Create365: Pristine Wilderness

creativity, graphic design View Comments
Jan 062010

A friend moved to Alaska over the holidays and put out a general call for someone to create an Alaska-themed avatar for her.

My contribution is today’s creative offering:

Original photo by V. Orange. No infringement on copyright intended.

What I didn’t realize is that my fonts haven’t imported into GIMP for some reason, and given my current luck I didn’t feel compelled to push my luck. I don’t know that it’s quite what I wanted as a result.

I’ll have to wait and see what she thinks of it. Edit: I just heard from her, and she loves it. As usual, I’m my own worst critic.

Posted by Rebecca at 10:36 pm Tagged with:

The writer learns the design side

graphic design View Comments
Apr 052009

There are different ways to learn, to develop processes. My favorite is experimentation. I like trying to figure out the best way to bring my vision to life.

For example, a few years ago I thought it would be fun to figure out how to write a graphic novel. I was just starting to really get into manga, and I’d learned about a world manga series that had been designed, in part, to help boost SAT verbal skills. It sounded like a great idea, so I started playing with it as a storytelling medium with an toward using it as a curriculum vehicle. I actually got pretty far with the script, but my lacking artistic talents put a quick stop to the project.

Right now, I’m consolidating everything from that project into digital files so I can archive it, get it out of the way of my current project, and still have it if I ever feel like pulling it out and playing with it. When I wrote the script, I included with each chapter my vision of how each page would be laid out. At the time, I was just trying to get some sort of flow. I made a small attempt to be mindful of where scenes started and ended within the pages.

I wish I’d been so mindful with my layouts. In putting things down digitally, I’ve discovered some interesting problems. For example, my placement and panel sizes give no real sense of hierarchy to the scene. Even better, for some reason I insisted on giving small boxes a lot of art and/or text and larger boxes little art and often no text. I actually drew out the first chapter, and then discovered that you can read the bubbles without ever being drawn to look at the art. While the story has flow, the layout doesn’t.

Once upon a time, I used to be good at laying out teacher guides, how-tos, and wayfinders. Now, I feel completely lost just trying to create a graphic novel. Same design principles…need more practice.

Posted by Rebecca at 10:16 am Tagged with: ,

Branding concerns

graphic design View Comments
Oct 302007

Yesterday, I went to replenish my tea supply. I’m a huge fan of Oregon Chai, and a long-time Celestial Seasonings addict. Both companies are in the process of revamping their look, and I’m not sure I’m okay with that.

Oregon Chai used to sport one or two toned boxes so you could visually tell what flavor you were picking up. The original flavor was in a box with a yellow body and a purple top. Well, not the boxes are their color for the body, but they all now sport a yellow top- essentially the reverse of the original. This one really isn’t that big a deal (except that it looks a bit odd).

Celestial Seasonings’ boxes used to be part of the experience.  The company runs out of Boulder, Colorado and had a quirkiness to their boxes that seemed to carry with it that oddness that is patently Boulder. Artwork and quotes covered the box, almost wrapping it in a story. The quotes are still there. The artwork has been stylized to look more 2007 than 1997. The stories are gone, and so is the quirky look. The box now sports a two-toned design- one color fills the majority of the box, and another covers the top.

In fact, it looks a lot like the Oregon Chai design now. Perhaps this is the new packaging brand for teas, and we can expect something similar out of Bigelow, Twinings, and Good Earth soon?

The point of design in packaging is to make your product stand out, not homogenize your niche. I don’t feel like these two are accomplishing that.

Posted by Rebecca at 11:00 am

But they’re complements!

graphic design View Comments
Sep 112007

Any kid stuck in an art class learns about artistic complements, those colors opposite each other on the simplest color wheel. Each pair usually consists of a primary and a secondary derived from the combination of the other remaining primaries. We’re taught that these colors “complement” each other because they force the color to pop, to stand out.

There are examples all through advertising and the art world that demonstrate how well each pair plays together.

One of my favorites was an ad where a green-eyed girl was wearing red, and she was standing in a room that walls nearly the same shade as her eyes. It was such a powerful combination that it’s stuck with me twenty years later. The message comes through loud and clear- play with complements to make an impact.

