TARDIS Clock

Today's post isn't about a school project but a really nerdy thing I just did on my own. I was having a really strong urge to paint something about two weeks ago, so I decided to customize my boring white clock. Being the huge Doctor Who fan that I am, I painted it to be TARDIS themed. I first painted the rim a dark blue, layering on bronze, silver, and black to make it look more wooden and aged. Then I designed a custom insert for the actual clock, copying the design of the sign on the front of the TARDIS. I printed it on watercolor paper to give it a little more texture, and added some paint around the edge so the transition from the blue to the off-white wasn't so drastic.

Looking for Alaska Cover

Another John Green-related project today. Today I'm going to share with you the cover I designed for the contest John Green's Dutch publishers put on, where they asked nerdfighters to design the cover for their new edition of Looking for Alaska. This was right in the middle of what was probably my busiest week at school which is why it isn't necessarily my best work. I only had about 4 hours to work on it one night, and there are definitely some things I would change now. However it is already sent off for consideration so I can't really fix it now.

When I was designing the cover, I wanted to use imagery from the book without making it too literal. It is meant to appeal to teenagers so I tried to use bright colors to make it really pop off the shelf. If used, I would ask that the silhouette of the girl be replaced with the iStockPhoto one I traced, but I didn't see the sense in spending $15 on the download if it wasn't going to be used.

John Green's Website Icons

A couple of you may have heard of an author named John Green. I hear his books are pretty good, but he also makes videos on the internet? That's actually kind of weird...

Ok, just kidding. Today's post is about the icons I designed for John Green's new website, which was designed by Alan Lastufka. Alan asked me to design icons for each of John's books and a couple other pages, which he wanted to look hand-drawn and simple. I chose symbols from each of the books from the various covers and drew them out with the pen tool in Photoshop. For the text, I couldn't find a typeface that looked exactly how I wanted it to, so I wrote the alphabet out by hand, scanned it, and pieced together the words in Photoshop. It became a weird hybrid of a typeface and handwriting, and I think it works well for John's site. Below you can see all the icons I designed, including the ones that Alan didn't end up using in the final design.



The letters with the dots over them are the ones I used for the text.





By the way, I didn't make the colored versions of the icons that you see when you mouse over them on the site. You can thank Alan for that feature.

Final Review Photos

Today I don't have just one project to show you but many. Namely, photos from my final review at the end of junior year. Basically, all the graphic design majors must bring all their finished work from the entire year to their appointment to get an overall review from their assigned professors. Even though we don't get a grade from it, it is an incentive to have all of our work finished and in one place, and it is helpful to be able to see it all as a whole. My review went really well this year, and here are the photos I took of what I had set up.











The work that you can see in the edges of some of the photos is not mine; it is by my friend who had her review after mine. So don't think I'm not showing you guys everything, because I most certainly am. Well, except for some of them which I'm not really all that proud of and don't want to show off in high quality. But I'm showing you the rest =)

Photography

Let's take a break from graphic design today and delve into the wonderful world of photography, shall we? I took a photography class last semester and I really feel like I learned a lot about editing photos to make them look professional. I would like to share some photos I took for my analog photography class last semester. I scanned the negatives (on a very, very expensive scanner) and worked on the photos extensively in Photoshop. Even though it might not look like it, each photo has several Levels and Curves adjustment layers and look vastly better than the original scans.

Visual Systems Process Books

For the final project for Visual Systems, we had to create a process book showing our notes from the lectures and our process for the two projects we had done during the semester. I chose to split my book into three smaller books that all obviously went together as a system. I chose to use the typeface Folio, because it works at both the large scale on the cover, and as body text. I am very happy with how these books came out; my paper cutting and book binding skills have definitely improved drastically in the last two years.

Visual Systems Posters

It seemed like I was constantly making mock-ups of posters last semester and the project I have to show you today is one of the reasons for that. Our second assignment in Visual Systems was to design a series of three posters for an exhibit at the Canadian Center for Architecture. We had to make posters for exhibits of the work of Richard Neutra, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Gehry, and we were given all the text. That posed a bit of a challenge since there wasn't an equal amount of text on each poster but we still had to create a system that would make it clear that the three posters went together.

When it came to sketching out ideas, I first researched the three architects’ styles and their impact on architecture history. I discovered that Louis Sullivan is essentially the “father of modernism.” He designed many of the first high-rise buildings and also used massive arches in many of his designs. Richard Neutra’s designs were all very geometric, combining metal and stucco to make light, open spaces. Frank Gehry designs in a deconstructivist style, where the form can take more precedence than the function. After I felt like I had a good idea of the architects, I sketched out ideas that were inspired by the posters. I experimented with grids, but ultimately decided that I really wanted t o explore the possibilities of having a large letter to stand for each designer being the focus of each poster. I was inspired by many posters, especially this one:



I love having a large graphic element like that and the typography is handled and balanced beautifully. In my posters, it just so happened that the first letter of each of the architects' last names mirrored their architecture style, so I decided to run with that when designing the main form of the poster.