Kelsey C design @kelseycgraphics-blog - Tumblr Blog

Book cover

Book Arts

When this project was first introduced, I had no idea what I wanted to do for it. I went back and forth between ideas until I finally decided that I was going to alter a book. I had always wanted to experiment with book alterations so I decided this would be the perfect chance. I did a lot of my research on Pinterest which is always a great resource because you can save a lot of your ideas. Making a prototype definitely helped me a lot with figuring out how the final product of my book was going to turn out. The prototype helped me organize what page of the book I would put each design on. It also helped me with figuring out which concepts would be in the before and after section of the book. I feel like my concept was portrayed pretty well in my final design of my book. Since I was going for a “find yourself” type theme, the illustrations I used without the book represented different ways people find themselves. Since I didn’t have to physically bind my book, I decided to sew my pages together with yarn by hole punching the pages and weaving the yarn through. This made it so that the pages I wanted the viewer to see would be easier to find than just flipping through the book to find them. Overall, I enjoyed this experience because it took me out of my comfort zone which we all need to do once in a while. I haven’t painted in years and that was the main thing I did throughout the book and I forgot how much I really enjoyed it. My only wish is that we had more time so I could have expanded more on my theme. I think in the future I will keep doing book alterations.

Sticker Collection

When we were first assigned the sticker project, I had a lot of different ideas running through my head. The one that stuck out the most to me was I wanted the sayings to be puns. I had an idea envisioned in my head that I would create graphics of food and have the puns tie in with those. For example, “you stole a pizza my heart”. After thinking about it for a while, I thought of other subjects that people would enjoy a sticker of. Alcohol was the one that really stuck out to me. Everyone jokes about alcohol and for the most part everyone can relate that they enjoy it. The age demographic for this subject is also targeting people in my age group which will help when people are picking out their favorite stickers. After I picked my topic of ‘alcohol puns’, I then had to decide which 5 different alcoholic beverages I would make a sticker for. I decided on beer, wine, margarita, vodka and an old fashioned. I chose 5 different ones because not everyone has the same alcohol preference. I decided to do a different color background on each sticker that would tie in with the vibe of that specific drink. I also decided to use the same font in each sticker to make it more cohesive. Each graphic is the same type of style. I was going for a very simple, get to the point type of graphic. I’ve noticed with many of my projects, I tend to go for this simplistic style when using illustrator. I placed each graphic in the center of the sticker so they would all fit nicely together. When looking at them all together, I believe they look like they could be sold in a set. Looking at them, I also believe these would work well as greeting cards or post cards to send to friends. I would love to make more of these and plan on giving extras that I have to friends and family for Christmas this year. The hardest part of the project for me was challenging myself with these graphics. Some of them were harder than others to make because all the curves and everything they had in them. At the beginning of the semester, I had barely ever used illustrator and after these two courses I feel much more confident with what I can create. I feel I have grown a lot throughout the semester between Typography and Graphic Design. I enjoyed the process we used with sketching and blogging to get down our ideas. It was also helpful to use Pinterest as a resource throughout to help get those creative juices flowing. The project that was the biggest breakthrough for me was either the magazine project or this sticker project. I really looked forward to coming to class throughout those two projects and am very proud with how my finals turned out. I feel I overcame the fear of trying new things from this class by doing things differently than I had done before such as sketching and using different software besides just Photoshop. The other Adobe programs used to look intimidating to me but I now feel very confident with them thanks to this class. If I could take this class again, I would try to do more sketches and maybe end up scanning them in to live trace them in Illustrator. That is one thing I’ve never done before because I’m not the best at drawing. I believe this class really helped me out and I S enjoyed the project and Jen as a teacher!

