Clare Cover

This is the cover I designed for the Clare Literary Journal in Graphic Design 2. I fixed the spacing and shifter the entire title block up a little. I also changed the slant of the smaller word clare in the sans serif font.

Violent Typography

In my desktop publishing class we moved on to a typography project. We are supposed to use one to for words and create a type only image that fits the theme of our final book. My two files that I liked them most are based off of themes from hard rock music and and the themes that people stereotype about hard rock music. Both of these use only the letterforms of the font I chose for each word. I distorted each letter to create the image. Here are my in process projects:

Photoshop Club Meeting

The first photoshop club meeting was held last night at 8:00 pm in the mac lab, room 135.

There were four people who came. It was Austin Gundlach, Darrel Payne, Melissa Webb and myself. We talked about the plan for the club and then worked on some projects that people were doing in classes.

The basic plan for the group this semester is to hold general meetings every other week where we will do tutorials and plan events etc. The next general meeting will be on Tuesday, March 9th at 8:00 pm.

On the in between weeks, members will have to opportunity to attend more advanced learning sessions where we will be working on actual projects for different groups who need logos, signage or publicity. This is a great opportunity to improve on photoshop skills and be able to see your work around campus.
Our current project for Tuesday, March 2nd, is a sign/banner for the newly named "Underground." This is the garden level lounge in Assisi Hall.

Thank you to everyone who came to the first members and hope to see attendance grow throughout the semester.

Again, next meeting: Tuesday, March 2nd at 8:00 pm to work on projects
Next general meeting: Tuesday, March 9th at 8:00 pm to do tutorials 

Looking at Color

I have a painting class this semester. One of the concepts that we are looking at is how we see and interpret color. It is interesting because right now we are looking at kind of a pointillism perspective, using dots of color to create visual color mixing. Our teacher asked me to explore some of the filters on photoshop that broke down color in this way. Here are some filters that I played around with.

origional image

Fresco Filter

 Paint Daubs Filter

Palette Knife Filter

Smudge Filter

Portfolio Review

I had my sophomore portfolio review on Friday at 11:15. I was pretty nervous, just because I get nervous about everything. It actually went really well. They liked my work and could tell that I put a huge amount of effort into everything. It was nice to have all my work from the different classes together to see how each piece related to each other and to find common themes. The review reinforced my confidence of my choice of major and I got some really good feedback.

Desktop Publishing

I have desktop publishing this semester which is basically a second graphic design class. We are working through the entire semester to create a final publication, artist book. Mine is based on the music I listen to and why. For the first project, we had to explore getting images from different sources and experiment with how to show our theme through these images. Here are the images that I created.

This is my found image. It is Disturbed's Indestructable album cover. I wanted to show kind of how the music "burns" with in me. I used a photo of burnt paper to create my edges and drew them in to burn out places where the Disturbed character and i matched up. Then I also shifted some things around on the album cover to blend better.

This is my scanned image. It is the Korn's Greatest Hits album and I changed the text to Cathy. I always changed the parental advisory.

This is my image that I took for the project. It has the lyrics to "I Will Not Bow" by Breaking Benjamin down the right side and also repeated smaller across the photo as texture.

Cool Site

http://www.zixpk.com/


This site was showed to me by a friend. I looked around under the design and icon sections. In the design section they have the daily digital painting which I thought was really neat. The icons sections is just a whole bunch of really cool icons, that I thought were fun to look at since we did our icon project last semester.

I have Programs!!

Tonight I finally put the design programs on my computer! I now have Indesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop CS4. I am really excited about being able to work on my designs where even. No more spending full days in the mac lab. Now I can work on homework from the comfort of my own room and become a hermit like Rachel said she is.

Grunge blob

In the first critique, My text was criticized for being to clean and modern for the classical books that I am making covers for. So, I switched to a serif font and also added a kind of grunge detail to make it look like text was deteriorating. I looked at some different some different grunge brush styles online and then decided to create my own grunge blob in photoshop. I just used on of the basic splatter like brushes and drew a center black swirl. Then I added some single click splatters around the edges.

Here is my finished blob:

Then I placed the psd file in Indesign. Since my covers have a black background, I used to the edges of the blob to kind of erase the white text and make it look like it is breaking down into the black.

The main spot I did this is on my Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde cover. I made the text "Mr. Hyde" look really deteriorated.

Here is that cover:

Disturbed CD Cover

I listen to hard rock music and am currently working on a project in Desktop Publishing where I create a book related to my choices in music and why its important to me. While I looking at album covers, I came upon this article about how Disturbed's Ten Thousand Fists article was created. It is an older article, from 2005, but I thought it was interesting because we have been talking about design briefs in class. This article  gives a good idea of how lead singer David Draiman had a concept for the cover and then Todd McFarlane and Greg Capullo created the final design.


Here is the article:

SPAWN.COM >> NEWS >> DISTURBED UNVEILS NEW ALBUM C... DISTURBED UNVEILS NEW ALBUM COVER ON SPAWN.COM Enter To Win a Guitar Signed By the Band Featuring Spawn Art August 19, 2005 Copyright 2010 TMP International, Inc.   Today, Spawn.com is debuting the full album cover art for Disturbed's Ten Thousand Fists. The album cover was designed by Todd McFarlane and Greg Capullo. Slated to be released September 20, Ten Thousand Fists is the band's first studio record in three years. Pretty frickin' cool. So why McFarlane and Capullo? Lead singer David Draiman explains the album art: "We wanted to bring our old icon, the Disturbed smiley face, whom we call 'the guy,' to life. I came up with a concept that embodied what the record was about, the 'guy' leading an army of people from all walks of life and all colors of skin, with their fists raised in unison, as a symbol of unity, strength and defiance with an azure sky in the background. Being a fan of the Spawn comic book series and the artwork that Todd and his company have done in the past, we could think of no better team to bring this idea to life. We are incredibly pleased with the piece, and think it is the most striking and certainly our favorite of the three covers." So when the idea was presented to McFarlane and Capullo to do the artwork forTen Thousand Fists, they jumped at it, especially with Capullo being a big fan of the band. "As soon as I heard the concept, this composition sprang to mind," Capullo said. "There was, however, early ideas concerning color and lighting that I changed once I began the painting. At first, I planned to make the sky dark and brooding which I thought I'd contrast by using some blood red up-lighting on the figures. While I was painting, I decided to try a fiery sky instead. This approach served two purposes. Firstly, I could draw the viewer's eye to "the guy's" fist by placing the brightest glow directly behind it. Secondly, I could silhouette the throng of bodies against the horizon; further drawing the viewer's eye to the main focal point--'the guy.'" Recorded in the band's hometown of Chicago, the 14-track album was co-produced by the band and Johnny K, who also guided 2000's The Sickness and 2002's Believe. A modern hard rock essential, The Sickness has sold 3.4 million copies while the equally evocative and platinum-plus-selling Believe debuted at #1 on Billboard's Top 200 chart.