.

This magazine advertisement took approximately 4 hours to design and layout.

This was a magazine spread for an article containing lots and lots of body copy! I used a stock image of a curly fry and wrapped the text around it. I had issues with placing the orange box of information on the right page, but I think the spot it ended up in turned out well.
This magazine spread took approximately 4.5 hours to design and layout.

We had to create an audiobook for a book of our choosing. I chose to design packaging and a CD label for the audiobook for To Kill A Mockingbird. My concept was the design the packaging so that it would unfold and look like a bird, and the CD would be a target, taking on the literal meaning of "killing a mockingbird".

The entire design, layout, and crafting of the audiobook took approximately 7.5 hours.

Red Barn Final

2009-12-03T15:02:00.001-08:00

Red Barn Revision #3

2009-11-25T15:17:00.000-08:00

Here is the third revision of Red Barn Arts & Crafts Festival.

I still have a ways to go on the pamphlet; it is too purple at the moment instead of a dark red. The headlines need spiced up on the inside.

I like the poster better when it has some color in it. The pumpkin in the back, however, needs to have more orange in it.
The banner is going to be 4-color instead of 2, similar to the poster above.
And, last but not least, is the newspaper ad. So far, I like it.

What do you think?

Society of Illustrators Final

2009-11-25T15:07:00.000-08:00

This is the final Society of Illustrators mailer.

Society of Illustrators #3

2009-11-16T07:13:00.000-08:00

Here is my third revision of the Society of Illustrators mailer.

Red Barn Revision #2

2009-11-11T05:39:00.000-08:00

Society of Illustrators #2

2009-11-09T13:12:00.001-08:00

Here is my second rev of Society of Illustrators.

Red Barn

2009-11-08T23:36:00.001-08:00

For Red Barn, I decided to go with the theme of "Follow the pumpkin trail" because the festival is very autumn-ish, and there tend to be a lot of pumpkins around. Also, some of my better photographs had pumpkins in them. We are creating a pamphlet/mailer, poster, newspaper ad, and web banner for this project.

First, is the Red Barn Arts & Crafts Festival pamphlet/mailer. The text has not been manipulated yet but that will come soon. I generally know where things are going to go.

This is the other side of the pamphlet/mailer. The top (upside down) flap will fold down over the bottom section, and the picture will be completed. Also, there is a mailer panel on this side.

This is the Red Barn poster. Actual size is 13x19. I'm thinking about making the picture monotone or duotone to go with the flow of the mailer, banner, and ad, but I'm not sure yet.

This is the half-page newspaper ad. I really like the typography so far, but it needs something else. Since it is a 2-color job, I made the photograph a sepia kind of color to emphasize the fall feeling. Actual size is somewhere around 10.25x10 I believe. I need to downsize mine a bit; I believe it's 15x11 right now.
Last but not least, this is the web banner. Apparently the web banner has to be horizontal, so I need to change the profile, but I really liked the vertical layout anyway!

Society of Illustrators

2009-11-08T23:35:00.001-08:00

Tamarin Finals

2009-10-24T13:46:00.000-07:00

Here are my final layouts for the professional photograph assignment.

For the spread, I brought the body copy up from the margin a bit at the bottom. Also, I finally finished the body copy text.

For the poster, I tried to sell the service a little more than just inform people about it. To do this, I added the pull quote that is "from a user" of the service. Also, I added a kind of subtitle to the top of the spread. I think the logo of the handicapped person with the monkey (which is a rebuilt Helping Hands logo) helps get the point across that this is a service to help those that are handicapped become more independent.

For the poster, I made the "to save them" text a little more visible by upping the opacity and changing the position.

Revision of Time in the Woods

2009-10-20T21:19:00.000-07:00

Here is my first revision of "Time in the Woods". I centered the one column of text and added some extra photos above the body copy. Also, the image on the left is now taking up the entire left page. I think the headline might need to stand off the background a bit more; it's kind of hidden. Anyway, here it is.

Time in the Woods

2009-10-20T21:17:00.001-07:00

Here is my initial layout for "Time in the Woods". I wanted to try doing a one-column spread because I haven't done that before. I think some changes could be made.

Tamarin Attempt #2

2009-10-12T01:32:00.000-07:00

Here are my revisions. For the spread I chose to zoom in on the face of the monkey and make the spread look more "National Geographic" because that's the magazine I imagine an article such as this one being in.

This is the revision on the magazine ad. I recreated the logo for "Helping Hands", an organization that trains monkeys and gives them to handicapped people as service animals. I turned the headline to grayscale to help the logo not seem too out of place (color-wise). *Still needs text.

Annnd, this is the revision on the poster. I think I could use another image in the negative space on the left. I tried to make the event a little more serious than just students playing with tamarin monkeys on the quad. I figured it could be an event to promote the awareness of endangerment of this species.