#made with tumblr #gif

For my book project, I’ve decided to alter an already written book. The book I will be working with is “Looking for Alaska” by John Green. I’ve decided to go this route with the project because I’ve made an accordion book in a previous class so I wanted to change things up a little bit. I’ve also seen many books that have been altered online and I found some really sweet designs. I’d like this book to really represent my inner feelings to go along with the story line of the novel. The mood of the book will have a lost feeling and will be split up by the “before” and “after” chapters. I’d like this to represent the stage of finding myself. So in the before chapter, I will be added things such as balloons flying away, burnt pages, dried flowers, and burned photos. The photo’s I will be using are of flames which goes along with the cover of the book that has smoke on it. In the after section of the book when I “find myself” I will have a landscape of space with astrology and constellations, a drawing of a colorful tree that is now alive again, a moon and stars, a lighthouse with a light shining through. This is kind of contradictory to the book because in the “before” and “after” in the book, everything good happens before and after wasn’t as good. But I’m organizing it this way because I feel I have grown over the years and want to represent that. I will be utilizing the text in the book by blocking out certain words with paint to make a new sentence. To book mark the pages that I have altered, I will be hole punching the edges and using ribbon to bind it together. The main materials I will be using will be film photographs, paint, ribbon, colored pencils, and fire. My goal of this project is for people viewing it to understand that it may take a while, but everyone will find themselves at some point in time.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/130111876714774284/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/130111876714774166/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/130111876714774228/

For the sticker assignment, my idea is to make a collection of stickers with the idea of “punny alcohol sayings”. My original idea was to use food sayings such as “you stole a pizza my heart”, but I figured the audience of people who would like alcohol stickers would be more adult ranged. I will be making 5 stickers which include, beer, wine, margarita, vodka, and an old fashioned. Each sticker will have a different background color and a different pun quote. I will also be using a different font on each sticker that will fit the saying. They will all still be cohesive by keeping the graphic in the middle of the sticker and they will all have a similar design feel. My goal is to keep these stickers simple, yet funny.

Human Rights Design Rationale

For my human rights poster, I decided to chose Article 12. I chose this article because I am not a very political person and all the other articles had very passionate meanings to them. One thing I do believe though is that the government should not have access into our personal privacy. Article 12 states, “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” Basically what this is saying is that people will not be subjected to interference with their personal lives by other people, which includes the government. When I saw this, I felt it wasn’t actually followed by everyone because there is many rumors that the government hacks our phones, computers, and other methods to keep a close “eye” on us. This is what I based my poster on. In my poster, I made a door, a large key-peep hole, and abnormally large eye. This is to represent that the government is spying on us but they don’t want us to know about it so they keep it under cover. I also used a pull quote and put it on the key hole that states, “They say that people who worry about their privacy have something to hide… but do they?” This is to represent that just because people want their privacy and don’t want people spying on them doesn’t neccesarily mean they are hiding something bad. It just means that this is their right and people are supposed to be respecting that.

My type and images create a unified and readable poster and gets to the point of what I’m saying. Throughout the poster, I have more imagery than text so that people who may not speak English will understand the concept of the point I’m putting out there. I chose to work with the focus of eyes for this project because I’ve always been very interested in eyes and tend to design a lot of my work incorporating eyes in there. When I was researching posters, it helped me by showing other conceptual pieces for the same idea of article 12. During my critique, I made a few changes which included alignging the text in a different way, changing one of my type faces, and just over all making everything flow more together. I chose the colors black and red because those colors have a very mischievous feel to them and that’s the feeling I’m trying to portray with this poster. I used the color blue for the eye color so it would draw the viewers eye to what’s most important.

Fonts by: Font Squirrel

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Design Rationale Info Graphic

I believe my info graphic successfully advocates for the topic of saving the bees. In my info graphic, I included main points that are vital information on how we as people can help by getting the bees off the endangered species list. I used two different fonts throughout the info graphic so it looked clean and legible. I also set up my graphics in a way that would lead the viewer to the next section of information without being scattered. The color scheme I used is unified and the colors of important information is bright so it pops out and gets the viewers’ attention. I believe if someone was walking past my poster, they would quickly understand what I am trying to advocate for. By just looking at the imagery and not reading the content, it clearly depicts that the bees are in some kind of danger.

The process of this info graphic has come a long way from when I first started it. When I first started, I struggled to figure out how I wanted to display my information in a clean, but interesting way. I decided a cool way would be to put the information into big honeycombs. Having big honeycombs all over the page ended up looking a bit messy so I left some of them and left some out. I felt researching about the topic first helped in a way because it let us decide what important graphics and information we could include in our poster.

Final critique really helped me fix and put the final touches on my info graphic. I ended up moving my beehive on the bottom to the right, I made some of the text more legible, and I found a place to add my sources. I feel that critiques really help people see some final touches their piece of art could use by hearing others perspectives on it. Before this project, I had not used Adobe Illustrator more than a few times. I enjoyed this program and felt that this project really helped my learning and understanding of the different programs within Adobe. Overall I really enjoyed this project.

