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!