What I've Learned

Well today marks the official last day of class. This blog is to show you all of my different materials and talk about what I have learned over the course of the class.

Here is a banner done for Will Campbell

Here is a very similar banner done for Robin Gosh.

What I learned: People really like small alterations. Save all previous work in it's original format (not just jpeg) so that the corrections only take a minute, and not seemingly, a lifetime.

Here is a timeline for a story on beer. I made it to match one of the graphics that Sam Hume did for the same story. See below:

Done By: Samuel Hume

 What I learned: Matching graphics look a heck of a lot better than graphics that are completely incoherent. Even when the client (or in this case fellow peer) has a very specific idea in mind, don't be afraid to sacrifice a few elements of  their idea for brand unity. Below is the original idea. As you can see I kept the basic layout, but changed all of the elements to keep it more clean.

Computer Image from Prezi.com

A banner created for the social media team

What I learned: Ideas evolve. What was originally a background full of dots changes to randomly dispersed dots to feel like coding, and then to follow the map pattern. Ideas are ideas. Some start off amazing and some start off so-so, but in each case evolution is good because it keeps you in touch with the project.

Thank you card to be distributed to guest speakers

What I learned: Even though there are people in your group that may have more experience than you, they aren't always right. When I showed this card to the group, they wanted the colours changed to mostly white and green. This was fine with me because I wasn't overly attached to the design, however the person I made it for preferred my colour choice and in the end that is what they went with. The client always gets the final decision.

Yet another banner.

What I learned: It's okay to push yourself to try new things. Drawing clouds by hand on photoshop and drawing the cn tower gave this image a unique feel. Because I did not use pre-made shapes, this banner actually made me feel way more artistic and I would say it definitely advanced my skills. It also allowed me more leeway to try new things. See below.

Comic con visual. 

What I learned: Drawing on the computer is fun! Not all images need to have the CN tower in it to be a part of emerge. Some people will be upset that they didn't come up with a cool idea, or that they don't get to work on the project with you. This project took me a while to complete, but because I took the time, I was incredibly pleased with the results.

My first really cool banner!

What I learned: Not all of my ideas will be used, both in the class and in the work place. Even if I think the work is fantastic, there will be others who just plain disagree, and that's the way it is.

 Preview ad for Emerge

What I learned: Some things that are really quite awesome on photoshop, or in a psd file, are completely different when turned to jpeg. So much for the beautifully glowing text. Ah well, you win some you lose some.

Overall you can see that I learned quite a bit throughout my time in this class. These graphics are in no particular order, but if they were you could see how much I improved, not just in design but in time management, etc. In the end I think it's safe to say that I have a lot of great graphics to add to my portfolio!

The Final Countdown

Well, it is on. Today officially marks the start of the final week of University classes. These four years have flown by! I still can't believe that I am even finished high school, let alone University, and they say that life gets faster and faster the older you get. I really hope that isn't true but we will see!

So, focusing on Emerge: Last week in class our entire group got together to figure out what all was completed, and what needed to be done to finish up all of these graphics. We made a document compiling the projects that includes a list of due dates and a list of who is doing what. Since I have done a lot of graphics previous to the list, it was decided that I would be in charge of compiling the important and beneficial information for next years students while those who haven't done much in the past could do the graphic work. That said, since last week I have completed the above mentioned document, in addition to a banner for the web team which was requested after the list was put together. I had created the other banners like it so it was easy to use the materials that I already had and modify them by colour and through limited alterations. Here it is:

As you can see, it is very similar to previous work that I have done.

By creating the document, we have made an amazing accomplishment this week: Organization!!! Go Team! Because of this, I would say that this week has been pretty free and easy as far as difficulties go. Probably our biggest challenge is just getting the designs that we create, to match up with the designs requested. This most often means multiple rounds of adjustments but in the end it seems like everyone end up more than satisfied.

For next week, we are hoping to have all of our emerge files organized so that we can almost do an inventory of all the work, and determine how our styles have changed and what we like/ what needs to be improved about our work. It will be good to have this time within the group to bounce off strategies for the future.

