Sophomore Review

Below are some photographs of my set-up for my Sophomore Review. :)

the official instagram photo right before the review!

the overall set up.

close-up of desk.

close up of desk and up wall.

vizcom2. v2. kidwell class. reflect.

I honestly had no idea what exactly was going to be covered in this class, as based off of the name it was a continuation in my mind off Visual Communication1(VisCom1), except there was a different professor. I was honestly waiting the first day to receive a subject that I would have the whole term, same as VisCom1; we never did. We dived into terms day one and I believe that is the day that we took a class photo.

the day that we all decided to wear dark colors. ;)

It's been an interesting semester, full of many frustrations and break downs on my side due to this class. Our first poster had become my favorite project...the first project at KCAI that I didn't hate; I was progressing. I didn't fully know how, but assumed either I was growing, it was Kidwell's doing, or something else. I went back at the end of the semester with a better head on my shoulders and reworked on the train poster. I am still proud of the poster; I know work still can be done, but I am on the road to effective communication. I really strove to make myself work and grow, so I had pushed myself to use no images or heavy colors, only text. It was an extremely difficult task, but I needed to know how far I could push myself and still succeed. I ended up successfully portraying both emotional and informational perspectives in my California Zephyr AMTRAK train poster.

The second project forced me to work with a partner; I chose someone who I was attempting to design like, Wendy is awesome. I thought with her design abilities and my words/concepts we could take over the design world! We didn't do that yet, but one day we will. It was a bit of a difficult partnership as we both had our own ways of completing projects, but we ended up with a fairly successful How-To that I think incorporated both of our styles. 

The last project as basically rebranding, even though it wasn't really rebranding. This project was one of the most difficult for me during the semester because we needed to narrow on one pop culture reference and change how it is seen, make it a better icon of culture. I put a lot of research into this project, as well as past knowledge as a fan of David Bowie. The most exciting and interesting part of the project for me was using our 8 visual elements to create a t-shirt design, calling card, CD + case and a website. 

Throughout this course I learned more about the ways to work in a partnership, combining not only both schedules, personalities, and automatic design responses. What I mean is how we, as designers naturally respond to a given design problem/prompt. I also learned more about making smaller, subtle changes in typography, color, and lines to add emphasis, following along the lines of "less is more." I have definitely changed as a designer, and become more calmed with my design skills. I still need to figure out how to push myself further than I am comfortable going; that is one of my major setbacks as a designer.

typography. reflection.

The literal definition based on typography reflection reminds me of the first project this semester that I struggled greatly with. I won’t stray from the truth, I wanted to quit. I didn’t know how to make a typography exercise represent the seven design elements: anomaly, convention, direction, gradation, repetition, space, and texture and the quote that we had chosen in relation to design. Not only did we need to do this digital, but also analog. It was one of the most difficult assignments that I had done so far. I am used to working abstract, but it was too difficult for me to figure out how to bring all of those ideas together to create one cohesive unit. I feel that by the end of the project, it made more sense to me, but I still greatly struggled with how you make letterforms look like an idea, that people could understand. This project ended with a window wrap, which I thought was an interesting application. I had never really thought about how much work goes into creating window wraps.

The second project, the design lecture poster had one of the largest impacts on me this semester. It began with research on our assigned graphic designer, mine was April Greiman. Being an avid research buff I threw myself into the research. It was an extremely rewarding process because I was able to learn more about a designer’s process and inspirations. I then was able to look more into my own process and inspirations, which is actually the largest part of being a designer, the process to the final product. I also worked more with layout and attempted to be “less Swiss” as I often have a tendency to be. My edits to my poster post the final iteration show my progression with typography. It is still a work in progress, BUT I am getting closer to where I should be at the end of sophomore year.

