This is my machine-portrait for the assignment 2B. Based on the scenes of cities at night, I represent myself as a person who likes tranquility and darkness. Moreover, all of the small images also illustrate a dream which I really want to achieve. Nevertheless, I think there are no such relevant words to describe that thing. Maybe, I should keep it for myself.
A very interesting short video about typography I found on the net. This can be a helpful and comprehensive summary of similar principles that I learnt.
Create a rectangular path and fill it with blue gradient.
Create another path with Blue-Black gradient and select Screen Blending Mode. This will create a lighter blue gradient shade. If your color setting is CMYK, make sure the black is full black (C,M,Y,K=100). The red arrow on the image is the direction of the gradient fill.
Repeat the previous step to create another Screen gradient path.
Make 2 white stroke paths.
Go to Object > Blend > Blend Options, enter Specified Steps = 20. Then with the 2 strokes selected, go to Object > Blend > Make or press Ctrl+Alt+B. This will blend 2 white strokes and create an abstract wave effect. If you want to change the Blend step, you can go to Object > Blend > Blend Options or double click the Blend Tool(B) on the tool bar.
Use Direct Selection Tool (A), select one of strokes and change it to blue stroke color. Notice how 2 strokes blend from blue to white. Isn’t this cool?
Now go wild with your Pen tool, create 2 wavy strokes and blend them. Play around with the Blend step, stroke weight and color.
Repeat the steps and create the last abstract blend, from blue to purple.
Your image should look like something below:
"If You've Had Two Sex Partners" and "AIDS: Get the Facts" represent a common didactic and informative approach to AIDS educational posters that does not use images to supplement text. Their respective content and approach, however, are dramatically different. This poster from the Texas AIDSLINE makes reference to a metaphor taken from Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in the mid-1980s. Koop and other public health educators suggested that in terms of the epidemiology of AIDS, having sex with someone was like having sex with all of their previous partners. At a moment when the dangers of promiscuous sex were being emphasized, this metaphor had the power to even invoke fear of serial monogamy.Among hundreds of images that demonstrate the effects to prevent HIV-AIDS, respectively in the topic “Safe sex”, this poster stands out and attracts me much due to its special and attractive method of presenting the main ideas. Essentially, having no pictures enclosed does not mean that you lose the crucial parts to exhibit your points. In my opinion, this poster even says a thousand words better than the usual ones.
After learning the rules of using fonts as a critical issue in design, I looked back this poster which was made for an entry of my Dim1’s visual diary. I thought the layout had no serious problem with my idea of creating. Nevertheless, the text and title were made randomly as these were the last process and did not take much time for me. Therefore, perhaps I got a mistake of not purposefully choosing and putting the fonts. Now it is time to review what I have done and be aware of this aspect in the later work.
This is the layout I made for the Gestalt exercise as a class activity. Overall, my arrangement of text and image is quite simple. Nevertheless, I suppose that the viewers will definitely find it easy to follow and read the contents. Moreover, the title may get their attention at the first sight since I intentionally made a dominance of the word “Sex Life” as they are put in the middle, huge and have colors which are discriminated from each other. In addition, I also tried to fix those two words by using the kerning function in Illustrator.
In Dim2 class, I have learnt a method to create this kind of image and color. Nevertheless, it was a little bit complex as many steps had been taken in order. Consequently, I found some similar techniques on the Internet but the way to do that was much easier and still works well.
· Layer->Layer from background
· Duplicate Layer.
· Image->Adjustment->Desaturate
· Use History Brush Tool to recover the colorised area.
It may get viewers paid attention to the main point considerably although the tip is such simple.
Besides, thanks to my old friend who took this photo. Now he is living in Orange County, LA.
After experiencing many logos of the sun, I came up with some ideas and made this image. During the online research, I found some things interesting about the sun such as the history, names and the convention that designers usually exhibit in their logos.
At first, it is now hard for me to remember all the words which are used to describe “the sun”: Solar, Helios, Luminescence and so on. Moreover, I observed that white color is used in most of the logo backgrounds, but there are still some exceptions for black, deep brown, etc. In addition, it is clear to see that lines is the crucial element which many designers take advantage of and easy to distinguish from the moon.
I had the background of my image filled with black to represent the universe. Therefore the sun is made by using hot tones of color such as red and orange, also creates a high contrast actually. Besides, I used straight lines to express the sun lights and hoped that it may help people realize the sun without any doubt. Furthermore, in my opinion, the colors can not only illustrate the temperature but also the shape of a human iris.
Through the attractive animation and a meaningful story, it was a great interest that the movie “Transformers” brought to me. Consequently, I tried to make a pencil-drawing based on the poster which I got from deviantart.com website. It took me 2 days to finish this picture. The process was not easy as I had to erase lines and started from the beginning many times. Nevertheless, the final drawing did not disappoint me. Besides, I think the word “Bumblebee” (the robot’s name) got a font that may not only look smooth but also set off the drawing and make it not become so empty as well.
Poster reference: Welmaker, N (Whirlwind), 2007, Neon2004.devianart.com
I took this photo after playing with my ball in the home garden. Actually, it did not please my eyes at the first time due to the performance of such a normal camera (Sony DSC). Moreover, the photo was quite big and I realized that it might look catchy if I could omit some unnecessary spaces. This is how it looked like according to the use of crop tool. After that, I began to adjust some key elements such as hue, brightness and contrast…The result somehow got me satisfied,together with the feeling of peace and will every time looking to the photo.
