Abigail Good

In web we decided to explore the animation side of photoshop as an end of year experiment. The project was to use two photos, one that shows through the first when a mask layer is applied. Using the timeline feature you can create a timed sequence with type and a "peep hole" aspect with the mask. what pictures we used was up to us. I decided to do a picture of myself and the picture that would show through is a bunch of smaller pictures of things that are important to me.

I have finally finished my magazine. 1 front cover, 3 articles, 3 visuals, and 1 back cover. I did it. I am super proud of myself for all that I accomplished. I finally made something that represents not only my creativity, but also what I believe in. This project has also given me the confidence to know that I can start something from the sketches all the way to the final file, and have every single word and design come from me. I am so thankful that I trusted my gut and chose this as my final project. But most of all, I am glad that I learned that it is okay to use your experiences to influence your creative work.

This week is starting to pull everything together. I finished my graphic about technology and phones and got it laid out in InDesign. After figuring out the layout for the type, I will only need to type my last article, a graphic to go along with that, and a back cover. I chose a topic for my last article and that is "Expression". I wasn't to end my mini magazine with a whole section of it being devoted to loving yourself, and learning how to let your emotions out. Some graphics I was thinking of implementing is adding some scans of my own personal journals. I think this could go really cool or really cluttered. Ill figure it out I guess. I do know however what to do for my back cover. I want to have a picture of m jumping off of a wall with my arms up with really bold colors and then over the picture in bold type I want it to say "Finally Free". I think that will allow for a good story line throughout the whole thing. I am glad that I finally have my vision an...

This week I was really productive. I got a lot of things accomplished that started piecing my final product together. I finished one article titled "Screens", so now I only have one more big article to write, but I would like to design some fun graphics to spice up the information a little. Along with getting on article completed I was able to finish the cover and the first two pages of my magazine. I am super excited for all the knowledge I am learning about writing, and InDesign. By the end of this week I hope to have selected and started my last article topic, and put together a few more pages that include some graphics and "Screens". Next week is the final week and I am very pleased with where I am right now I just need to keep reaching my goals!

The second week of Freedom Magazine went a lot smoother. Since I had the photos from Ava, I finished my front cover. I think that the cover gives off exactly the vibe that I wanted: relaxed and simple. Aside from physical designing, I began to put some content together. I began with my introduction. Since the cover is so minimalistic in the type department, I wrote an intro about what the goal of the magazine is supposed to be and where my inspiration came from. This part was very emotional for me, but overall I am very pleased with how my magazine is coming together. Next week I hope to have at least one article completed and maybe any info

The first week of my senior project was spent sorting all my thoughts. I finally developed a rough sketch of all that I wanted to do. I wanted to create a magazine, called Freedom Magazine, that was designed and written by myself. The goal of this magazine is on mental health, and everything surrounding that topic. I struggled with what I wanted to do but I found some inspiration and decided on this topic which holds dear to my heart, plus I get to combine it with what I love: design. After I felt confident in my concept. I started with the front cover. I decided on a hand written font that say "Freedom" and a very sleek sans-serif font that says "Magazine" underneath. I found a stalk photo that I began to manipulate. I found out that I really just wanted a simple magazine front that focused on one image that had a very easy appeal on the eyes. Over Spring Break I had a photo shoot with Ava Yerkes to use for my cover. I got some great shots. Here are my favorites ...

Wow. I am so happy with my portfolio. I think that is sleek and really shows my personality, and my aesthetic as a designer.  am really proud of how much I have learned in web design this semester. I know I am a bit off track, but I feel accomplished. My portfolio is not done by any means. I have a few things left on my to do list. I would like to like my O.P.E.N website to my portfolio along with my TV25 website. I also completely forgot to include my manny's Marbles site, which I think could add a lot to my site. I also need to delete/add links to the social media buttons after the contact page. I would say that I am very close to the finish line though. Overall things that I struggled with in this project is the header picture, the colors, and the portfolio photos. The header image took a combination of all of the adobe programs, and some assistance from Ava's photography skills. I needed an image that had a white background. So I set out into the hallway to take som...

TV25 Experience So for the past while we have been working with a local antenna T.V. company called TV25. The CEO is Brian Short. We began by talking with Mr. Short and going over his current website, and all the things he hopes to achieve with this new website. In this meeting I took some very scattered notes that are shown below.  Some of the main things that I gathered from this meeting was that Mr. Short wanted his site to flow very well and be easy to read. This is also made me think of a site that is sleek and modern to show that they are still very technology oriented even though they still use antennas, unlike cable companies. A long with looking at his current website and logo I wanted to find a way to spice up the layout, and add interest for his viewers. He was also very interested in the idea of a carrousel in the home page of his site that was linked to the weather, YouTube, and News. The next step was creating a layout in Illustrator to start to plan where thin...

My made up company is called Manny's Marbles. I had designed a navy blue and orange logo for the company. With tis logo I designed a t-shirt design, billboard design, storefront design, app icon design, and a business card design. I mocked all of them in photoshop to make a realistic representation of what they would look like. Here are all of my designs! 

  When I stated brainstorming about color schemes I instantly thought about the primary colors and maybe some more muted neutrals because those are the main colors in Marbles. to the right are the two color schemes that I like the most and the color combos that I thought looked best within the color schemes. I ended up up choosing the color scheme on the top because I thought it had the most versatility and most practicality. So I was left with these two color combinations and I picked this color combination because I liked how visible it would be on a variety of colors and also how good both of the colors would look with a different tag line color.  I put the orange on top because it drew the viewers eye to Manny first then marble second, which is how  I wanted it to be read.   