The History of Beer

It is insane that a week has gone by already since my last post!
I have been so incredibly busy (with a new job: scoree!!) that the time has just flown by!
I did manage to make time for EMERGE though as I helped Sam work on an infographic for a story based on the history of beer. Here is what I came up with:

This will act as part of the timeline feature of the story providing a relevant series of dates pertaining to the article! I was able to use parts of the article that were provided, including the text, as well as a previous graphic that Sam had made for another section of the article to create a similar colour scheme and a similar technique.

Since last week, our team has really focused on getting organized and figuring out who will be doing what graphics. A lot of the group members feel as if we are lacking delegation and they feel that the work has been distributed unfairly. Personally, I feel like there are some graphics that everyone wants to do, and others that no one seems to volunteer for so I usually try to focus on the ones no one seems to want. There are tons of graphics that need to be done and lots of work to go around so we are working on resolving this issue. We have decided to split the graphics up evenly so that we arent stepping on each others toes and so that some of the people who haven't spoken up will still have the chance to design. For me this means that I likely won't be making graphics this coming week so that other people can take on a job. That is of course, unless people still aren't volunteering for specific ones. I guess we shall see by  next week!

I will say one thing though: Throughout my time in University I can say that I have been a part of some useful classes, and some pretty meaningless  ones as well. As I am starting this "real life" job I can guarantee that this class is one of the most important classes that I have taken and will ever take. It is teaching me time management, design, marketing, best practises, etc. and I have already used a lot of the skills learned in this class in my new job. I feel like this class actually helps the students teach each other skills and tools that have been picked up along the way. I know that in my group it has definitely been a collaboration of ideas.

Until next time...

It's Coming!

Since last week I have put together a few Instagram teaser images! Yay! Here is one you can see right meow:

Black on Black on Black.
(Here's me coming to the realization that all my blog posts are sort of lame and trying to be a little cooler).

Well, that's enough tomfoolery for one day.

Back to the facts (because that's what blogs are about):

I ended up using a variety of resources for the images including the photography that was taken by a few of me peers. Originally,  I wanted the words to glow, but because the sizing for instagram is so small, my teammates and I were worried that it would just appear grainy in the resolution.

In the last week, the team has all come together, making various designs for the website, and working on a t-shirt design for the conference. What we have accomplished, also ties in with our biggest challenge, in that this past week we found out that there is actually more than one graphic team, who is putting out some pretty cool stuff. Because we didn't know that there were two teams, a lot of our work has actually been overlapping creating a challenge. We were able to meet with the other team last week and we have decided that we will focus more on the web visuals, while the other team targets the magazine and print visuals. This was a little disappointing seeing as we all were quite interested in making large ads for the metro and other things like that that were mentioned, but I think we have come to a good understanding.

Personally, I am collaborating with a girl from the other design team (since we were both working on the same graphic) to make something even better than what could have been. I hope to have a good idea of the direction of that project by next class.

Until next time.

Babies and Comics!

Congrats on the new bundle of joy!!!! I'm sure you're positively thrilled! Get ready for a little less sleep but some amazing moments and tons of giggles!  

On an EMERGE related note, lots of different things have been taking place within the graphic design group! A ton of people have expressed an interest in Comic Con and because of it, a group of students are headed there this weekend to do a story on it. When I found out about this, I also wanted to take part, so I made a graphic to be used in the article, but also to be used throughout social media before the article goes up!

Here it is:

I found this graphic especially fun to make because of all the varying details that went into it and all of the different elements. To create this graphic I looked at a bunch of different comics to get an idea of how best to reproduce them. Thanks a bunch Google!!

The entire team has been putting together a variety of graphics from infographics, to instagram teasers etc. We are really focusing on creating a unit with all of the different pieces.

The biggest difficulty personally, was trying to merge a ton of different graphics in a visually appealing way that also had a comic tone. Using the same layout as a comic helped with that as well as the colour blocking technique, however this is not what I started out with. The continuous alterations proved to be the most challenging.

