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!

Assignment #5: True Colours

Here is the fifth assignment. I was excited to finally be working with colours and had a good time creating schemes. Also, printing this time went much more smoothly so they actually look like I want them to! I am a big fan of very natural, and neutral colours such as brown, pale pink, etc. so they show up a lot in my colour swatches. However, on the last one I decided to be a little more bold and that one ended up a little crazy. I'm still not sure how well the colours go together but it describes my favourite memory perfectly so I didn't want to change it.
Overall I am basically happy with this assignment, and I think the 'My Favourite Colours' turned out to be my favourite, also I like the combo of brown and pink in 'Colours of the Body'.

Assignment #4- Typographical Higher Arches?

Finishing this assignment was pretty much the bane of my existence. I enjoyed doing it fine enough but printing it off was a nightmare. For some reason the templates don't load right on my computer at home. Anyways, I finally got it done but it doesn't quite look like I would have hoped. Oh well. The last one is my favourite.

-Oh, and I'll never diet again.

Assignment #3

Well here is my shape assignment. I found it pretty interesting and fairly fun to do. One challenge I had was creating the low contrast with only black and white. I tried a couple different approaches and in the end I think they turned out OK. My favourite type to do was the asymmetrical one although I'm not sure why.

Assignment #2: Composing with the Camera

Week 2 of School

Well week 2 of semester 2 has started; not quite sure how I'm feeling about this semester yet. I think it might end up being quite a bit of work so hopefully I will be able to handle it. At least most of my classes seem fun. I had compositing today for 3 hours and as painful as it is to sit through 3 hours of lecture whilst torturing myself with 3D Studio Max (which I pretty much hate) it was a fairly interesting class and I learned how to make a ball destroy a brick wall. Pretty neat.

In Class Assignment #1

Introduction to Me

Hello. My name is Julie Bailey and I come from the Land of the Living Skies; Hazlet, Saskatchewan. Where is Hazlet you ask? It's near Verlo. Google map it, I know you want to. I am 2o years old and am in my third year here.
In my spare time I like to draw, listen to music, watch TV and movies and mostly just relax. I also play intramural volleyball and this semester I am going to try my hand at competitive dodgeball. We'll see how it goes.

I chose to major in New Media because I have always been interested in art and design and in high school I became very interested in film and video as well. A friend of mine was already majoring in New Media here and told me it would probably be right for me. I trusted her and here I am. Although I am nearing the end of the program, I'm still not sure what branch of the business I want to go into. Recently I have become more interested in design than anything else so I might try to pursue a career in that direction which is mostly why I am taking this course. I would really like to gain a better understanding of what makes compositions work and how to create them so that they are aesthetically pleasing to their mizzax.

I have experience in many different programs as they are required for the many courses we take. Adobe PhotoShop, Illustrator, Premiere, Acrobat, Macromedia Flash, Director, Dreamweaver, some 3-D Studio Max (although I'm not very good with it), as well as others.