Imaginer my surprise, then, to see an article titled “Red and Green Should Never Be Seen” on a color-blending site. One of the most basic rules children are taught in art class, and the design world frowns on it?

If you look at the article, you’ll see that it’s a design axiom that people love to break. In fact, the entire article is examples of color palettes that break various design axioms quite nicely. In fact, I’m even looking at one of them as a starting point for redoing one of my own websites.

You can decide for yourself whether to follow middle school art class or trends in design, but following color complements hasn’t failed me yet!

Posted by Rebecca at 11:05 am Tagged with:

This week was slightly more interesting

education, graphic design, reading View Comments
Sep 092007

Things have been utterly crazy this week. The only books I’ve read have been two manga volumes late this week. Those who follow the Notebook have probably noticed it’s been conspicuously absent all week. iGoogle has some sort of connection error (that I can’t find any information on) every single night right as I get home from work (or right after Ghosty’s show, as was the case last night), and it lasts for an hour or two. And don’t get me started on work…aside from the fact that the new director is also from Texas. That makes three Texans in director or lead instructor ranks. (Remember that I live in the Puget Sound.)

So, the aggregator isn’t empty for a change, but some of what’s in there is just a reminder to myself to get some things done.

Let’s start with one of my favorite math blogs, Let’s Play Math. (I do have to see how other people do what I’m doing with Dead Bunny, after all.) Denise has been putting up old newsletters, and some of her work centers around Egyptian math (Very funny. You can all stop acting scandalized now.) It’s been rather interesting, but what I’m linking to here isn’t math as we tend to think of math. It’s an old favorite game that I didn’t realize is Egyptian in origin.

Next in the aggregator is a Wired article on the trend of virtual schools, and I only have it here to remind me to include virtual schools in my search for a new job.

Then I have a link I’m just saving to give to my best friend. It’s an interview with Maki Murakami, the manga-ka for Gravitation.

Another post in the aggregator reminds me that I do actually need to get my act together and interact with 100 Bloggers this month. The problem is, I have the perfect post for the first criteria, but I think I wrote it at the end of August.

Finally, there’s a post on the Muller Formula from one of my new favorite blogs ColourLovers. It really seems to be about hue and brightness, but I wanted to look over it some more.

OF course, the week wouldn’t be complete without a quote, and I happen to have one from a man I seem to be collecting a lot of quotes from :

“The important thing is not to stop questioning.”- Albert Einstein (Source)

Very sage advice, Mr. Einstein.

All right, I have save the world before going to that place I really just don’t want to go. I might even read some email along the way…

Posted by Rebecca at 9:42 am

The truth about design

graphic design, web design View Comments
Mar 132007

As I’m reading through my aggregator and reading list every week, I find topics that make me think, “Wow! This needs to be shared.” I generally resist the impulse for a few days, waiting to see what the fallout is.

You see, good blog posts seem to inspire some sort of fallout, whether it’s positive or negative.

That happened with this posting of five design principles. I thought all five of them were fairly obvious. Technology servers humans. Experience is designed with the user in mind  Design should never be obvious or overly complex.

Seems pretty straight forward, really. The standard things you cover the minute you set foot in any basic design class.

Sure enough, though, designers of various breeds were weighing in on it. Working Solo actually pointed me to the post to begin with with Leah’s post on how design is contextual. It’s true. Try taking an experience out of the context it was intended for, and you can almost guarantee yourself a baffled audience.

However, that same point was being contested by Mark Boulton, a designer who has pretty much seen it all (and tends to have an interesting take on it). In some ways, Boulton’s rant reminds me of the portfolio on display at the Art Institute downtown. The Industrial Design students have pictures of some of their work, along with an explanation of what the item is and where the student envisioned it being used. If not for the description, I’d have never guessed what half of the items were, but there was a definite creativity and usability to the items I could identify. It’s a blending work.

So…design is usable, but can be artistic. Design is contextual, but doesn’t have to be dry in its context. (I’m pretty sure that’s oversimplifying a complex question.)

Posted by Rebecca at 11:16 am Tagged with:

Subtly manipulate your audience

graphic design View Comments
Feb 222007

When I was in grad school, I had to take a rather encompassing design class. We learned how to design exhibits, signage, brochures.

