Dreamweaving in Dreamweaver

As a senior preparing to graduate the State University of New York College at Buffalo in May 2016, I am glad to be able to have learned and accomplished so much during my time in COM Graphics 322. For our final project of the fall semester, the class was assigned the task of creating our own personal website used to demonstrate samples of writing and graphics that we have completed in our classes this semester. This website is going to be used as a reference for any skill samples related to my major such as public relations writing samples or graphic design and social media websites that a future employer or internship may want to see.

As part of my bio for the website, I also advertise my love for music and displayed a link to my own personal instrumentals where you can purchase beats online. Just having different skills and being able to do many things is the point of this website that I am trying to promote.

In the portfolio page, I specifically chose to upload certain graphics that display a tie in to social media. One of the uploads on this page is the Buffalo State homecoming 2015 flyer. The content of my flyer includes the official buffalo state pre football tailgate party and the homecoming football game followed by after. The overall theme of the homecoming flyer is supposed to be the trending hash tag #Unleashthebengal. This was the hash tag used on twitter to help promote and spread the news of homecoming weekend here at buffalo state. The second project that I uploaded was my Amber Rose slutwalk poster advertising when and where she is going to be having the event. This poster was based off of her real life slutwalk held in Los Angeles. The poster is meant to be advertised on her twitter.

As far as creating the website, this project has been a very fine detailed and somewhat a difficult experience for me. The class was guided step by step by the professor, and if you missed even 1 step or a small tiny little detail, your project would suffer. I missed a couple of steps such as how to link your social media profiles to the links and adding your contacts. Because of this, I needed to stay longer at class sessions to get the help that I needed to stay on pace with the rest of the class.

I designed the heading of my website with a photo of the music software that I use to produce my instrumentals in called FL Studio 11. I didn’t have any professional pictures so I just snagged one off of Facebook. At the beginning of the project, professor told us that we were going to be using more of the website coding page to the right opposed to the number coding page to the left. She was correct. The majority of all my actions in Dreamweaver were done on the right side. There wasn’t really much work to be done. The most work that was used for this project was having your graphics prepared and following the coding instructions on where to put everything.

Creating The Logo

Posted above are the 10 logo ideas tat i designed. I can only choose 5 to talk about so let's get started with number 1! 

1. In the 1st picture, 3rd column to the left is the 5th design idea for CAPTURE COLD. It's basic but yet so unique. The C* stands for Capture cold but is written wit an exponent to shorten the product name which looks cool, and has little speed marks on the C to give it the impression that it works fast.

2. The Banana Tropics logo has visual display of a hip banana as its mascot. The font of the Banana Tropics is supposed to look cool. 

3. The fro' logo is pretty simple and to the point. The faceless person was done on purpose to focus more on the hair, and the word fro' was spell without the A to give it uniqueness. 

4. The 2nd column logo to the left has the logotype and the text type combined. I tried to make the logo look "cute" by putting the 2 c's together.

5. 2nd column to the right. It's simple but get's the job done. C* stands for capture cold and whenever you see that you'll know what it means. 

 WHAT IS MY COMPANY???

The pictures posted above have 3 different companies. The first is for CAPTURE COLD which is cold and flu cough medicine designed to fight off the common cold in a quick time span. Ages 13 and up. The logo was made to keep it's professional over the counter drug appeal to it. 

The Banana logo was or a juice car called TROPICAL BANANA. The target audience would primarily be high school kids to young adults, ages 16-36. This cafe serves fresh fruit juices and smoothies. You could say it is a hipster bar. 

The FRO' logo represents hair products for the African american community. Pretty simple and to the point, the target audience sells products to blacks of any range. 

Let Me See That Brochure!

For about the last two weeks of our class lectures for COM 322, we were assigned the task of getting into groups of four and designing our own brochures using elements from Adobe InDesign C6, Adobe Photoshop C6, and Adobe Illustrator C6.  As we started getting closer and closer to completing our brochures as a class, we began to understand what makes a successful brochure design and design hierarchy. With the brochure assignments due today, I can say that I am truly ready to critique and evaluate other professional made brochures. Some of the things that I will be discussing while evaluating these brochures are the following:

Why is this brochure design successful?

How does the designer use color in the piece?

How does the composition show repetition and varied repetition? How do these unify the compositions?

