the book

The book has began, and I think its safe to say that it is actually coming together quite nicely. I did use the book smart program but I feel like I got the chance to use my own ideas in it. I didn't feel like everything was laid out for me.
I think I am going to be happy with my results, I am almost but not completely finished. My backgrounds for the entire book is black and my copy is all white. The pictures I included in the book are black and white. I feel I have a simple but clean to feel to the book. 

the begining of the book

I had a few ideas for my book starting out. Some very typical, some not so typical. I started brainstorming with things I was interested in. My first ideas were a craft book, cook book, environmental book, or photography. I wanted something out of the norm, something original.
I have always liked taking pictures so I thought it would be cool to have the chance to explore my picture taking abilities, or more so explore different views of looking at things.
I got the idea to take pictures of peoples faces. Many different types of people. I think a face is something memorable and makes a statement. I want to have different definitions of the word face in the begining of the book, then throughout the book I will have different photographs of peoples faces and either have a poem, or sort of tell a story to bring all the photographs together.
My cover though I want to be covered in different pictures of peoples faces and then in the top corner have the title of the book be the word face.
I think it will be a challenge and I hope it works out as I hope it will.

problem 5

For my spring break I visited the city of Chicago. Included in my brochure are most of the activities that I did while on my visit. I wanted the brochure to be colorful and inviting. I wanted it to tell a story in a interesting yet informative way. I felt my brochure turned out in a way that I felt I wanted it to be portrayed. I had a slight bit of trouble in printing the brochure, so the final product isn’t exactly as I planned it to be.

rough draft project 5

Creating a brochure.
Creating a brochure full of everything I did over spring break I think could be a good way to show my experiences and display it all in a creative way.
My first attempt to sketch out the brochure didn't turn out exactly as I had in my mind. I had the most trouble with the cover of the brochure, after sketching out the whole base of both of the brochures I started to think of more creative ideas and added them to the covers, I felt bringing the entire display together more smoothly.
I feel my sketches helped me to get a feel for the ideas I would like to use in my final brochure. I think I can confidently say I think my final brochure will turn out well and hopefully to some extent to my expectations.

final quotes and excerpts

I liked this project. I felt I got to show my creativity in it. The traditional version of both the quote and the excerpt were not as much fun or exciting for me to do. I really liked doing the modern version of both of them though. It was somewhat of a challenge but I felt I took my time and did a good job, I was happy with my results.

Traditional Quote:

I chose to do the traditional quote with more of a traditional theme to it. I felt it was somewhat of a Victorian style border and also the font I felt had the same feel to it. I felt the Victorian style was traditional because it reminds me of the medieval times or maybe the renaissance time period.

Modern quote:

For the modern quote I wanted it to have more of a unique feel to it. So in looking for ideas I searched for pictures and came across this one. I felt it fit my quote quite well and that I could incorporate the two of them together quite well. I wanted a simple font so the focus would be more on the meaning of the picture and its words. I put the words the way that I did so that it would have the feeling of entering the man’s mind.

Modern excerpt:

 The excerpt I choose was from a story about a tree, so I thought it was relevant to use a tree with the words and have them work together. The font I choose I felt went along with the style of the tree I choose. I tried to make the words flow along with the words. I felt the style of it all was unique and therefore modern and different than traditional style.

Traditional excerpt:

I choose to the border that looked somewhat like a plant, the border I found had vines in it and I felt would go along with the excerpt because it was about a tree. The font I choose I felt was traditional and looked English to me and I thought went well with the theme of the border.

quotes and excerpts

I picked a quote from Ghandi and I picked an excerpt from a shel Silverstein poem called "the giving tree". 

When asked to pick an excerpt I at first thought of picking a poem, a famous love poem or really just any famous poem that I knew...I first started searching and they all seemed a bit boring or too deep for the mood I was in. I wanted to pick something that had meaning to me. 

I thought a bit longer and in my search for poems in google I saw the name Shel Silverstein. That immediately rang a bell for me, but I couldn't exactly put a picture to what he did. So I did some more research and saw that he was the author or the poem called " the giving tree". When I was little I loved that poem and would read it all the time. 

In finding two writings that sparked interest for me I was excited to get started on this assignment. 

I started sketching out ideas, the farther along I was the easier it was for me to think of new ways of displaying the writings. 

Out of my rough drafts I decided to go with either the face with the message or the brain for the modern display of the quote. For the traditional view of the quote I decided to do a sort of old english style. 

For the excerpt modern style I decided to pick the tree and for the traditional I picked a style which started off with a big A and reminded me of a old story book of fairytales kind of style.

"branding the type" my first attempt at project 3!

Project three was somewhat of a different direction than the other projects. I got a chance to explore the typography in representing my name in many different forms. I also got to sketch out simple road signs with different meanings behind them.
I found the first part of the project to be enjoyable to some extent. Some of the representations were a bit more challenging than others for me such as the taxi driver, magician, and the taxi driver. I liked most of my outcomes. My favorite was probably either the acrobat or the chameleon. I feel it will be more of a challenge to transfer my ideas onto In-design, I'm hoping i find similar fonts for at least a few of them.
The second part of the project, sketching out road signs was more challenging for me than the name representations. I felt my sketches turned out a bit sloppy and some its hard to tell what I'm trying to represent.

This was the first step, hopefully I have a successful finish to project number three.

final attempt at visual data

I did some more researching online in search of interesting data and I came across the Fargo floods. It caught my eye and I thought I could put something together representing the data I found. I printed it out and set it aside to deal with later.
Later came soon enough and so my attempt began. I thought the finished graphic had to be done on the computer so I attempted to do so with the In-design program. I had taken desktop publishing the semester before so I knew how to use the program, but I hadn't used the program since then.To say the least I forgot a thing or two. My attempt at final visual didn't turn out as I had imagined it to. I was less than satisfied with my work. I think for this project I should have stuck with drawing in my sketch book.

finding data gone visual

In finding visual data I at first was somewhat thrown off as to what kind of data to look for. Off hand when I think of visual data I think of all types of graphs.
My first search for visual data was graphs, I did my research online and found more than enough types of graphs. I felt I needed more visual data than just graphs. I continued to search in hopes to find more.
As I continued searching I came across the many types of visual data that is out there. I realized that more things than you think are considered visual data. The most interesting of my finds was weather data. Weather data is most often visual in some way. I found it interesting in the many ways it is put into visual form. From the radar map, temperature map, to pictures of clouds explaining a cloudy day ahead.
I feel more of our world is in the visual form than I assume a lot of people realize.

My first attempt at drawing.

Last week were assigned our first sketchbook task. I have always been somewhat of an artist-y person. Its not that I feel I really have the talent for it, I just always enjoyed doing it and it has always interested me. So my intial thought at the assignment was this could be a fun challenge, and a challenge it was indeed.
I was sitting at work with not much to do, work has been pretty quiet lately, so i decided I could attempt to be some what productive with my time. I got out my target sketch book from which I acquired from the little kid art section. I read the assignment, got situated, and started drawing my boxes.
I started out with a jump drive, I wanted to succeed, so I started  with something I felt would be simple enough for me to do that. I spent a lot of time on it and it was a much harder task than I had anticipated. I continued to draw and then found my self erasing more than I was drawing. I finished the jump drive feeling somewhat proud of my outcome.
The jump drive was confidence booster but it only seemed to get worse as I went along, and I continued to loose my patience.
By the end of my drawings I was less than impressed by the final two drawings. I found though through the experience I somewhat enjoyed the challenge, I might make a similar attempt in the near future, hopefully with a more positive outcome.

layout and typography

This is my first blog post.