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.

Soundslides- Assignment #7

This was probably the hardest project I have done in this class. I have never created anything with sound or anything close to it. I struggled with this project but in the end I did my job.

The song I used is Lupe Fiasco's "the cool". I was lucky the beginning of the song had about a 5 second instrumental part so I could loop it. The final time was 28 seconds in the soundslide.

I haven't used Audacity so it took some time getting used to. Like I stated I took the 5 seconds of the beginning of the song and looped it to 28 seconds for the final soundslide. It took about 4 or 5 loops to get it to 28 seconds. The process wasn't hard, it was the uploading and extracting that made this extremely long.

Once I had my music all set, I put it to the slide show and adjusted the timings so it could be enough to read each slide. This was the most challenging part because the timings I had when my project was on powerpoint were very different to the soundslide program. I then edited the captions and credits and little things here and there.

If I had more time I would have played with the looping much better. I think there might be slight problems with how it sounds in the final piece but maybe that's just me and I am very picky about my work. Guess you could say I am a perfectionist when it comes to things like these.

In the end I really struggled but it was definitely worth it. I wouldn't mind doing more projects like this but I would really have to dedicate my time to getting it right. Overall, I liked the way my final soundslide came out and I am proud of what I have accomplished.

QuarkXpress poster-Assignment #6

When first hearing about the assignment I got really excited because I love creating new things and putting my creativity to good use. Although I have never used Quarkxpress, I was excited to try something new. We created a poster about the artist we chose for the power point saying they were coming to campus for a cd release party. Quite frankly I wish Lupe Fiasco would come to campus, that would be very exciting to me.

My first attempt at the poster actually became my final piece. I took a picture Lupe looked really good in and cropped his face so only half his entire face and body were showing. Professor O'Connell said that making it that way would really capture someone's eyes and make them want to read who that person is. Before putting the picture in quark I edited it in photoshop, making the picture look heavenly. It actually came out good!

I was glad in the picture he was wearing red because the yellow wording I used complemented it perfectly and made the words pop out at you. Professor O'Connell also said that yellow catches reader's eyes. I also added Lupe's CD cover of Food & Liquor. I thought that gave the poster something extra.

The only trouble I had was figuring out how to use my space with the wording. I didn't want to clutter the poster, but I didn't want empty spaces. I made sure the title stuck out and that all the information was there. I put a star burst and had the pricing information in it because I think that if I were to go to an event, the first thing that I would want to know if I was interested in going would be the prices.

I will be honest, I thought my poster was going to be plain and boring. However, it turned out really good and I am really proud of it! Everyone in the class loved it and that makes my hard work even more rewarding.

Making posters or any other project can be easy if you pay attention to the steps and take your time. If you rush then the project comes out bad and you really don't learn anything. It took me about 2 1/2-3hrs to complete this project. I really enjoy creating something new and that is all my own.

Artist Slide show- Assignment #5

When Professor O'Connell explained that we were going to use Power Point in our next project, I thought it was going to be tougher than she explained it.

The assignment was to choose a band or artist we really enjoyed and make about a 5 slide presentation about the artist or band we chose. The artist I chose was Lupe Fiasco. My boyfriend gave me alot of his albums and I really enjoy listening to his music, he's different than the rappers heard on the radio today. He doesn't rap about being a "gangsta" or having 10 hoes, he raps about whats real to him.

I think the most difficult thing about this project was deciding which pictures to use as the backgrounds for the different slides. Lupe's pictures doesn't really have that many pictures that show his artistic talent.

1. The first picture I chose for this project I thought made the project very interesting because Lupe is standing in front of lights that look like he's ready to begin a show. And in this case begin the slide show presentation.

2. The second slide was titled "Lupe 101". This contained 5 informational bullets about Lupe Fiasco. The picture I chose I was able to change it up and make it a mirror image. I thought the slide didn't look boring because of the picture change.

3. The third slide was the album slide. I took one of Lupe's albums, Food and Liquor, and put all of the songs and song times together. My favorite part of this slide was the album because I was able to add shadow and mirror to the album to make it pop and not just be ordinary. During the class review everyone thought this was the best slide.

4. The fourth slide was a similarity slide in which I took Lupe's album, Food and Liquor and compared it to Nas' Stillmatic, Jay-z's Reasonable Doubt and Erik B & Rakim's Paid in Full. I found the similarities for each album by their notable attributes and the most important lyrics in each album (in my opinion). The challenging part of this slide was getting the album covers to fit in the table and which color(s) to choose. I wanted the slide to stand out and not be boring. The black and yellow was a good mix in my opinion.

5. The fifth and final slide was the reference slide. I chose a black and white picture of Lupe for the background. I thought this slide came out good because the last picture in the presentation is a really good picture of Lupe.

Overall, I really enjoyed this project because it gave me a chance to use my creativity in a program I am already familiar with.

Do you blog?

