pure beauty

In conclusion to this semester it has been a huge learning experience for me in more ways than I learned just from the classroom. Working with a client was an eye opener to what to expect when we get thrown out into the real world in the next year. It’s also almost terrifying to see what all there is out there too. Most of us just want to create beautiful things to better the world around us. And that is what is so exciting about design, that you have the ability and the power to make that happen, whether its corporate and your designing advertisements for companies, or its for non profit and its something that you get to have full control over what it looks like, you are creating and designing, making things more beautiful than before and shooting them out in to the world for everyone else to enjoy. Imagine a world with out design. Pretty depressing huh?! What a beautiful thing it is to know that I’m a part of something that we couldn’t/would hate to live, without.

printer guide

Well my first real published book came in the mail today. Its pretty exciting to see something you created in print with a cover and everything. Like is said before we have always designed mock ups of what a cover would look like or what a spread should look like but there is just something about seeing it bound and with a real cover and meaningful pages that all live together in one thing, that is just so rewarding. I have seen everyone else’s but it wasn’t until I got my own that it all came together and made me feel so good about it. I feel like I already explained the project so ill just recap. We were all assigned 2 printers to research and in the end we were to design a page for this book that could live on its own and stand alone but that meant that every single page in this book was going to be different. Which makes it an even more beautiful end product because it has so much personality. And we have all the information from everyone’s research about the printers at our own disposal. Anytime we need it its there. 

EL FIN!

Well tomorrow we turn in our things for TastBuds. The project is finally over. Well as unimportant as my group felt throughout this project we really came together at the end and cranked out a FABULOUS identity guide. The guide is so intense and full I think we covered more than necessary but you can never have too many instructions. The final product included about 32 pages of everything from this semester. In the end the group worked really well together. I’m excited to see the end of this on Friday and have it all come together and get all of this off our shoulders. Friday at 11 at crabtree farms everyone should come! See what tastebuds is all about and support healthy eating and local economy. Even if you don’t live anywhere near here, I’m sure there is one near you. Not necessarily TasteBuds, but a local food guide to set you in the right direction of where you can go to get some fresh food.

Alegra

So since Leslie takes us on countless field trips to different printers, I half expected this one to be like all the others and was not as excited as I was when we went on the first field trip. But I am so glad I opened up to it because it was the most beneficial one we had gone on yet. Alegra printing is located here in Chattanooga behind Sportsman’s Warehouse out off 153 it looks like a huge building from the outside (like all the others) but its nothing like that at all. Todd Oats, manager, greeted us so warmly and started the tour. He showed us the design room and where it all beings and took us to some of their laser printers. And I began to realize at that point how small it was. But their turn around is so fast and they can do anything. Then we went into the back where the main printer was and I was so surprised at how small it was. So used to going to the huge printers in town they had million dollar machines that were billions of tons and this one was as tall as us and the print man showed us exactly how it worked. (No one had been able to do that for us yet, it helped us make sense of things) then we went into the main back room and watched a man send things through a folding machine and watched them make a huge metal sign. The entire experience felt more heartfelt than anyone we had been on mainly because of the size of their company. And at the end we were given 2gig zip drives each and coffee mugs. It was such a great field trip. Good to know where they are and hopefully I will get a chance to go back and do business with them one day. 

networking with out the ick!

What a great way to put it. This past Thursday my class was privileged to be apart of a lecture series done by the wonderful and talented Cindy Li. Cindy Li is a graphic/web designer who has a degree from the University of Florida in fine arts. She has worked with big names like AOL and Map Quest. She gave her talks specifically in the best way to network and self branding. She made great points like we are all a brand and how we market ourselves is how we sell ourselves when it comes time for getting a job. She talked about all the sites to check out and what is the best way to go about putting yourself out there. Our professor arranged for her to come back to campus to have her answer more questions and clear up some things about what will happen when we graduate. Some of the sites she recommended for us to be on were http://www.linkedin.com/ and http://twitter.com/ (which I’m sure most of us are already on). We hear so much from our professors that it almost becomes second nature to just smile and nod, but when things begin to repeat from outside sources they tend to sink in more and mean something different. Almost like that’s when your begin to believe it.

