Cd Booklet Draft 1

Spread for Act 2

Title Page

Title page

Okay so here is my first renditions of the CD booklet. I did the front cover and a spread for the second act. I honestly HATE them both and will be taking a different approach to this over the weekend. I will probably draw my ideas out first, scan them in and then trace them in illustrator.

Anyway, just to explain my thought process. My topic is on "True Urban Legends" and I wanted the cover to portray common urban legends like big foot, the lochness monster, and ufos. Originally I had thought about screen printing the images onto paper and having a folded booklet. But I have changed my mind [mainly because I found out I do not have the resources] that I want to do a regular booklet that has paper transparency pages [like velum] that will show one image and then as you turn to the next page have a similar graphic that displays something else. I know that didn't really make sense. But basically you can see I have two different title covers - one will be on the transparency paper and the other on regular paper. Because my topic is about "legends" I want to show one point of view and then another, and by having those transparent/translucent pages it can show an alternative view.

Anyway - very preliminary stages.

-Erika

Billboard Design

Charging Station in Environment

Update on Charging Station

Work Study

Posters I've had to do for work study:

Two ideas for consumption flip book

Here are my very rough starts for my consumption flip book. I don't particularly like the first one - but both need work. I didn't focus so much on color nor on information. I do have all my information though and at this point need to put it in with the rest of the design.

Final Consumption Poster

Poster!

So for our final Type II project we had to create a promo poster of our "favorite" band and it had to represent a collage and/or montage aspect. We were supposed to highlight an album and include tour dates and what not (although this aspect was fairly lax), and we were supposed to represent who the band was and what they liked/stood for, etc... We *technically* only had two class periods to work on our designs, so this was a lighting fast project. However, that being said, this was my most favorite project and the one that I feel I did the best on.

The band I chose was The Gaslight Anthem (if you haven't heard of them you should definitely check them out! They are amazing - and while not my favorite favorite band, they are a band that I really like!) and I decided to highlight their "sink or swim" album (however, I would highly recommend their "'59 sound" album!). I saw this band about a year and a half ago at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, NC and just loved them - they have this old-timey feel to them, where they kind of come off as "greasers" from the 50's or 60's with tattoos covering them. Their songs are very much about relationships and life and it just makes you feel like you are hearing about the noir time period.

ANYWAY, like I said I highlighted their sink or swim album and I wanted to make the poster a collage of traditional tattoo flash with a nautical theme. So, what I did, was hand draw each element of the poster on paper, then scan it in to the computer and manipulated it then in Photoshop. I had a lot of fun with it. If I had a little more time I would have liked to connect the rope (in both the band name and the anchor) altogether and to the ship in the top left corner. Otherwise, I am completely content with how this turned out.

Again, like all my other projects, I will probably tweak some things here and there in the future, but otherwise I love it.

-Erika

Final Calendar Design

Here is the outcome of my calendar design - and let me say this was probably my least favorite project. I was a little overly ambitious and it really came around to bite me in the butt. I used that stylized type that I created out of brushes I made in Illustrator. Well, since I wanted to highlight the northern and southern hemisphere that really made it double duty on myself and I thought it would easy but as I added more and more months, the file size got larger and larger, which made it difficult to work in indesign as the program slowed WAY down because I had to keep the vector images sharp so I could see what I was doing, but anyway - I could rant about that for a long time... When I look at it though, I just feel like it's lacking a bit all around. (I am my own worst critic if you couldn't tell). Even though I did finish the project, I do feel like I should go back and work on it eventually. I wish I had highlighted numbers a little bit better as this was for the "numeric institute" but what I decided to do was make it as though the "numeric institute" was featuring their artists series where designers created their own calendars and the "numeric institute" was selling them for the artists.

Anyway this is a long post - the first calendar being the northern hemisphere and the second being the southern hemisphere so enjoy!

-Erika

PSD tut quatro? (four)

So I took this PSD tut on changing color of this car and it was a really long tutorial that really had more detail then I was looking for, so I just stopped when I changed the color. I even changed the color again to something other than what I was told to do just to get a feel for it. I must say I was a little lax on using my pen tool around the car too, but I really didn't want to spend TOO much time on it, if I could just get the concept down.

Here's the link for it:

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/give-a-yellow-lamborghini-a-paint-job-in-photoshop/

Here's the before:

Here's my 1st one (as instructed)

Here's my 2nd one (my choice of color)

PSD Tut tres...novices beware

So here is my PSD Tut on how to make transparent glass lettering...

It was an awful tutorial. I literally only got to the 3rd step (out of 10 I think) - and the guy just tells you to copy the layer effects used from the sample. The CRAZY thing is, even when I did that (because there was no precise instructions on what to do) it looked NOTHING like what was in the example!! SO I spent like 45 min. tweaking what I had to make this, which I think looks good, but I would have liked to have a finished look like the tut does. ANYWAY - I usually read about how difficult the tuts are before I start them, and I must have only read the ones that said it was good, because when I looked back at them SO many said that it was confusing and missing steps.

Just my luck to put in an hours worth of work with no progress. humph.

Mine:

Tut:

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/text-effects-tutorials/transparent-glass-lettering-in-photoshop/

-Erika

Calendar update.... technology woes.

So I don't understand it, but technology seems to be failing me lately. I have started to make the months for my calendar out of that stylized treatment on the type I am using - and I realized after you make one letter it is REALLY easy to make the rest, however, my computer is being extra crappy today. Now don't get me wrong, I love my macbook baby, but it's been freezing up Illustrator every time I save something AND won't even let me open InDesign...what the hell.

Good news is I do have something to show, unfortunately it is just the word January...however, I should be able to get all my months finished today in class on the class Mac's and then all I'll need to work on is my actual table for the days (which should be easy now that I know how to do tables in InDesign). Anyway, here's an update. I've decided to approach this project by working on individual elements first, rather than working on one month at a time. Today I plan on finishing the treatment for the months, and then work on the tables for the days of the week. Then I am going to make tree limbs out of that same stylized treatment and then add the details for that illustration later... Well, it's all in my head - I know what to do, I just have to do it now!

-Highly frustrated and technologically challenged,

Erika.

PSD tut dos

Here is my second tutorial. It was supposed to represent a sugar bag, however I chose a different font so it doesn't quite represent what the tutorial was exactly teaching. It was really easy though, I feel like what took the most time was just reading everything. Otherwise, the tutor did really well in describing EVERY step.

Here's what it was supposed to look like (click the pic to go to the link):

Here's my final product: