Weekly Summary

Design has gotten off to a great start.  I was able to brush off some of my old Photoshop skills and have some fun as well. I’m really looking forward to doing all the daily creates and designing some unique things.

As far as my creates, here is what I made:

In honor of our Final Four win, I made a Michigan Basketball inspired image: MICHIGAN!!! This was my own design.

For the daily creates:

1. I did a minimalist travel poster for Westeros, one of the Seven Kingdoms in the Game of Thrones TV series.
2. I did my own version of a movie poster inspired by Zero Dark Thirty, Zero Dark Thirty – My Own Movie Poster
3. For my color splash, I did an American Flag.

For the poem inspired design, I made this: Laughter and a Flower

For responses, I really enjoyed the readings and going through the Albums without Sounds website. My thoughts on an album I found creative and interesting can be read here. My response to Minimalism and the example I found can be found here. 

 

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MICHIGAN!!!

In honor of our trip to the Final Four, here is my own design!

I started by getting pictures of each of the starting five players, Coach Beilein and the Michigan Block M.  I then used the text tool in photoshop to type out Michigan and find a font that I liked. I chose Impact for the font.  I then used the Magic Wand tool to select each individual letter.  Then I went to the different images of the players and pasted the letter.  I used the magic wand tool again to delete the black fill of the letter, leaving just the outline selection in the picture.  I used the arrow keys to move the selection and then copied and pasted onto a new photoshop canvas.  I repeated the step for each letter until I spelt out Michigan. I used the signature block M for the first letter. I then filled the background blue and I was done!

 

Minimalism

The concept of minimalism is very cool.  I think its because of the simplicity of the images that make this form of design so enticing.  Some of the posters I looked at had such little going on that they were somewhat tricky to identify.  I came across a lot of superhero posters, which was fairly unsurprising.  Since these characters have so many weapons, symbols, costumes and what not, they are easily identifiable and easy to turn into minimalism posters.  I tried to find one that didn’t involve a superhero, to see how other types of movies would be transformed into minimalism artwork.  I cam across a poster for The Lion King which really struck me. The clean background of a green landscape and a blue sky with a shining sun and Pride Rock in the distance. Pride Rock is a huge element in the movie, so it is fitting that it is in the poster.  I think the outline of the lion is a neat touch but I think the entire piece would be better suited without it.  I thought it was too overpowering due to its size and location in the middle of the photo.

I thought the ideas of Proximity, Alignment and Contrast really shined through.  The difference in colors, the separation of the symbols and the way the image was structured really seemed to work.

Westeros

Welcome to Westeros, one of the Seven Kingdoms in the HBO series Game of Thrones.

To do this poster, here is what I did:

1. Found a picture of Westeros online
2. In Photoshop, I outlined the kingdom and Select > Inverse and deleted the landscape
3. I used the gradient tool to make my own gradient from colors that were in the original background, a green and a blue. On a new layer, I clicked and dragged on a slight angle in order to to have the green slope.
4. I used a filter on both the Kingdom and on the landscape.  I went to Filter>Filter GAllery to bring up all the filters and view them in real time before applying it.  For the castle, I decided on Poster Edges.  For the background I used Cutout.
5. Online, I found a website that generates text in the Game of Thrones font. I generated the Westeros text and then added it in.  I used a Layer Style by double clicking on the layer.  I used the Bevel and Emboss effects.

Zero Dark Thirty – My Own Movie Poster

1. Found a picture of a ZERO DARK THIRTY poster here: http://www.impawards.com/2012/zero_dark_thirty_ver8.html
2. Typed out “The Time We Got Osama” with the text tool in font Helvetica Neue.  I opened the Text Tool Toolbox and played around with the spacing between the letters in both the vertical and horizontal directions.
3. Then I did Layer > New Fill Layer > Pattern
4. Set opacity to 90% and clicked ok and Set Scale to 90% > Clicked OK.  This acts like a layer mask so I needed to get a fill on the text I had written before, which was i plain white font
5. So I selected the text and then went to Select > Inverse while on the layer mask
6. Then I filled in the layer with black to reveal the background but leave the text with the pattern
7. Added clever subtitle in plain white font. The for both the title and subtitle are Helvetica Neue

American Flag – Color Splash

For the color splash daily creat, I immediately knew I wanted to do something with an American Flag.  It is such an iconic figure and I knew the colors would stand out really well on a black and white background.  Here are the steps I took to create this image:

1. Open Image
2. Duplicate Layer
3. On original picture went to Image> Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and turned Saturation down
4. Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All
5. Selction of Flag using Magic Wand, Quick Selection and Lasso Tools
6. Contol & Backspace to fill with Black to reveal background color.  White Reveals and Black Conceals
7. Played around with Brightness/Contrast as well as Hue/Saturation under the Image>Adjustments tab.  Did this on the orignal picture layer in order to play with the colors that were coming through the layer mask.

 

Albums Without Sound

Album 322
The Parliament of Dreams – You Can’t Get To Sleep

Scrolling through the Albums Without Sound website I was really intrigued by all of the designs.  Some covers were better than others, but I found them all interesting and cool.  The concept was really neat and I thought the whole idea of a random Album Title, Picture and Band brought some cool pictures and text together.

The one above, Album 322, was one that really caught my eye.  I thought that the album title and the picture tied together really well.  The darkness of the photo with the brightness of the light in the background contrasted really well. I thought the album title “You Can’t Get to Sleep” somehow was captured really well by everything going on in the picture. The black text on the bright light background also played really well tying into the background of the picture.  The Band Name, above the light with the song title, also ties in well due to its orange color.

As far as the image itself, I really like it because of its simplicity.  The darkness and the protruding light that reflects on the ground.  The brick walls on the sides are very subtle but it definitely plays a part in the picture.

When I saw this picture and read the album title, I immediately thought of the late nights when seeing a room in a house completely dark but that little light from a television. I also thought about the single street light on a dark street late at night.  The idea of sleep and darkness with a little light made so much sense, no matter how random it was.