How is text used in support of the design? Is the font / typeface a good choice?

Discuss how the layout is used - is there a lot of text? Images? How do these balance with each other? 

SuperCars Asia 2012

Background: Super motor sports 2012 brochure is a promotional brochure featuring the new Lamborghini held in Shanghai (China) and Florida (America). An introduction of the new car model DominatorX, with its car outlook as well as interior design and body kit.

This brochure really has the ability to catch the attention of a mass amount of people. With just one look at the cover or any of the inside pages of the brochure, you could see the clean, slick, professional, and exotic design that was created by the graphic designers. This is the true definition of first hand advertising. The brochure is showing off the release of a new Lamborghini, and as you open up the brochure, the pages actually take you on a “journey” giving you an inside look what is inside the car such as the pure leather interior seats, the steering wheel, and rubber tires. The brochure is consistent with its use of images, having the Lamborghini usually on the right side of the pages and either the global continents or an inside look of the Lamborghini on the left side of the pages. What really makes the brochure aesthetically pleasing on the eyes is the use of the color scheme. The ongoing repetition of colors used in this design were black, a sort of honey golden yellow and grey. The colors primarily revolved around the color of the gold Lamborghini and the surrounding black and grey really complimented it well. The use of text was done quite nicely, mostly shown underneath any of the pictures on the left providing a description about the car. Another design that also stuck out was the use of the golden hexagons with the big bold print inside them advertising some of the perks that the car had to offer. Little small things like that can influence someone looking at this flier to want to take the next steps to inquiring about the product that is being advertised.

Azlan Energy Solutions

The purpose of this brochure was to provide the reader with an alternative solution to saving energy by becoming an Azlan customer and going green. What really hits home for this brochure is the use of natural green colors to really get their point across on their views about going green, no pun intended. There are also little green leaf patterns highlighted in green running across the outlet to symbolize that going all natural. What makes it even cooler is that at the very center fold you have an Azlan outlet that tells you to save money by going green. Apparently that current of energy is coming from the power outlet that grabs your attention on the front cover of the brochure. The designers incorporated the right use of images to really sell their product to the customer that is viewing this brochure.  The text are also short and sweet to the point. For each bullet point explaining the benefits of going green with Azlan, there is a power cord icon. Very creative as it goes with the overall theme of the brochure.  The purpose of this brochure was to provide the reader with an alternative solution to saving energy by becoming an Azlan customer and going green. What really hits home for this brochure is the use of natural green colors to really get their point across on their views about going green, no pun intended. There are also little green leaf patterns highlighted in green running across the outlet to symbolize that going all natural. What makes it even cooler is that at the very center fold you have an Azlan outlet that tells you to save money by going green. Apparently that current of energy is coming from the power outlet that grabs your attention on the front cover of the brochure. The designers incorporated the right use of images to really sell their product to the customer that is viewing this brochure.  The text are also short and sweet to the point. For each bullet point explaining the benefits of going green with Azlan, there is a power cord icon. Very creative as it goes with the overall theme of the brochure. Good color scheme, good use of info, good use of graphics and theme, overall this is a simple brochure that makes it point that the simple average human would be able to understand without difficulty.

The Mind of Wes King

For journal assignment #3, our communications graphics class was assigned the task of creating our own post cards describing ourselves using three graphic design applications, Adobe InDesign CS6, Adobe Photoshop CS6, and Adobe Illustrator CS6. The class was already quite familiar with using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign to complete posters for past assignments, but in the week that journal assignment #3 was assigned, professor introduced us on how to create our own shapes and designs in Adobe Illustrator. The first step I took into creating my own postcard was taking a "selfie" on my camera phone, and then dragging it into Adobe Photoshop to change it to print format and silhouette the pic from the background. 

Now it is time to use our newly taught application Adobe Illustrator!

I played around with the shape tool for a few minutes too see what kind of wild and wacky designs I could possibly come up with. In the end, I eventually settled upon a sharp and pointy tribal looking design, just to be unique. After doing that, I went and opened up Adobe InDesign and chose to set the background color of the postcard to baby blue. The blog said to choose your colors carefully so I went with my favorite color, an indirect way of telling the viewer another fact about myself.