Blog- first named "weblog". In simple terms, it is an electronic journal you could update. Blogs are used in many different ways; some use them as a diary, some to share work from a class or work setting, and informational blogs. despite what you write in a blog, you can add pictures, videos, projects, links, etc.

*Key terms*

Blog: online journal

Blogger: person writing/updating a blog

Blogging: the process of writing or updating your blog

One particular site used for blogs is Blogger. It was launched in 1999 and has been the home for millions of blogs since the start.

I have personal experience with Blogger (hence I am writing this post on Blogger). I had never had a blog until my Elect Comm class this Spring semester. My blogs consist of the work I have done for this class and my reactions to the work. So far I have about 4 or 5 postings (more to come because the class is not over) and along with written reactions I have pictures, links and animations.

Since I only have experience with Blogger, I will mostly give information about this site.

Some of the key features Blogger offers are:

1. Blogger Comments: Anyone is allowed to comment and give feedback on your blogs. The comments you don't want on your blog can be deleted by you. Posts can be an optional choice per blog.

2. Access Controls: This is for deciding who can see and comment on your blogs. There are options in which there is more than one author, or a single author for personal items.

3. Blogger Profiles: The privacy settings give you the options to to be found, if search for, let others see certain things in your profile (interests, name, etc). This setting can be removed for safety or personal preferences.

4. Templates: To personalize your blog, you are offered different blog templates that come already made and if preferred you can change the HTML to your liking.

5. Custom colors and fonts: As with any other website, you can change the font and color to your liking.

6. Drag-and-drop page elements: You have the option to add any animation or picture and choose where it goes.

Caslon Analytics Blogging states the following:

"In July 2006 the Pew Internet & American Life Project estimated that the US "blog population has grown to about 12 million American adults", some 8% of US adult internet users. The number of US blog readers was estimated as 57 million adults (39% of the US online population), although few of those people read widely or read often. David Sifry reported in April 2007 that growth in the number of blogs created had slowed - "matured" - with other observers noting that the percentage of active blogs are compared to the total number of blogs tracked by Technorati was declining, down from 36.71% in May 2006 to 20.93% in March 2007".

"In July 2003 BlogCensus suggested that there were 701,150 "sites we think are weblogs", of which 380,657 appeared to be in English. It claimed that Portuguese, (with 54,496 blogs), Polish (42,677) and Farsi (27,002) were the next most popular languages - well ahead of French (a mere 10,381) and German (7,736). On a per capita basis the language with highest blog penetration appeared to be Icelandic, with 3,542 blogs. "

*LINKS*

http://hnn.us/articles/1572.html

http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g

http://www.geardiary.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/blogger.png

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/wp-content/uploads/blogs.jpg
http://www.blogger.com/tour_con.g

http://www.caslon.com.au/weblogprofile1.htm

Animated font poem- Assignment #4

This project I thought was rather difficult the whole time I did it. Getting the poem together and making the pictures wasn't a challenge. It was putting the words in the animation form and getting the pictures together. I had hoped to add more animations to the words but as I kept going and following my notes I still couldn't figure it out. I made the choice of just having the words appear (as you see above) in different orders but looking the way it does on the regular non animated poem. I do love how the pictures go together from the blending of one set of colors to the next, it does look very appealing I think, and that makes me happy.

One of the big challenges I faced was when I was making the words into separate slides. This was difficult because numerous times the placing of the words didn't look right and when I tried to get animations just for the words it didn't work so that process was frustrating. One of my fellow students helped in making the words look appealing in the separate slides so that made it not so stressful anymore. The last problem was when I had thought I saved my work I accidentally deleted it and the work I had done for two hours had to remade.

What I enjoyed about this project was gaining the knowledge and experience to be able to do similar and advance projects in the future using Photoshop. I was able to teach my boyfriend how to do this project and by teaching it I was better aware of what I had to do.

I am most proud of the final outcome of the project. I think the words go together in a good order when they appear and the photos are awesome and just bring the whole project and meaning of the poem together. If I had more time I think I would have made the words look better with animation and better layout affects. But I am happy I was able to successfully complete this project.

Font poem- Assignment #3

The third assignment was taking the animated postcard and put a poem to it.

The most enjoying part was being able to successfully complete this project. I stressed about it alot, but in the end I was able to make a project I'm happy with.

If I had more time I think I would've been able to make the words animated. I wasn't sure how to do it and it became too late to fix it. I don't have photoshop on my laptop and I commute to RWU which doesn't give me the time to work on these types of things.

I wanted to put emphasis on the word "if" because not only is it the first word in the poem but if read out loud then it makes you wonder "yeah, what if". The same with "just". If you read it and actually put it out then it could make or break your message.

"Good enough" is in all caps because thats the message of the poem. Being good enough is equivalent to being perfect, and that is how some societies want us to be.

"Life" and "Easy" go hand in hand because in life things don't come easy. In reality nothing that comes easy is worth it. You have to live life with some challenges to really enjoy it.