By next week, I hope to have completed this graphic and to have it completely finalized with the group.

Again congrats on the baby! I'm so excited for you!

Hey All,

Since last week I have been working on a  couple graphics! One is for an article on slang words and in it I have included some various fonts and images. Eventually the graphic will have a timeline of when words came into being and how, etc. This graphic should go alongside he article. Note that this is only a section of the final graphic and may be in colour in the end.

The second image is for a header for either the linkedin or youtube accounts. 

These are just a few quick teasers.

In order to complete these designs, I needed to review the infographic concepts to see what the applicants wanted as part of the image. From there, I took the information provided and was able to make graphics to match the text, finally laying it out in a unique manner. The above images have not been finalized and changes may still be made before these graphics can and will be used. 

As a team, we have been able to complete a number of designs including a series of posters and social media teasers in preparation of the big conference day! These posters will be displayed throughout the school and will also be posted on various social media platforms to be viewed by the multitudes!

The biggest difficulty over the last week has been trying to create graphics with only half of the information present. FOr the infographics, we know the feeling that the applicants are going for but are still waiting on some material and just hoping that what we have already created will not ned to be altered too much!

Before next week I hope to have the two above graphics finalized so I can move on to creating some more unique pieces!

See you all in a few days!

Reading Week Update

I've been working on an infographic for a slang article!! So far it's not so much info as graphic but I am still waiting for some information so that is bound to change at some point. As of right now, designing a twerk pose and a food baby is consuming the majority of my free time! See you tomorrow!

Infographics!!!!

Last week was awesome! We finally got a good amount of design requests! Maybe I shouldn't be so excited to get lots of designs. I might be wishing for those days of patient waiting before too long. But for now, WOOHOO!

Although we are only two days into the new week, I have been looking over the info given to us in the requests and trying to figure out which is the best way to organize it. All of the requests so far are for infographics! Something that I have been dying to do! It's like visual journalism. Anyways, through my research of infographics I have determined that I am a fan of one's that are seemingly crowded with a very limited colour palette. This way they keep their quality. Here are some examples.

http://www.findingdrishti.com/.../sweat-the-big-picture.../
 http://visual.ly/bycatch
http://visualoop.tumblr.com/post/37391889762/specs-appeal

Because there are so many infographics to be done, our whole team has been researching various types that we like and starting to put our ideas together. We are still waiting for the editor in chief to pass along the exact info that will be appropriate for each graphic so until then we can't really work on actual designs,(which seems to be the biggest difficulty of the week) but we should be getting that info soon.

That said, by next week we hope to receive this info and at least have preliminary graphics ready to be approved by Sam and his team. We can't wait to get started!

Since the Meeting...

The meeting this past week seemed to bring all of the different teams together as it went over everything that has been done and really put pressure on everyone to get their heads in the game. This is definitely something that was super awesome for us because we were able to show off the graphic submissions form online and get everybody thinking about what sorts of graphics would work with each design.

Since last week I have reached out to various people in the journalist stream to discuss what sorts of graphics would work with specific stories. I am incredibly interested in making an info-graphic at some point during the course so really I am most interested in finding someone who is interested in adding one to their story. So far I have had no luck with infographics but people are definitely more interested in adding designs to their stories, especially after they have seen what we have to offer!

As a group, we talked to a variety of people about graphic ideas, in particular the editor in chief for the journalists who promised to have a handful of designs ready to discuss for this coming week.  We also met with Robin to discuss adding new graphics for some social media updates just to keep everything interesting.

Our biggest difficulty over the past week has been trying to stay creative and come up with various ideas even though we don't have any graphic requests coming in but since our request form is up and running it shouldn't be a problem.

For this coming week I hope to have a clear idea of all of the expectations from the visual team and hopefully some ideas to design!

Everybody's playing the waiting game...