Like I do with all my design projects, I get different ideas on how I want the set up to be layed out and what pictures I want to add in the project. Next I inserted my "selfie" picture to the far right, my tribal design to the far left, and my header aligned in the top center (Wes King) using the font style Hiragino Mincho Pro. I used this font style because it had sans serifs “feet” on the top and bottom of the letters. It just added a little spice and flair to the header and made it look a little fancier opposed to having the plain Minion Pro default font. Underneath my header I inserted my text wrap body paragraph describing my physical attributes and hobbies/interest. Next I just literally took a step back from my computer screen and looked at what else I could do to the postcard. It looked too plain. I had space to fill in at the bottom of the screen so I know that I needed to occupy it with something or else it wouldn’t produce good results visually. After a bit of thinking I decided to take my love and passion for music and translate it into a picture of a headphone emoji to visually display that I am always “jamming”. I did the same process as I did with selecting my selfie photo as far as choosing a picture, re-sizing the picture, using the pen tool to cut it out, and then open it up in Adobe InDesign. I added one headphone emoji to the bottom left and at first was content. The next day I brought it into class and asked Professor Pabico what else could I possibly add to my postcard? Professor recommended that I take the tribal design that I had created and put on the top left of my postcard, and put another one on the bottom right of the postcard. I thought about it for a few during class and decided that as the artist of my own work, it wouldn’t have made me happy to put that design there on the bottom right. I didn’t think that it would have made good design hierarchy because my design was to abstract to begin with. Having the same design repeated again would have been too much of a sight for the eyes and would have took the attention off of my text and selfie and would have put it on the tribal designs. There would be no balance. So what I ended up doing was, I decided to take my original emoji headphone on the bottom left, copy and paste it two times to produce two more headphones and added those to the right. I felt that adding more design to that space was the icing on the cake to completing this postcard. Using all five of the Adobe graphic design applications were essential in creating this project and I am glad that we learned so much at this point in the semester to be able to create our own artwork. This was a fun project and I am looking forward to learn more!

SLUT SHAMING/DOUBLE STANDARDS

Research: After swapping papers with other fellow classmates from our previous lecture, I received the topic “Slut Shaming” and “Double Standards.” Slut shaming is a form of social stigma applied to woman and girls who according to society go against normal expectations when it comes to sexual behaviors. It is a double standard in society when a female is harassed and ridiculed for performing an action that would otherwise be praised or seen as acceptable by society if done by a male. Examples may include being criticized for dress code, number of sexual partners, or performing certain sexual actions. In today’s society, if man is known to have sexual relations with several different woman, he is known as a “pimp” or a “player”. If a female were to have sexual relations with various men, then society will deem that as socially unacceptable and that female would be labeled as a hoar, slut, and criticized negatively for her actions. Slut shaming has recently become a trending topic in the media after famed celebrity model Amber Rose launched The Amber Rose Slut Walk on October 3^, 2015 in Los Angeles, aiming to combat women’s equality issues, such as, sexual injustice, victim blaming, derogatory labeling and gender inequality.  Women should be liberated just the same as men are on all levels without disapproval from the general public. This blog post conveys that women should definitely have the same freedom as men to do as they please without scrutiny. Slut shaming is a social injustice to woman and girls and change needs to occur in America.

Design: When it comes to the design of this poster based on the topic of slut shaming and double standards, the main theme that I would want to get across is that woman are being oppressed through society for sexual injustice and inequality. If the female population were to see this photo, I would want them to join together in unity to support each other and rise to fight social criticism that they may face. This should be a poster build off of empowerment. My goal is to envision this poster the same way that Amber Rose would envision a poster promoting woman’s equality for her Slut Walk. This poster shouldn’t be a reflection of the sexual injustices that society has put on woman. Instead, this should be a time to have the voices of slut shamed victims heard, and also to spread awareness for change to end slut shaming and double standards towards woman once and for all. Similar to the LGBT movement, I was thinking maybe having an upbeat and happy themed poster with the colors of the rainbow incorporated throughout the poster. Maybe have a background of the city of Buffalo or Los Angeles where the Amber Rose Slut Walk took place.

