Into To Visual Design

So I have had this blog since Elect Comm 240 and I'll just keep adding on from here for Intro to Visual Media!

Enjoy!

BiBi Card- Indesign #9

Above is my Indesign bibi card. My Quarkxpress bibi card differed from my Indesign bibi card.As I stated for my Quarkxpress bibi card, this card was not so much difficult as it was time consuming.

I enjoyed doing the Quarkxpress bibi card more than the Indesign one because I was more familiar with Quarkxpress and Indesign was harder to navigate around. The Quarkpress bibi card also came out better looking than the Indesign one, in my opinion.

The part I had difficulty with for the Indesign bibi card was the color and lining up the texts to how it is on the real bibi card. The color that I had needed for the card came out different than the original card.I think that the color also differs from the Quarkxpress card by being brighter than it is supposed to be. The other difficult part was lining up the texts. When I looked at the original card and how my Indesign card came out, it was obvious the text did not line up. I think this may be because the Indesign card is bigger in height and length than the original card.

If I had more time to work on the Indesign bibi card I would have spent the time looking for the exact fonts that are on the original card. There is not too much of a difference, however, if I had the exact text from the original card then the texts would have lined up exactly as it should've.


I am most proud of my ability to work through the hardships of Indesign. Even though the card I created in Indesign did not come out exactly (one part), I still am proud of what I did and I think it looks awesome. I thought the colors would not match up but luckily, they came out just like I had wanted them to.

FINAL Project- My passion: Sneakers

Sneaker soundslide- Script & Design Rationale

Script:

Many of us have at least one material object that we hold near and dear to our hearts. Personally for me, I would say that my choice would be my sneakers.

I don't leave the house without matching my shirt to my shoes, and vise versa. I have a collection of about 20 pairs of sneakers. My other shoes consist of about 12 pairs of heels, 8 pairs of sandals, and of course a pair of UGG boots.

My personal collection ranges from different styles, colors and meanings. My mom thinks I'm crazy for having purple and red ones, teal ones, and even bright orange ones. My personal favorite pairs of sneakers are Jordans and Nikes, and they make up the majority of my collection.

In high school, being one of the 4 minorities in my 98% white/Caucasian school, really made me to stand out because I looked different. This of course intensified whenever I wore something my fellow classmates were not accustomed to seeing. For example, my bright orange sneakers with of course, a bright orange shirt.

I believe i left quite an impression on my high school classmates because I was always known for being "the girl who always matched, plus she had the best sneakers."

The way I present myself really says alot about me. I believe that I was born to stand out, so why should I try to fit in with how everyone else is? My fashion sense says alot about me too. I don't try to look like every other girl on my college campus. For example, many have said that the typical "uniform" for Roger Williams University is a pair of UGGS, leggings and a North Face.

#1- I don't have a North Face.
#2- I don't wear my UGGS with my leggings, just my sneakers.

I'll never give up on my sneakers. They are a part of me, they mean alot to me, and they look good on me. They are not just sneakers, they're my sneakers.


Design Rationale:

For my final project, I made a soundslide of my passion; my sneakers. This project wasn't so much hard as it was time consuming. My project had different parts to it such as taking pictures for the slides, recording my voice for the background of the slides, tieing it all together in the soundslide application.

The easy part of this project was putting all the pictures into soundslides once I figured out a way to do it that did not take forever to load, as well as recording my voice. I took about 25 pictures of my sneakers along with shirts that matched the sneakers. This was so whoever watched this could see that I do mean what I said about matching my shirt to my shoes. The voice recording was easy enough because once I had my script it only took me two attempts to get the recording I wanted.

The music posed a bit of a problem because I kept having trouble figuring out what else could go with my voice. I decided to use an instrumental Reggae song to be put at the beginning of the slide show as well as in the end. The problem occurred when I couldn't get the timing of the song and my voice the way I wanted.
If I had more time I wouldn't have made the ending not last more than 10 seconds. The way everything else came out left the ending to be longer with music.

What I am most proud of is my voice recording and the music I chose. I had the hardest time picking out what went with the theme of sneakers and listening to the Reggae song I figured it was a good match. I hope everyone else agrees. I have only done a voice recording only once before this project, however, it was at a recording studio. Doing it on my own was not hard at all and it was interesting to listen to my voice and how different it is from when I speak out loud.

Overall, I am happy with the way my project turned out. This was a great way to end the semester. I believe I have completed all my assignments for this class to the best of my ability and I am happy to end on a high note.

Mediterraneo Website- Assignment #10

To see my actual website, visit it Here .

1. home page

2. about page

3. contact us page

4. links page

5. menu page

This project was very fun to do. The task was to make our own website for the company or place we chose for our brochures.

While it may have taken me a while to get everything right, I did manage to stay focused and do everything I was supposed to.

My brochure was done on a restaurant, Mediterraneo Cafe. For my website, I had a home page, an about page, a contact us page, a menus page, and a links page.