What do you think?

Midterm Portfolio

2009-10-09T13:00:00.001-07:00

For my midterm portfolio in Viscom II, I chose the following six pieces. They are in order of the most recently created. I didn't use many of the things I did at the beginning of the semester. I think I finally got into the groove of using a grid and paying attention to small detail, so a lot of my more recent work looks better.

Assignment: Using photography shot by you at Thousand Hills, create a 2-page magazine spread for the article "Time in the Woods".

I wanted to try a one-column grid for this layout, just because I hadn't tried it before and there wasn't too much text to be used. I centered the body copy underneath three photos of Thousand Hills scenery. The picture on the left had some oranges and reds in it which I sampled to color the text for the headline. Since this spread is only in its first revision, I believe I'm going to take more pictures of colored leaves close up to use for the three images at the top of the right page. I think the one column of text was successful in this layout, though.

Assignment: Using a professional(looking) photograph of your choice, create a 2-page magazine spread using the image. Text not supplied.

I chose a picture of a golden lion tamarin mainly because I'm interested in rare animals, and thought it was a professional looking picture. When deciding on a client, or theme for my article, I thought it would be appropriate to imagine the article in National Geographic. For this reason, I chose to zoom in on the most intriguing part of the photograph, which is the tamarin's face. I made the column on the left of the photo black to contrast with the golden orange of the monkey's fur. Also, I wanted to be sure to create hierarchy with the text, so I focused on the word "Tamarin", added "the golden lion" above it, and a subtitle in a smaller font just below the headline.

Assignment: Create a 2-page magazine ad for Rapala crankbait fishing lures. Text supplied.

I decided to use a COB of a young man holding a large fresh water fish for this spread. I chose the tan and dark green colors to get a camo sort of feeling since our viewer's would probably be hunters and fishers. This poster has been through many revisions, starting with moving the focal image from the right side of the page to the left, creating a red info box on the top right, adding lures to the main body of text, and making many minute decisions while typesetting.

Assignment: Create a 2-page magazine spread for the article "How Safe?". Text supplied.

This was a spread with very little text to work with. I used stock photos of peppers and a food market for this layout. I wanted the colors to be bright and catch the viewer's eye, and I think that was successful. Some of the revisions I made throughout this poster were finding new images, resizing/scaling images to take up more space, turning the body of text into three columns instead of two, and working with text wraps.

Assignment: Create a text-heavy 2-page magazine spread for the article, "The Secret of Feeling Full". Text supplied.

At first, the amount of text on this spread was a little intimidating. I realized that there wasn't a lot of space to take up, so I found an image that the text could interact with, and that was the curly fry. This was the first spread I really figured out the text wrap settings on, only after manually (and tediously) spacing the text to wrap around the curly fry! The orange informational box on the right page went through many different areas of the page, but I think in the end it sits well at the bottom.

Assignment: Create an informational poster listing events for Native American Heritage Month.

For this poster, we were required to list the events for Native American Heritage Month, which was more text than we had worked with on a single poster. I wanted to try something new, so I water-colored some Indian corn. Although the image is a little pale, I think it still draws some interest because of the contrast between the headline and the illustration. Apart from the illustration, I like the handling of the text at the bottom. It is simple and orderly, which I think creates good overall flow while maintaining structure with the organic image.

Tamarin Attempt #1

2009-10-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, for this project we first chose a picture that we thought looked professional. I chose a picture of a golden lion tamarin monkey. We then had to use the picture in a magazine spread, a 2-page ad, and a poster.

Here's my magazine spread. I was going for a National Geographic kind of look. I need to add something else. It's boring. Also, I've got to get some text written, or else, who will read it?

Here is the poster I created for "Tamarin Time!", a made-up event where students at Truman can experience golden lion tamarin monkeys on the quad for a day. Something needs to happen here still, too!

And, last but not least, this is the 2-page ad for service monkeys. The organization that I'm basing my ad off of is called Helping Hands, a group that trains monkeys and gives them to handicapped people for help with everyday tasks. I still need to get the text in there.

Finally! Fishing Final!

2009-10-08T14:31:00.001-07:00

For the Rapala revision, I moved the focal image from the right page to the left page to interact with more text. I separated some key information about joining the Rapala fishing club from the main body copy, and created a little visual interest on the top right of the page. The bottom right of the page is blank now, but I think the negative space is OK, and gives it a little breathing room. Anyway, here's the final Rapala!

Rapala Crankbait Lures!

2009-10-01T19:30:00.000-07:00

Feeling Full & How Safe? Final

2009-10-01T19:28:00.001-07:00

Feeling Full & How Safe? Revision

2009-09-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

For "The Secret of Feeling Full" article, I blew the image up so the text could interact with the curly fry. I need to work on my text wrap on the image. I created an orange text box on the right page to put information in. I don't like how it is even with the image on the left side and breaking the text columns up, so I have some issues to resolve there still.