Adjectives: Ten adjectives that I would use to describe this poster are the following:

• Happy
• Strong
• Unity
• Empowering
• Energetic
• Upbeat
• Proud
• Enthusiastic
• Carefree
• Brave

After going through several fonts available to me at my disposal, I came across an idea for the heading. Let’s hypothetically say I wanted to make a poster for the Amber Rose Slut Walk. I would make the tittle of that poster about a font size of 28 in font “MV Boli”. What I liked about that font was the half script like curves that the letters present. It shows that woman are classy and this event is about empowering woman and not putting them down. The font lets ladies know that we should be celebrating and have a good time getting our message across. The use of serifs in this poster really isn’t necessary. I think that having serifs on the letters would make this event seem more like a business affair opposed to a sort of parade fighting for woman’s sexual rights. As I stated before, the use of colors in this poster should be light, bright, and flashy, something that shows that there will be brighter days ahead for ladies that have fell victim to slut shaming double standards. If I were using key words in this poster such as SLUT, or Criticized, or any of my adjective words. I would probably highlight them in a different bold bright colors such as yellow or orange, and change their font to maybe 18 to have them stick out to the viewer to show the purpose of the parade. This could maybe be listed in plain Times New Roman font to maintain a seriousness of these words, but the bright colors would balance it out to where our point would get across.

Links:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slut-shaming

https://twitter.com/slutwalk_la?lang=en

http://www.amberroseslutwalk.com/

http://www.bustle.com/articles/110650-amber-rose-redefines-the-term-walk-of-shame-in-a-hilarious-important-new-video

http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-adjectives.html

Posters: The good, The Bad, and The Ugly! Part 1

Posters: The good, The Bad, and The Ugly! Part 1

1. This has to be the best photo of them all hands down. This a poster for the "Dark Knight Rises" film, the final batman movie in the trilogy. For those who are familiar with the batman franchise, you would know that batman has a dark and mysterious persona. The background colors give off that visual effect with the use of dark colors such as black and gray, as well as creating a sort of rainy thunderstorm effect on the poster. Batman is seen dressed in all black and his eyes are hidden as he stands in the rain. At the top of the poster, you can see the word "RISE" in an all grey color, continuing the color scheme of black and grey throughout the photo. The letters are also spaced out at a good distance to really give meaning to word, as it symbolizes the name of the film "Dark Knight Rises." Besides the use of colors, the fonts look pretty plain and simple, there are no fancy designs at all. Not that it is a bad thing, sometimes less is more, and the creators of the poster did a good job getting their visual message across to the public.

                                                     

2. Here we have a very bright and colorful picture of the Jonas Brothers that will catch anyone's attention. This picture may be a better representation of the use of color scheme compared to the batman poster above. The use of the colors pink, blue, and purple all throughout the poster connects all the visuals together through this scheme. Look at the way that the words "Jonas Brothers" are displayed on the bottom. It is in some sort of live concert looking, bright lights looking font that matches perfectly with the visuals of the Jonas Brothers performing live here in front of a crowd. Below this are the words "The 3D Concert Experience." Simply genius how the creators took that sentence and added what appears to be a 3D looking font to give it more meaning than it already has. Small little noticeable things like this makes the Jonas Brothers in the poster look like stars! The Walt Disney can also be seen in a smaller logo font above the Jonas Brothers name in pink, keeping the color scheme going. It is written in Disney's signature script font. What is questionable is to why are 3 men covered in pink, and purple?

3. I must be a batman fan because here is another photo of the bat in the "Dark Knight Rises." What separates this photo from the previous one above is the there are more colors involved besides black and grey, which gave off an ominous effect. In this photo there are several visuals that the creator used that shows signs of hope and justice. For example, the famous bat symbol is covered in bright orange flames and is engraved on the front of the burning building. Batman, who is standing in front of the burning building is still covered in black and surrounded by mist and burning ashes.The smoke is covered throughout the picture blue and grey. Although the color schemes throughout the poster does not match, it does tell a story of a hero providing justice to it's city, which is unique in it's own to grab peoples attention. The tile "Dark Knight" is written in a small white and plain font, but what is intriguing about that is the strategic placement of the name right across the bat symbol. At the top of the page the words "Welcome to a World Without Rules" blend sin with the smoke.