 

here is her website. everyone should check her out, she is fabulous!

http://cindyli.com/ 

The light at the end of the tunnel

As the semester is coming to a close we are beginning to see the fruits of our labor. As I had said before in my professional practices class we have been working on creating a food guide for our city. This has been such a long drawn our process that it is almost scary to be done. Our final day in that class will be this Thursday and then the following day we will have our big launch event at Crab Tree Farms to promote the guide. The guide consists of all the local CSA farms and restaurants that buy their produce from them all in all supporting our local economy. It is so exciting to have this finished and be apart of bringing it all together in our community. The name (I think I have mentioned it before) is called Taste Buds: Savor Local Flavor.  It is a play on words with how the food will taste and the fact that eating is such a social thing that you tend to do it with your “Buds” haha. The group incharge of actually designing the guide has created a smaller guide that will fit easily in your wallet or purse that they have creatively named the “tastebuddy”. It will be a relief to have everything done and get to enjoy the day out at the farm promoting something we have all worked so hard to complete.

 

Printing Book

For our process and materials class we were assigned local printers to research and write about. We are all assigned 2 printers and after we gathered all our information we were assigned to design a book, collecting all of our printers for a handbook that we can keep and use for further projects. This was a really cool thing for us to get to do because we have all designed book covers and 10 page books we bound ourselves. But this time we got to send them off and get them professionally bound and printed. We all had to design our two pages of printers any way we wanted but they had to feel like our word pair project we did a few weeks ago. (My words were fast and slow) – that was a project where we were given these words and had to take photos and manipulate them using our knowledge of Photoshop and make them feel like the words themselves. Any who… so each page was different because each person in the class was assigned different words which made for interesting layouts. The only thing that was supposed to be consistent was the cover, title page and table of contents. This was a fun project because it was an on going thing that combined 3 or 4 different pieces of knowledge we had learned this semester and how to send things off and to keep in mind what is good design. 

word pair

During my Graphic Design classes in the past couple of years we have been working on isolation (I guess you could call it that). Pretty much making your design live alone whether it is totally relying on typography and that needs to explain everything you are trying to convey, or whether its just an image and that needs to hold its own. Another thing we have been getting beat into our brains is that things don’t have to be obvious. The more someone has to think about what it is you are trying to say the more time they will spend with something you have created. (don’t go crazy abstract because sometimes you need them to get the message in a timely fashion but some mystery is always a good thing). For this particular project we were all assigned 2 words, pretty basic ones like wet and dry, nervous and calm, grief and joy, old and new etc. sounds easy enough. Wrong! Actually it was hard for most of us to get past say wet being a picture of water or dry being a towel. But after a few (dozen to hundred) word lists we all got to where we needed to be. For example the wet and dry became a washer and dryer but the inside parts of them and they color scheme when manipulating them was blue and yellow. But if you just looked at them as pictures you almost couldn’t tell what they were. My two words were fast and slow. I felt like finding a way to depict adjectives was hard and I made it harder on myself than it needed to be but I came up with two things that felt like fast and slow to me; my running shoe and a high heel shoe. Those are two things to me are something that obviously you cant go fast in a high heel, or you wouldn’t want to go slow in a running shoe. You are always going faster in athletics. At the top is an example of the finished project. 

vegas what?!

Last week we went to a print group here in town that happens to be just a little bit famous. This particular group is called the National Print Group. Here at the National Print Group they specialize mainly in large commercial printing. They have a few in house designers for smaller companies that need their assistance in that area, other than that they receive the large orders from big names like Lowes and Wal-Mart, Target and Pizza Hut. There in house they have huge industrial printers, one that is actually the largest in the world of its kind. They also do digital printing. The particular printer can print on any sort of material like ceiling tiles, plexi glass and even doors. They just send it through the printer and since it is digital they don’t need rollers and plates to run through the machine all they need is the file and the material and then WALAH!, there is your print. This company also has a place out in Vegas where they are able to do most of the commercial printing that you would be exposed to out on the strip. It is such a cool thing to be able to see behind the scenes of something that is not only cool to see when working (a huge press) but to know that they have something to do with the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas.

http://www.nationalposters.com/

design.elements

Finishing Design Elements:

 