The one design element that was discussed in every situation was line.

The reason for this is simple: line can help a designer tell the audience where to look without being overly overt. Paintings arranged carefully can tell a reader to follow a z or spiral pattern to see everything. A lack of line in an exhibit’s layout encourages a visitor to explore the space in their own way. Well-placed lines in a brochure can help a skimmer quickly determine what’s important in the brochure.

Line is a powerful design element. It should be used with care and with purpose.

Posted by Rebecca at 11:20 am Tagged with:

Artists, stand up for yourself

graphic design, web design View Comments
Feb 122007

Actually, stand up for your community.

Those hiring freelance artists, regardless of what the artform is, respect the person you’re commissioning.

If you are a member of either or both groups, drop everything you are doing and go read this post now. Then make a pledge to yourself. If you are an artist, pledge to not work for pennies, to be willing to do a little research and charge what you’re worth. If you’re an employer, make a pledge to do a little research and pay an artist what they’re worth.

This message has been slowly winding its way through the writing community, but the simple fact of the matter is that anyone who practices any type of art, be it literary, visual, performing, or digital, could stand to benefit from this advice.

Your time and talent are worth something. If the person hiring you feels they need to reach outside their own workgroup to hire you, then they need to make it worth your time.

Posted by Rebecca at 10:34 am Tagged with:

Feeling design-incompetent

graphic design View Comments
Feb 062007

I’ve started working on the math book the kids have been begging me to write.

It’s been quite the project so far. I’m the project manager, curriculum developer, content writer, and art department. I do just fine until I hit that last one.

My history with graphic design software has admittedly been fairly limited. I started out on some proprietary software that came with my first printer. It allowed me to do minor desktop publishing, but not much else. I then moved to Image Composer. I actually miss Image Composer sometimes. It let me do everything I needed to .

But my laptop had to be upgraded, and Image Composer left. I was soon gifted with Adobe Photoshop, which I couldn’t figure out without a couple of books to help me out. I did finally figure out how to do simple tasks with it, but I know I never used it to its fullest capacity. Knowing I was struggling with Photoshop, my cousin gave me Paint Shop Pro. It made so much more sense, but I knew again that I wasn’t using it well.

That laptop stopped working, and I moved to this one. Because of how I moved, I have none of my software with me, and ended up without any sort of image editor on this computer. Just before this laptop popped a resistor in December, I put GIMP on here, but never got the chance to play with it.

Now that it’s up and running again, I’ve downloaded GIMP (which seems to elude me in certain aspects). I’m trying out Illustrator (which I’m supposedly attempting to use correctly according to the book I scanned the other day), but it’s proven to be just as user-unfriendly as Photoshop initially was. In desperation to get some graphics work done, I finally downloaded Paint.net 3.0 yesterday. While it let me get some of my work done, it couldn’t handle the same need that GIMP couldn’t handle.

I’m baffled. I think I need a graphic design mentor at this point or something because even the tutorials are leaving me frustrated (when I’m used to picking up things quickly).

Posted by Rebecca at 9:02 pm

GIMP vs. Photoshop

graphic design View Comments
Jan 242007

After my recent computer woes, I finally have my good laptop back and have been trying to put software back on this computer. Unfortunately, some things were loaded for me, and I don’t have them anymore. One of those was Photoshop, which I had almost stopped using because it always crashed the bad laptop.

Right before the Great Computer Crash of 2006, I had just downloaded GIMP onto my computer. I hadn’t even had a chance to open it when I lost my laptop for a couple of weeks. Now I have it back, and I’m not sure I like it yet. One of the tools I rely on isn’t present, and I’m having a hard time learning where everything is. I realize that in time, I will have it all figured out, but for now it’s more fun to stare at the Help menu in frustration.

Right after I put GIMP back on here, I found this article on who should use GIMP and who should use Photoshop. Since I’m used to doing a number of non-photo editing tasks with Photoshop, I’m going to guess I won’t be a good GIMP user for a while. I’m not willing to give up just yet, though. I’m going to go hunting for plug-ins, instead.

If you’re looking for photo-editing software, though, you might like GIMP.

Posted by Rebecca at 2:33 pm
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