As our graphic design team waits, ever so patiently for new and exciting challenges, we have decided to put our heads to work and brainstorm various creative designs that are basic, simple, and follow the discussed design recommendations. In doing this, I have been going through various design websites such as awwwards.com for web-based designs, and behance, muse, etc., for inspiration with various projects both print and web-based. I think the designs that most catch my eye are the ones that are simple and that use a large amount of negative space. I also think that for the EMERGE brand itself, it is important to incorporate various Canadian and "Torontonian" elements to signify its place of birth.  I have been looking at magazines as well to see how various graphics work into different page elements. I think that it is very important to incorporate design into every aspect of this project. We will definitely be using the large group meeting to let everyone know of our capabilities and get the ideas flowing for designs that would work well with each specific story.

Since last week, our entire team has been brainstorming, and we have also been working on a guideline for topics to present to the large group next week.

Our biggest difficulty has been trying to get our design submission form up and available to the other teams. This has proven to be a challenge based on the web design teams not having a location available for the forms to be put in place but hopefully this will be resolved by this coming week. Another challenge has been a lack of design work but that should also be resolved by this week when we discuss our availability with the larger group.

For next week, I am aiming to have gained a stronger understanding of Adobe Illustrator through my use of the program over the week on quick tutorial projects. I think that this will help me to be better prepared for the projects that I will be given within the EMERGE team.

Let's get it started in Here.

Since last week I have really gotten to explore the different types of graphics that I can, and will be, putting to use. I was able to create a couple of graphics, a twitter and a youtube header, that have helped me to determine the overall direction, and have shown me how cool graphic design can be. It's definitely amazing to know that if I get a job in what I trained for I will actually enjoy myself. Graphic design definitely does not feel at all like work!

As a team, we were able to accomplish our individual goals through various meetings with the Art Direction team which has helped us to develop visuals that meet the criteria. The visual team has put forth some pretty strict guidelines that will help the entire project to be more unified. Thanks to the information provided, (colour scheme, font options and design requirements) our team was able to get a good start on a few visual pieces that will greatly help out the social team.

Throughout the last week we have really come together as a team through our Facebook page. We are able to provide input to each other on specific designs and offer up suggestions to make each others designs smoother. As a team we have created various designs to be used by the social media team on all of the major media platforms.

The biggest struggle this past week was making sure that everyone was on the same page with the designs. Simplicity seems to be a main aim and it was important for all of us to like the designs that we make and still offer up constructive criticism. After this week it seems like we are starting to understand the different design styles within the group. It is nice to have a variation as long as everything still mixes well.

By next week I hope to have completed two successful designs for use on various media platforms that have been agreed upon by my team.

Here is an example of one of the things that I have been working on!

Getting FORMal

This week or groups main goal was to create a form to be used for graphic design requests. In class we talked about what needed to be done. It was decided that having both an online and a print form would be best because then it would be accessible to everyone and we also realized that we needed the forms to go to one exact location.

Personally, I was able to create a basic form to be used for print by looking at various other examples online and by discussing what was needed and what was not with the rest of the group. This form also created a guideline for which the online form, to appear on each of the Emerge websites, would follow.

All together, our team has met with an outside team to ensure the ease of the forms transfer onto the web, we have put in place a single email in which we all have access to make the application process easier for those needing designs, we have created a Facebook group to better stay in contact, and we have fully completed the application form as well as took minutes for our last meeting.

Our biggest difficulty was deciding the best aspects to add to the form and what to leave out. We decided to do different things for the web form than the print form such as removing the "quick sketch" area, as it is not needed online.

Before next week, I hope to be playing around with design ideas on the computer. I can't wait to start designing and I am happy that all goals so far have been met.

New Beginnings

Well, new semester, new blog posts, new opportunities.

I guess I might as well start the new year off by honestly saying that because of last weeks crazy snow storm I wasn't able to get to class and therefore I am still unsure of which group I am in and what I am to be doing. Because of this, since last week I have only gone so far as to review the slides from last weeks class. I presume that my group, whichever group that is, is doing wonderful and I look forward to joining my team and getting creative.

Before next week, I hope to have a solid understanding of my groups role within emerge. I hope to have engaging discussions and make myself available for any tasks to be completed. Also, I hope to have a group haha.

Until Next Week