The hardest part was just making sure everything ended up going where it was supposed to as far as links. If I had changed the place of a picture then it took me forever to find where it had gone. However, once I got the hang of it, I was able to make the pictures go where I wanted them to go and have them stay.

A snapshot of my pictures are shown above. In the home page I just have a welcome message to the viewer, the address, and a contact number. Professor O'Connell had stated that people want the information quick and available to them, so they do not have to go looking for it.

My next page was an about page which had the hours of operation and a fact or two about Mediterraneo.

The third page was a contact us page. The address was again listed as well as directions from every point available.

The fourth page was a menu page. It only showed about two entrees per section because I did not want to overwhelm the page. The foods listed were just samples of the many foods offered at the restaurant.

The final page was the links page. I had connected with a place to get dessert after the meal and the other link was to a hooka bar.

If I had more time I would have tried to add more pictures to each of the pages, as well as learn how to make the text more visually pleasing. I took the pictures from my brochure and even on my brochure they had a grainy texture so it showed on the website. I could have looked for more and better pictures, however, I was not concerned with it as much as I was with just getting the website up online.

Overall, I had fun learning new things on Dreamweaver. I had never used it before and I'm glad I got the experience of making something new.

BiBi Cards- Assignment #9

The bibi c ard assignment was not so much difficult, as it was time consuming. The one shown above is my work done from Quarkxpress. I first picked a bibi card that was from the GQ magazine. I worked very hard on it but in the end I didn't think I was going to get a good grade on it. I changed my mind on which bibi card I wanted to do and my reasoning behind it was because I would rather do a slightly easier bibi card and get a good grade instead of not doing my best on the GQ bibi card and get a bad grade. I worked hard on both of the cards but the Harper's magazine bibi card was the one I decided to use. I think the stress of trying to get it perfect made it seem difficult.

Working on Quarkxpress and InDesign is not all that difficult if you pay attention to what it is your doing. I found that I like Quarkxpress more than InDesign because it's simpler to navigate around. Also since I am more familiar to Quarkxpress, the project came easier, in that sense. Indesign was the same as Quarkxpress, just different language. It was still difficult because I was not used to how everything looked on the screen compared to Quarkxpress where I could get a better sense of how it would print.

The part I had the most trouble on was the back side of the bibi card, the mail portion on Indesign. This was troubling because it was tough to get the bar code lines to match up perfectly. I think they came out good but I am a perfectionist and I want things to be perfect.

If I had more time I would have stuck with the GQ bibi card because it became a challenge and I like to accomplish hard tasks that I am not used to or have never done before. I would have also worked better in Indesign to better my skills in that program. The promo code did not come out exactly as that on the original bibi card, because of the spacing, but the rest is still identical (in my opinion).

I am most proud of my ability to work through the hardships of Indesign. Even though the card I created in Indesign did not come out exactly (one part), I still am proud of what I did and I think it looks awesome. I thought the colors would not match up but luckily, they came out just like I had wanted them to.

I am overall proud of myself to overcome the hard parts of this project. If everything came easy then I would not want to complete them for the simple fact I would be bored. I'm starting to see how much I enjoy doing projects such as the ones I have learned in this class and I can definitely see myself doing this as a career.

Mediterraneo Cafe Brochure- Assignment #8

I really enjoyed using Quarkxpress during this project because I was really able to use my creativity. This was the second project done in Quarkxpress I did my brochure on a restaurant called Mediterraneo Caffe in Providence, RI. This was my second idea because originally I was going to do the brochure on traveling to Bora Bora. I thought the restauraunt idea would be a better idea because I knew more about Mediterraneo Cafe than Bora Bora.

The reason I chose this restaurant is because my dad is really good friends with the owner, and I have been there on numerous occasions. Also,the owner, Gianfranco, really liked the idea of my brochure being about his restaurant.

My first task was figuring our what I want the brochure to look like. I decided to use the colors of the restaurant (gold and blue) and make those the back

ground colors on the brochure. I also decided that the fonts would be the opposite colors (blue with gold font and vise versa). I thought this idea made the brochure become an eye catcher because all other brochures are usually white background.

My second step was finding the right pictures. I know I wanted the logo on the front cover and pictures of the foods I mentioned in the menus. The problem with gathering the pictures was that everyone that I had come out blurry and I didn't have time to make them clearer. The pictures were the hardest part of this brochure. It sounds like it wouldn't be true but I really wanted the pictures to come out clear and I didn't have time to fix them.

After I had decided what pictures I was going to do I then went and got all the food that I put on the brochure and divided them up into pasta, meat and fish dishes.

I ended the project by doing the back mail portion of the brochure. I found this to be very easy because Professor O'Connell showed us a simple way to make the indicia and the FPO box.

Overall I'm very glad with the way the brochure came out. If I had more time I would've made the pictures more clearer. People have noticed that the pictures came out pixely and if

I would've changed it then everything would be to my

liking. I am proud of myself for making my first brochure and it came out looking amazing.