Final Assignment: Meliorist Re-Design

Here is my final assignment, the redesign of the Meliorist. For this assignment I tried a variety of different things but finally settled on using a sort of "zine" style with a very informal feel, the way I think a student paper should be. I tried to keep it bright to catch people's eye as they walk by and also give it a youthful feel that would make the student population want to read the paper since, right now, not a lot of people do.

I chose to use the Abortion and Head Shave stories as my articles because they are both something that the students at the U of L care a lot about. The abortion issue is a heavily debated issue here and I thought I should try and represent it my own way. As well, the Head Shave was a huge event and something that our University should be proud of because they raised $38 ooo which is amazing.
For the cover I wanted it to look kind of like a notebook that had been scribbled all over and spilled on. I am pretty happy with how it turned out.;

RIOT GRRRLS!

Riot Grrrls are part of a feminist movement in the third wave that is fueled by art/music/zines, etc. They use punk rock and other underground methods as a way to express themselves regarding feminist issues. Many women in this movement started bands regardless of their musical abilities and publishing their own zines to say exactly what they wanted to. Being hardcore seemed to be a fairly important part of being a riot grrrl which meant you had to be able to rock out and just kick ass in general.

The main issue that these feminists seemed to address was sexism and sexual abuse against women. It also tackled issues such as male dominance in the punk music scene. Most of the Riot Grrrl bands formed wrote their songs about these issues and looked for a change.

Frank Lloyd Wright.. but with less angles.

So for my architecture assignment I chose to redo Frank Lloyd Wright's "Falling Water" which was designed privately for a couple in Pennsylvania but is now a museum. I picked it because I think his designs are very neat and very creative. I thought I would redo it by changing it from being angular, to being very soft. I did this by using nice pastel colours and the charcoal and watercolour brushes. This was the first time I really experimented with the different brushes so it was a good experience for me. I am learning more about Illustrator by the day. I also experience some major difficulties with this assignment because my pirated version of this program at home decided to crap out on me and I ended up not being able to save, and since I am forgetful, I ended up losing a lot. However, the only way I could salvage my work was to use the trusty print screen which unfortunately made it lose a LOT of quality. But I didnt have time to totally redo it so I have to settle, I guess. Oh well.

Assignment 8: Bonne Homme-age

Here is my version of a Paul Frank poster.

This is an actual Paul Frank design.

Assignment 7: Visual Onomatopoeia

Here is my visual onomatopoeia I created. I am so sick of typing that word. When I was first starting this assignment I wasn't really sure what to do. I kind of just typed "sketchy" in as a filler word because it was the first word that came to mind, and then I guess I just went with it. It's kind of a double entendre and I used both meanings in the piece because I wanted to show the real meaning and then the slang meaning of it. I tried to merge them as seamlessly as possible and I think it went ok, I like the hooded guy that is scribbled in and mad shoutout to Scott who showed me that feature in Illustrator. Overall, I like this project and I think it is my favourite thing I've done in this class so far.

Text Assignment

I had a lot of fun doing this assignment. I am excited to be working more with colour now in this class because it gives you so much more options. I picked this font because I thought it would be fun to kind of make a satire of, and poke fun at, girly, cutesy fonts. While I still did that, I kind of also went in another direction by making it very romantic-ish. The creator said that he made it for valentine's day so people could use it in their cards to each other so I decided to make it portray a certain "puppy love" feel, if you will. I also used a custom candy heart generator to help give a Valentine's Day effect. I also used french because "cheri" is a french word and I worked it in there.

Reading Week

With Reading Week coming up fast I realized we are almost halfway through this semester and I haven't made very many entries in my blog that aren't just posting my assignments. Mostly because this semester has been very busy because I am taking three New Media classes which all have time-consuming projects. Although a bit stressful, I feel that taking all of these classes is helping me to expand my creative process, each in their own way.
In my Theories of Design class, I am learning a lot about always thinking about negative space and thinking through how you set up everything on your workspace. You have to be aware of all elements at all times.
In my Production Management class, we are doing what I have been wanting to do for a long time in this program. We are learning how to present work that we have done, like we would if we were presenting to a client. This is a very important skill to develop because ultimately this is what most of us New Media students will be doing as a career. Creating things for other people and selling them to them.
Finally, in my compositing class I am learning a whole new side to special effects. They are a lot simpler than I had thought and I am having fun creating little sequences with particles, etc.

So that I guess is my mid-semester relection on my class.
Have a good break!