Approximate Work Time: 1 hour

For the revision on the "How Safe?" article, I needed to fill more space. To achieve that, I enlarged the image of the peppers to stretch across the page and interact with more text. I made the body text into three columns instead of two, and got rid of the dark green side bar on the right page. I need to tighten up the space between "how" and "safe" to make the headline flow a little better, and I need to find a better image to go behind in order to correspond with the peppers at the bottom. Also, I think I'm going to mess with the "fresh concerns" type because I don't like something about it right now.

Approximate Work Time: 1.75 hours

Feeling Full & How Safe?

2009-09-24T22:18:00.000-07:00

Here are two more initial magazine spread layouts. I haven't used stock images before, but I was running out of time to come up with my own photography or illustration, so I settled for some stock photos from flickr since I haven't used them before. I thought it was a little more difficult to use so little body copy for the "How Safe?" spread. The other spread, however, had a ton of type, and I felt like my initial layout is a little crowded, so I used a smaller image. Anyway, here they are!

Stressed Out!

2009-09-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

Here is my first layout for the Stressed Out magazine spread. I chose some neon colors because I feel that they jump out at you, and give off a fast-paced, high intensity vibe, implying stress.

NAHM...OVER.

2009-09-20T08:45:00.000-07:00

This is my final Native American Heritage Month poster. I went back to the old image because I think the image works better than the nasty, poop-colored one I tried. It does need more color, but I believe the typeface sticks out well enough that it gets the message across. Anyway, done with the Native American poster!

Gilligan List

2009-09-17T19:44:00.001-07:00

Here is the list of 5 typefaces I would "take with me" if I were stranded on an island.

Revision #2 of Native American Poster

2009-09-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the illustration was the main thing that needed work here. Basically, I wanted to make the visual stand out a bit more so instead of leaving the monotone yellow/orange color, I added another color for a duotone of yellow/orange and black. This added more contrast to the poster and I believe the visual sticks out more. I also put the word 'yield' in the yellow/orange color to give the poster a little more color.

Revision #1 of Native American Poster

2009-09-13T18:34:00.000-07:00

For Friday we had to revise our Native American Heritage Month poster. First, I turned the graphic 180 degrees, so that the corn faces up. I think the husks of the corn at the bottom of the page help lead the viewer to the information about events. Next, I made all of the event information dangle from one baseline instead of staggering them. I think this is less confusing now. Also, there was a hierarchy issue going on, so I made the 'Native American Heritage Month' text a bit smaller and made the 'yield a harvest of culture' the main focus. Anyway, here it is...

November = Native American Heritage Month

2009-09-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

So, Native American Heritage Month is sneaking up on us! How better to celebrate than to redesign a poster for the presenters of the month's activities (unbeknownst to Truman's Multicultural Affairs Center)? Yes, we are required to use the nasty yellow/orange pantone color displayed in the first draft of my poster. I wanted to illustrate a graphic using something I had not done before, so I watercolored a few ears of Indian corn, scanned them into photoshop, set a monotone with the orangish color, posterized the picture, and then gave it a feathery edge to avoid the bleed issue. Here's what I've come up with so far. I wanted a somewhat symmetrical layout and I think that is achieved with the 5 column grid and the centered illustration. My concept was "yield a harvest of culture". I'm not exactly sure if it makes sense. I even had to read it a few times to convince myself that it was a correct use of words. Anyway, I wanted to have a headline that convinced people to grasp the culture of native americans. Native Americans had to learn to grow corn, and once they did, they really prospered from it. I'd like to think that if a person were to learn the culture of Native Americans, they would have a similar experience, and possibly prosper somehow from that knowledge.

Chacha and Climb a Wall

2009-09-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

I think these posters went a bit better than the last batch. I wanted to do something more illustrated in one of the posters, so I did a quick sketch of a man climbing a rocky mountainside. I like how it turned out - it's something different from what I've done in the past posters.

Post On Posters

2009-09-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

Organizations at Truman are able to hang posters randomly around campus. Fortunately for our professor, he can walk around, pick out the crappiest ones, and have us redo them as assignments! We remade some horribly designed posters for class on Monday. Let's just say that mine were not much better than what they started out as! Ok for now there's only one...

Here are the two I redesigned for Wednesday. I definitely put more thought and time into them, and I think they turned out a bit better than the last ones.

First Day

2009-08-28T07:47:00.000-07:00

Let the 7:30 morning classes begin! This is my Visual Communications (VisCom) II blog, which I will be updating with project progress and, most likely, some frustrating project situations. Enjoy at your own risk. Things could get dirty.