Posters: The good, The Bad, and The Ugly! Part 2

1. There are some good posters, and then there can be some really bad ones. The next three posters that you are about to see lack certain elements of a well designed poster such as maybe design hierarchy, font choice, use of images and colors, etc... Here we have a poster advertising a musical act called Beach House. Not sure if the creators of the poster thought it was cool to have the word house spelled upside down and backwards, but it really ruined the design hierarchy of the photo. It really throws the viewer off, as they have to use a few seconds of their time to try and figure out what the other word on the bottom of the page may be. Eventually they'll get it, but it just adds confusion to the viewer. The color scheme on the words look very sloppy. The use of pink and black on "Beach House" look over did and the creator tried to do too much on it instead of keeping it simple. What really got me going was the choice of font that the designer used. It looks old and worn down. The event details are also written too small on the paper.

2. I know that Professor Pabico told us not to use the word "Interesting" for this assignment, but this poster right here is very very interesting, and the use of that word is meant to put this poster in the negative spotlight. Look at the design that just jumps out right at you! You have a QR code right in the middle of the photo! Very creative yes, but aesthetically pleasing and easy on the eyes, no. The QR code bar looks like an optical illusion and your eyes could get lost in it, might even cause a headache. Inside the QR bar is a woman's face that you can barely see or make out because it is covered by the giant QR Code! Now whether the QR bar has symbolic meaning to the movie, one thing for sure is that from an outside view, it is not attractive to look at in the slightest. Besides the QR bar, that seems to be the only use of images. The rest is just a blank white background with movie details written in a a small plain black font. There could definitely be some more color to this poster to bring it to life.

3. Last but not least, we have this weird psychedelic rock poster that could use a serious tune up in the graphic design department. First and foremost, what immediately jumps out right at you is the fact that the poster is green and looks as though it was made on some old construction paper. The next biggest problem that I have with this poster is that the proximity of all the images and words are TOO DARN CLOSE! I've never seen such a clutter in my life on a poster. Every image on this sheet seems to be kinda doing it's own thing. There's no unity whatsoever. Not only that but the font isn't in sync either. You have a sloppy crooked bold faced font at the top left of the page, meanwhile there is words written all throughout the poster in all different fonts and styles. Images are being overlapped by other images and it just looks like a mess. Now i can understand what the designer was looking for when he made this. He was appealing to the genre and culture of psychedelic rock music. Regardless, certain rules could and should have been followed to promote this concert in a better way.

My Very 1st Blog Post.....Wish Me luck!

How is everyone doing today? I've decided to complete this assignment in a creative kind of way, using Q&A type format. Professor Pabico will be "interviewing" me for my personal take on different forms of communication.

Q: What type of communication do you respond to? This could be visual, verbal, audio, written. And why?

A: I believe that everyone in general responds to visual, verbal, audio and written communication. In my opinion, the factors that may produce different results are the person’s interest and difficulty to understand what is being communicated to them. For example, I'm a big music guy. That's one of my biggest traits as person when people try to understand who I am. You can always find me jamming to the good stuff. When people are "jamming" you tend to see head nod movements, maybe a little dancing, and sing the lyrics to a song. Music changes the way people feel and puts them in certain moods. Some people use music to relax or use it during a workout at the gym. These actions are all forms of communicating through audio.

When it comes to verbal or visual communication, people may not exactly understand or comprehend right away what is being told or shown to them until it is thoroughly explained to them a few times.   I admit that I personally have difficulty understanding things, which can put a little bit of strain on communication between me and a person verbally.

Q: For visual communication, what do you feel is the necessary tool? Type, images, symbols, color, etc...And why?

A: When it comes to visual communication, I think that symbols are very important for people to gain an understanding of what is being shown. Symbols help give meaning and tell a story, so the use of those can only enhance your understanding. I also think that having a bit of background knowledge on what is being shown to you really helps out your understanding as well, especially movies. A person who is watching part 2 of a trilogy with a friend isn't going to understand what is being shown to them unless they have seen part 1. Those without prior knowledge might be lost.

Q: Name three companies / people / bands / brands / etc. that have strong visual communication and why? These could be logos that you respond to (either negative or positive), websites, animated graphics, packaging, printed publications, etc.

A: Nike, McDonald's, and Gatorade.

These are 3 very famous brands that mostly everyone knows.

Nike: When you see that Nike check, the 1st things that you think of are "Just Do it" and sports apparel.

McDonald's: The golden arches logo of McDonald's kind of looks like French fries or an upside down smile. The golden arches may represent the wealth and success McDonald's has as one of the top companies in the world.

Gatorade: The electric symbol for Gatorade may represent the electrolytes that it provides you, and that after drinking some, athletes will feel charged up.