I have gotten better with adding emphasis to words by only making small differences such as using bold and roman together bring emphasis versus using smaller roman text and larger bold text. I am finding the ability to add just a bit of emphasis instead of an in your face extremes. This allows my work to look more refined, elegant and thought out; which is what I am trying to prove with my personal style.  Overall I know I still have work to do but I know by adding subtle differences I will be able to keep a cohesive look that is effective and not distracting.

communication theory is a way of life

When we first started this class, I was nervous yet excited. I had yet to be as excited about any class as I was this one. I am a lover of research due to my previous major and life choices. I helped one of my professors at my previous school do research for the book that she was writing; I also formatted her Works Cited pages for the book. Phi Theta Kappa, international honor society involvement had a large impact on my love of researching and learning. We had to create projects that related to an honors study topic. While I was part of Phi Theta Kappa the study topics were: The Paradox of Affluence: Choices, Challenges, and Consequences and The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril & Promise. I am just a lover of information, which also tied in nicely to my previous major of English & Writing. So, after the first day I was the most excited to do research, although we had done research for previous projects, this class was based on researching, learning, and then creating.

The one thing that I have struggled with for a while is the act of communicating, which may be why I keep choosing careers that cause me to focus on communication; I like the challenge, but also communication is such a fundamental tool that I really need to get better at. The overall focus of this class was communicating and the basics of how to effectively communicate, which was the most amazing thing ever. Basically it was a semester long tutorial about how to communicate, and I feel that I am definitely on my way to communicating better. Before I had incorporated the use of comparisons, but through tropes I learned more about different kinds of comparisons and how they can support or alter my intended message. This leads me to believe that I will be more specific about what comparisons I end up using when I talk to specific people. Sometimes there are the times that one needs to be more abstract or focus on explaining a comparison on a logical, emotional, or ethical way to be more efficient.

Going along with that, what we learned were the basics for design. These basics are what we will be using in all design pieces. Although we may not always be using ALL of the parts of the communication process that we learned, we will use all of them at one point or another in our career. Some of the elements will be used more often than others, but each holds a specific purpose. What this class has really does, is push me more into wanting to research design and design theory. I was engrossed with what we learned. I had some difficulty in creating design based on what we learned that was quality, but I thoroughly enjoyed researching and learning about our field. I really think that in order to understand design now, we need to know about where design and its theories came from. Thus this summer I will be doing more educational reading on design and can’t wait.

Guide to Applied Communication Theory

I am actually the most proud of this project than the other projects this semester. I created a consistant structure throughout the whole book. Any part that was broken in the structure was broken with a purpose. The main purpose was due to the fact that I had created the work; those were the pages were the background was black and the columns were closer in size. I incorporated an analogous color scheme to follow the overall progressing idea of communication theory, starting in semiotics and ending in communication models. I struggled with quite a few layout design problems throughout the process, including keeping "too Swiss" of a design for a bit, but I feel that the overall piece fits quite beautifully.

Open publication - Free publishing - More book

the final book!

Ziggy Stardust Project 4 Final(which is really the end of project 3)

My focus for the calling card was focusing on the visualization representation of Ziggy. I overlaid the image of Ziggy's face on the card. I wanted the image to wrap around because Ziggy was all about breaking the norm and changing what was accepted. One thing that sets Ziggy apart from others was his two different colored eyes, so I also put the face on the card fr that as well. I added a pictogram of Ziggy to the business card, because Ziggy's focus was that he was an alien rock star who sang, wrote songs, and played guitar.

close-up 2 sided calling card.

calling card front.

calling card back.

The Website continued the idea of the new CD coming out by Ziggy and the Spider From Mars. I incorporated the well-known lightning bolt, with the logotype, Ziggy's face and the alien rock star pictogram. I wanted to create a website that had a multiple number of items that had a direct relation to Ziggy. The new CD compilation chronicles the rise to Earth fame of Ziggy which is the direction that I took the website, to be a companion to the CD. 

website mock.

website in action.

With the CD, I did not want to just redesign a CD so I created a specific compilation of songs from the Ziggy era that chronicled his rise to fame. I chose the red for the cover of the album to reference the lightning bolt that was on his face, as well as the strong, flamboyant styles of Ziggy to the CD. I kept the overall design pretty minimalistic to let each segment speak louder for itself. On the inside I kept the CD red to very lightly reference Mars, as well as continue the red from the front of the case.

CD front.

CD side.

CD back.

CD inside.

I wanted to continue to incorporate the unexpected with the shirt design. So I used the lightning bolt to wrap form the back to the front. On the front dropping down from the lightning bolt is my symbol of a spider. I wanted the shirt to represent the whole band, not just Ziggy. His band mates are the Spiders from Mars and thus I figured that it was appropriate to use the spider for the band and the lightning bolt to represent the whole band.

t-shirt.