-Varnish: a solution of resin in oil or spirits applied to a surface to give it a protective gloss.- I found lots of examples of varnishes. They seem to be everyone’s favorite “embellishment” on business cards and books. It helps the words pop off the page by giving them a shine. Most varnishes depend on the paper, the image or words being printed on and the type of varnish you decide to use. The ones that I found were either on a book cover, brochure, business card or on gift card holders. As humans we love to touch things and subconsciously I tend to rub my hands over the surfaces of these pieces of paper; feeling the glossy surface. (I think that goes for embossed things as well)

 

 

 

 

-Die Cutting: a style of cutting out or into something that makes a shape.- some of the examples I found were in fast food restaurants on the tables; the small triangular piece in the middle of the table that promoted a new combo. Other more interesting examples I found were gift card holders. Two I had were Banana Republic and Starbucks. As you can see the inside is where the cut is on the banana republic one and the Starbucks card holder has a slit in the back where the flap from the front is able to stay closed. A third example I found but wanted to use for examples of folds was a wedding invitation. I have never seen one like this and it is truly unique and beautiful.

 

 

 

-Thermography: Raised results on paper that come from a combination of ink, powder and heat.- this is seen mostly on business cards. It has a more standard feel to it. It is that raised “bubble” look and feel to it, almost like it is embossed. The examples I found were only on business cards one from art creations and one from Kim’s Nail Salon. This technique helps the words really pop off the page and give them hierarchy and a lot of texture.

 

 

-Emboss: the process of creating a three-dimensional image or design in paper. It is typically accomplished with a combination of heat and pressure on the appear by using a metal die usually made of brass and a counter die that fit together and squeeze the fibers of the paper. This pressure and a combination of heat actually “irons” while raising the level of the image higher that the paper. This has been done for centuries. And is still used today in many parts of design. Some examples I found were again on book covers and a wedding invitation.

 

 

 

-Folds: to bend.- Pretty self explanatory. When looking at our daily life and the types of beautiful things we encounter we tend to look past simple things like folds. They make clothing look different, all the way to making a something you design more interesting if it has folds, or a fold making a pocket. The one thing in particular that I found that has such unique folds was a wedding invitation. It has a tri fold with narrow dimensions and 5 die cuts on the inside and one on the outside. These cuts have created pockets for smaller pieces of information to be held inside the invitation. The cut on the outside helps the folded flap on the outside stay closed to hold the information on the inside still. It becomes a package, almost, as well. The entire thing is put together so well thanks to the folds.

 

 

-Binding: the process of physically assembling something from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of paper or other materials. It also usually involves attaching covers to the resulting “book” or grouped material.- There are many types of binding, like saddle stitch, perfect, side stitch, case, plastic comb, and three ring. Some examples of binding I found were mettle coil/spiral and I’m not sure the name of the other type of binding but it resembles a staple. I chose these to use as my examples because they were the most interesting bindings I found and they’re different from just a standard book binding.

 

 

-Scoring: making a precise fold or crease line

-Perforating: a folded line that is mean to be torn, and made easy.- Scoring is something that we see most in our daily life. It is anything folder professionally, and perforating is just as common its in children’s coloring books all the way up to movie tickets and tags on clothing. My examples are birthday cards for scoring and movie tickets for perforating. They both show the examples well.

 

 

 

-Foil Stamp: uses heat and metallic film in a specialty printing process that produces a shiny design on paper, vinyl, textiles, wood, hard plastic, leather, and other materials. Some examples would be from a dollar bill or on a graduation diploma. I chose these examples because they were the only ones I could find. Really they can be anywhere those were just places I found them. You really have to look.

 

 

-Packaging: the package in which merchandise is sold or displayed. Packaging can make or break an item. Some things we buy because we genuinely like the product and trust it, and then some we buy because of the name or the way it looks with the package. Color choice as a lot to do with it but mostly if it is a cool box, or opens in a fun engaging way we buy into the package sometimes more than we buy into the product. I chose two packaging examples from Mac. They always blow my mind with their new design ways and I love that they hold up, you can use them over again, or use them to store important parts of your Mac’s history; like all your information about you computer, receipts can go into the original box you got it in so you never loose things.

 

 

 

-Duotone: a halftone reproduction of an image using the superimpostion of a contrasty black halftone over a one color halftone. Most often used to bring out middle tones and highlights of an image. Most common colors used are blue, yellow, browns and reds.- The examples I found were from a magazine and a card. I chose them because they were the only ones I could find.