"Nobody" is emphasized because different people would think maybe there is nobody to show me how to live my life "growing up"

"Hard" is what sums up the whole poem. It concludes that life is worth living if your able to enjoy the hardships.

Overall, the project was challenging and it made me push myself to get the work done in a way that made me happy. I'm glad with the final product and I can teach others how to do it was well.

Animation postcard- Assignment #2

The second assignment called for an animation postcard. For starters it seemed pretty interesting and simple, however, I thought many of the steps seemed to be difficult. The picture below is the first animated picture slide of my postcard. I love the way the colors compliment each other and how it just looks awesome.

The picture consists of my sister and step sister playing, a baby's crib,background of South Boston and a flower. All these pictures I took myself and I thought they fit nicely into what my poem said.

The crib represents being born, the city is where you grow up and face hardships, the girls are going through a happy life and the flower is hope for promise everything will

be ok once you go through hardships.

I hope everyone can get some type of message between the poem and the pictures.

I was able to do the animated pictures, that didn't seem to be a problem once I followed Professor O'Connell's directions and also

the ones online. It didn't become difficult until the animation poem had to be done. I was stressing about what to do because first I didn't know how to put the words into animation form, which I think makes the poem look bland. But the pictures bring it all together at the end. I asked a fellow classmate how to put the words into animation and I was grateful she helped me. Also my boyfriend loves to play around on photoshop so he knew a thing or two which was nice.

The most enjoying part was being able to successfully complete this project. I stressed about the project, but in the end I was able to make a project I'm happy with.

If I had more time I think I would've been able to make the words animated. I wasn't sure how to do it and it became too late to fix it . I don't have photoshop on my laptop and I commute to RWU which leaves no time to work on these types of things.

Contact sheet- Assignment #1

For our first assignment we had to work in Photoshop and the different functions in it. First thing ran in my mind, "uh oh I don't know how to use Photoshop". Luckily for me I pay attention and take notes in class so my anxiety went down. While Professor O'Connell was explaining the steps and doing everything with us I thought "hey piece of cake I can do it" , well, even with my notes by my side, I couldn't remember exactly how to do the steps (I also don't have the book). I had forgotten how to change the DPI and forgot that I had to save the original and constantly save off that. What should of been an hour work, turned into two hours in the library trying to fix my mistakes.

Row 1 (Resolution): In this row, we worked with resolution (dpi), of an image that we chose in four different frames. Each frame had an increasing resolution from 72 dpi, 300dpi, 600 dpi and 1200 dpi. The picture I chose was one I took from my friend's baby shower. It is a crib full of the gifts she received. I didn't have too much trouble with this row because I was able to refer back to my notes (even after forgetting the directions after class).

Row 2 (Format/Mode): The picture I used in row 2 was of a flower I took. We were able to learn about the different colors in Photoshop and how we use them. I first changed the original picture to RGB (red green blue) for web. I then changed it to CMYK (cyan magenta yellow black) for print. Third, the picture was changed to gray scale (black and white). Lastly, the picture was changed to Duotone. I used yellow and purple as my two colors. I think I preferred learning about the Duotone because I was able to change it how I wanted and my creativity came out.

Row 3 (Orientation): The picture I chose for row 3 is a picture of my cousin Kayleigh and my step brother David. Using the crop tool I was able to change the original picture to portrait (where the kids are the main focus),square (where there is a bit more land in the background) and landscape where both sides were equal in background). For landscape, the dimensions were 1" x "1.33", for square they were 1" x 1", and for portrait they were 1" x 0.75".

Row 4 (Framing): The framing row was about taking an image and making it start off with one focus object and "zoom out" until you get a wide angle shot. The picture I used was one I took of South Boston. I had begun the first box with a picture of a building in the background. As I worked my way out I brought in more street lights, tree branches and the sunset. I thought it came out beautifully once it was complete and it was my most enjoyed line.

Row 5 (Content): The picture I used for this row was of my 20th birthday cake. For the same basic process as row I took one piece and kept zooming out till I had the whole picture. The difference between row 4 and 5 was that instead of focusing on one object, I relied on abstract thinking rather than focus.

Row 6 (Purpose): I enjoyed this row very much because my creativity came out. The picture I chose was that of my step brother David at the children museum. I changed the pictures three different ways with three different filters. The filters I used were Artistic Palette Knife, Ink Outlines and Accented Edges. Journalistic was when the picture had no filters and that was the last box.

Over all the rows I enjoyed were format (row2), framing (row4), and purpose (row6). I worked very hard on every row but those three where the ones I worked on with ease and creativity.

Below is a close up of my favorite picture. It's my step baby brother at the RI children museum and the way I chose to edit this picture was through Accented Edges. I think the color really comes out and makes it very eye catching.

1st Blog - 1st Class

During today's class, Prof. O'Connell went over everything that was going to be covered throughout the duration of the class this semester. This is my first blog entry.