final project, week one

So this part of the project I always struggle with: coming up with a brand or product to use for my product. Usually I end up debating for entirely too long; not coming up with anything until the very last minute! So this time I purposely signed up for a critique slot next week. This way I’ll have to come up with something! I’m hoping to have a company or product profile decided by then, and hopefully a draft logo design or two to show. I’m thinking this will be a good start for branding any packages I’m making, I’ll be able to start thinking about the color scheme, fonts, and making sure the overall design and feel will fit with the culture of the product or company.

Right now I’m thinking I should start with a product I’m fairly familiar with, and I’m leaning towards some sort of hot chocolate/tea/chai beverage brand. I started just by looking on the Target website to get an idea of what some of these existing products look like, and see what catches my eye. This first image from teaposy caught my attention immediately.

I really like that the strong image of the teapot, so that at just a glance, you can tell what the product is. From there, the design is very clean and simple. After the teapot, you see the brand name and the type of tea; nothing cluttering or distracting from the main product. I really like that this feels like a mass market brand, with a little bit of a prestige feel. I guess that would make it more of a middle market type of brand…something you would still find at Target, but it seems a little more special.

This next brand just caught my eye for the interesting shape where the package information is contained. Overall, I think the packaging is harder to read, and I would have to look at the product up close to see what it actually is. But I think it is an interesting use of space, and something to consider when designing the packaging – that it can be used to catch someone’s eye, but can also be a hindrance, if it means that product information is smaller or more cluttered.

I think overall, I would like to work with a product with a feel of the first image – something that would appeal to a mass market, but on a slightly more upscale feel. Now I just have to start thinking of the specifics…

Zoo poster continued

So I had a little time in class today to work on this, and thanks everyone for the great suggestions. I definitely agreed it was a little text heavy, and I hadn’t noticed that the letter forms were more prominent in the body of the prairie dogs than in the head, but I noticed that right away too once it was pointed out! This was definitely one of those times I needed to step back from my work a little bit, so the outside input was really helpful!

I was able to add another letter in the head of the prairie dogs to give them a little dimension and balance. Overall, I liked that you could still see some of the letters in the forms, so I didn’t want to get rid of that completely. I also played around with the text a lot, and figured out how to make text boxes into different shapes (yay!). I ended up cutting a good bit of the text out, which I think is good, since it’s a poster, and I tried to make shorter points for some of the other information.

I’m pretty happy with it overall, but I’m still not entirely sure about the background and text. I like the yellow box at the bottom to break up the space a little, but I’m not entirely convinced the composition is the best it can be. I’ll continue to welcome suggestions, as I’ll probably keep tweaking this a little!

Zoo Poster

Updated version:

Zoo Poster 2

Text exercise

I’m working my way up on the text exercise, starting with “Maine.” Given the title of the exercise, I assume it’s some kind of clipping mask. After clicking around a little, I’m able to select the photo of the trees and copy and paste it into my new document. Next I’ve created a similar text to spell out Maine on a second layer. Those parts were fairly straightforward. Now I’ve come to the part I don’t have a clue where to start…making the clipping mask!

Okay, I have no idea what just happened, but my “Maine” now looks like the one in the exercise. From my very basic photoshop experience, I was guessing that the mask had something to do with the layers. I was rolling the mouse over, and saw that one of the icons said “Make clipping mask.” Great. Now how do I activate it? I selected both the picture and the text and clicked, but it didn’t seem to work. I accidentally clicked somewhere in the layers box, and it worked. So now I’m going to go back and try to figure out what I did!

I’m thinking it has to be a sublayer. For whatever reason, it looks like it doesn’t matter which order the text and picture are included in the sublayer (I guess I’m thinking of photoshop again), because switching them didn’t make a difference. I’m hoping the video later is going to help!

Yes, I’m glad I saw the video, I think the basic concept of the clipping mask makes much more sense now! I ended up starting over with “Maine” and it was much easier. I copied and pasted the picture, and the created the text. I moved the text to the front, selected both objects, and was able to create a clipping mask from the object menu. Then just like the video said, I was still able to manipulate the text to make it look as much like the exercise as possible. Very convenient.

The second one looks like it’s very similar, however this time instead of a picture, it’s text masking a shape with a gradient. I’m able to isolate the layers in the example so I can just see the gradient. I could just copy and paste again, but I’m really not that comfortable using the gradient tool yet, so I think I’m going to try to recreate it. I’ve drawn a rounded rectangle shape first. After looking around on several menus, I found a drop down box up top for the fill. I was able to select a radial gradient, and then use the eyedropper tool to add the colors used in the exercise. Once I found that, things seemed to fall into place! I also learned by accident when I was done that if it’s still selected, you can click to alter the center and size of the “circle” that’s making the gradient. Good to know.

Once I had the gradient created, I made the text, put it on top of the layer like before, selected both objects, and then created the clipping mask. Two down, one to go!

The last one to me looks like it’s a rectangle that’s been divided up, and then the live paint tool was used to create the different colored boxes. And from the layers it looks like two separate of these boxes were created, and then masked. So that’s what I went ahead and did…luckily I did learn some about live paint from the zoo poster project!

I created a rectangle and drew lines to divide up the box. Then I selected everything and went to object, make live paint. Then I selected the colors and filled the boxes with the paint bucket tool. I copied and pasted the lines to create a second box for the other text. Then I created the text, and masked each text box individually as I did before. This one didn’t seem too much harder for me, other than taking the time to create the boxes, so hopefully I didn’t miss something important!

The file is now saved in the drop box! yay!

Project Two drafts…

I finally got past designing the animals, and have started to play with layouts.  Here’s what I have so far:

Animal Poster draft

I like the basic look overall, but I’m afraid it might be too text heavy for a poster.  I tried breaking up the text in a second draft, and playing with some of the text tools we talked about last week, but I haven’t come up with anything I really like yet.  I guess that’s what next week is for.

Project Two – first stages

For our second poster project, I’ve decided on a Black Tailed Prairie Dog. I know prairie dogs are not often thought of as the highlight of the zoo, but I’ve always really enjoyed watching them, especially all their interactions – they seem like very social animals.

So far, I’ve started off just forming the prairie dog out of the letters. I found a picture I liked online, and that has seemed to really help me get started. I decided to try to “freehand” the animal, which I think has had it’s pluses and minuses. I think it’s forced me to be more creative, and thinking more spatially about how all the letters could fit together. It has also made it so my image does not look exactly like the picture I found; I was able to use the letters to create a similar pose, but also allow the shape of the letters to dictate some of what the outcome will be.

On the downside, I’m not as sure that it looks exactly like a prairie dog…yet! I’m having a little more trouble this time manipulating the letters to get them into the shape I want. Some of the problem I think is that I have an older version of Illustrator at home, and I think I’m forgetting there are some differences switching back and forth!

One thing I did have a specific question about – when I was working with a lowercase “i,” I was having trouble manipulating the dot and the line separately. I could select each individual part with the direct select tool, but often when I would go to move one part, the other would automatically select and come with it. I tried using expand to “break apart” the shape, but that didn’t seem to work. I ended up copying and pasting the separate shapes, and then deleting the original “i” so I could work with the two new shapes separately. I’m sure there must be a better way to get around that though!