These are my newly revised logos. Some of the comments. I received were to try to use the rounded font with the motion concept. I also ha the comment to try and put the marble in different places within my logo. I even tried deleting the marble to see if I could create a bouncing effect without making it too literal. I also though it would make the logo more compact if I was able to somehow stack the fonts or the bouncing stroke. My overall favorite is the circle logo with he tag line in the middle.

I started thinking about the round playful aspect of a marble. Thats how I decided on the soft-edged font that is thick. I molded it to a circle because it showed off the marble aspect. Next I thought of how a marble bounced so I added the motion aspect to my logo. I tried to make the Marble 3D by adding a gleam.

Wordpress.com vs. Wordpress.org Wordpress is a website you can use to make your own websites. This method is supposed to be easier than creating an entire website on your own using something like dreamweaver. However, there are some major difference between Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org.  The biggest difference is that in Wordpress.org you run your own site. This is also where you will find the free downloadable Wordpress software. This option does allow the most flexibility with the customization of your site. Sadly, Wordpress.org is more expensive since you are the one hosting and managing your site. These costs start out at around $3-$10 monthly, but as your site gets more traffic the hosting fee will increase. Wordpress.com takes care of all the hosting for you! This site is easy to setup and , most importantly, free! However, they do offer premium upgrades that do cost money. The business package, which is the most expensive, is $24.92 per month. The cheap...

Embedded Maps in Websites A client has reached out to the Web design team to see if we could create a interactive map for his construction company. He would like a map the could zoom in and out along with added pins where he had done work for people. Finally, he said he would like to be able to hover over, or click on the pin to make a tiny box pop up that gives a description of the work that had been done and a review from the customer. He gave the example of  zillow.com as something that he was shooting for ( image to the left). In this case, Zillow had embedded a bing map into their site and had separate codes for the different points. I think that it might be possible that they used the info from people who have accounts to enter in all the addresses. I did some research for other sites that had done something similar. One example would be Walmart.com. In this website they had a find a store near you tab hat had a google map that had been embedded into the site. I coul...

What is one valuable takeaway you learned from each guarantee?   Technology: I can definitely see a growth in my knowledge of the programs used during this course, such as illustrator, indesign, and photoshop. At the beginning of the year I was very timid and uncertain of my skills, partially because I didn't always know the best way to produce my ideas on to the computer. My biggest challenge this year with technology happened during the Brochure section of our most recent project because I had never had to do something so massive in Indesign before , which really scared me. By the end of the project, however, I felt much more comfortable and confident in InDesign. I disliked feeling uncertain of my skills so I decided to push myself by finding tutorials that I thought would help me, such as a cartoon type tutorial that showed me a lot of techniques to manipulate type that I didn't think about before. Learning all of these new techniques helped me create more complex wor...

Name Typography:  As the year started,  we received a name typography project. The goal of the project was to take our name and turn the typography into something that would reveal some of our personal interests.  For example, I personally enjoy jewelry so I made Abigail appear like it was written with pearls. This project took around three weeks from the first of the school year. I struggled with reaching out of my comfort zone coming into junior year. This helped me learn that it is okay to have multiple ideas and that not all of them will work out the way that you planned. I was critiqued mainly on taking some of the concepts too literally instead of pushing them outside of the box. I changed several of them by going all out with some of the ideas that I had started. Making my ideas stand out really helped make my concepts stand out on the page. I really enjoyed tis project because it refreshed my memory on how to use Illus...

Name Typography  This was my first project of my junior year. The goal was to take your name and alter the text to portray an aspect of your personality. I began by creating a list of words that I thought described me best. Including things I liked to do and personality traits. After narrowing the word list down to only 12 words I began to sketch how I could change the text to convey my ideas. I also began looking on DaFont.com for specialized fonts. I selected my favorite sketches from each word to try to pursue in Illustrator. As I began to manipulate the anchor points of the text I made ,shapes, lines, and curves, to give off the vibe I was looking for.  After I adjusted all 12 I went through with a fine tooth comb and began to pick out things that I thought threw off what I was trying to achieve or could possible make it clearer, after changing these few details I was left with my final project! During the process I learned many things. For example, I learned how to pro...

Google Play Logo!  This is the Google Play logo that I made with a tutorial. The logo was surprisingly easy. The most difficult part was creating the correct gradients to try and match it the best I could. Along with messing around with the opacity. I had a tom of fun making this logo and it only took me about 15 minutes to create!   

Creative Anarchy         Basically creative anarchy is learning when, and when not to break/bend the rules. The main point of this article was in order to bend or break the rules you have to know what they are. This reminds me of my english teacher who always justifys an authors reason to breaking grammar rules because they know how to use them perfectly and the broken rule they used adds affect to their writing. However the reason we cannot break the rules is because we do not know how to use them perfectly. we are simply just learning them. This just adds to the fact that we as graphic design students cannot break the rules whenever we want them because we don't even know whether are rules or not.       Without the rules how are we supposed to satisfy the very old fashioned clients that want a classic design with nothing exotic or inventive because it isn't needed to fit into the environment it will be put into. A great design is supposed to fit...

Motif and  Repeating Pattern      These are my two repeating patterns that i made for graphic design. A motif radiates from a center point while a repeating pattern can continue if you connect the two ends.        The scope of he project was to crete our own original patterns after we had done some tutorials and learned the skills. We also all voted on colors to use so that they had some form of uniformity. That taught me how to use the color books with a specific number to find the exact same shade as everyone else.        The day after I made my repeating pattern I went to the gas station and saw the same pattern in black on a door matt! I thought it was quite funny. It just showed me how patterns are just     used everywhere and that made me giggle.         I learned a lot during this project especially when i learned that making mistakes is sometimes good and thats how my moti...