Cole, Samantha. "Here's What You Can Do To Help The Declining Bee Population." Popular

Science. Bonnier Corporation, 10 Oct. 2016. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

Erbentraut, Joseph. "Now That Bees Are Endangered, The Rest Is Up To Us." The Huffington Post. N.p., 5 Oct. 2016. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

Why We Need Bees. N.p.: n.p., n.d. NDRC The Earth's Best Defense. Natural Resources Defense Council, Mar. 2011. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

Link to fonts: Font Squirrel

The loss of bee’s in the U.S.

The topic I will be trying to advocate for is saving the bees. Recently, bees have been added to the endangered species list. In the most recent years, bees have been in the decline up to 95%. Every year, more than 15 billion dollar’s worth of crops in the U.S. are pollinated by bees including apples, berries, cantaloupes, cucumbers, alfalfa, almonds, etc. (NDRC) They also produce about 150 million dollars in honey annually. (NDRC) The people I will be targeting through my info graphic will be farmers, the U.S. government, and people who eat fruits, vegetables, and honey since they will be the ones effected by this. This is an important issue that needs to be addressed because if we have no bees, we will be at a loss with our crops. I will be using shades of brown, yellow, and black throughout my info graphic. I will be using the type faces of “lobster1.3” and “learning curved dash pro”. Above, I have provided a style tile to give an idea of how the colors and typefaces will flow throughout my design. Below are the sources I will be using for my information about the loss of bees.

Save the bees

Bees have recently been added to the endangered species list.

Have declined by 95% in the recent years

If bees disappear, we will lose one of the worlds best pollinators

In decline because or urban development

Fruit, nuts and seeds require pollination

Habitat loss, pesticides, wildfires, and loss of genetic diversity is part of endangerment

MLA Sources

"Bees in Trouble and Agriculture Decline." Endangered Species International. N.p., n.d. Web.11 Oct. 2016.

Cole, Samantha. "Here's What You Can Do To Help The Declining Bee Population." PopularScience. Bonnier Corporation, 10 Oct. 2016. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

Dell'Amore, Christine. "For the First Time, Bees Declared Endangered in the U.S." NationalGeographic. National Geographic Society, 1 Oct. 2016. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

Erbentraut, Joseph. "Now That Bees Are Endangered, The Rest Is Up To Us." The HuffingtonPost. N.p., 5 Oct. 2016. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

Karimi, Faith. "Bees Placed on Endangered Species List -- a First in the US." CNN. Cable News Network, 1 Oct. 2016. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

"The Bees in Decline." The Bees in Decline. Green Peace, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

Why We Need Bees. N.p.: n.p., n.d. NDRC The Earth's Best Defense. Natural Resources Defense Council, Mar. 2011. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

My sketches consist of many different ideas I’ve had for my info graphic poster. After sketching different things on each one, I’ve decided to combine a lot of the elements into one poster for my final.

After a month process of designing my baking magazine spread, I am proud of how it turned out and I feel that it actually looks like a magazine spread. It was a long process for sure and took a lot of tweaking for me to be happy with it. The advice I received in critique helped me along with my process of alterations. During progress critique, I didn’t receive too much advice. But when I asked for Jen’s opinion, she told me I should add scissor markings around the recipe and make the color box smaller with information about the ‘bakery’ these desserts came from. I loved this idea and found real bakeries in states that focused on the specific desserts. I also used real recipe instructions. From the final critique, people suggested that I add my pull quotes on top of one of the photos. I figured if I was going to add a quote to one page, it would keep the flow if I added to each photo. I love the way it looks and I think in a way it adds more to the photo as if you were actually going to eat this dessert. Overall, I had fun with this project and am happy with how the final turned out. If I had more time, I would have added more spreads to go with the magazine.

Photography by Kelsey Carroll

Title font- Archistico (font can be used for commercial purposes, but not to be sold)

After a lot of revisions, I am finally happy with my postcard. There were many things I needed to overcome with this project not being an expert in InDesign. I enjoyed learning about my typographer Matthew Carter and all the accomplishments he had during his lifetime. After my progress critique, I changed many things people suggested.

The magazine I will be designing will be called ‘Sweets & Treats’. The magazine will display various different kinds of desserts and the recipe to go with it. The style and tone of the magazine will be pleasant and happy, because that is the way desserts make people feel. I chose shades of purple and gray because they have an elegant and ‘sweet’ feel to them. These are also the colors that I used in my magazine title so I felt it would flow well. I chose the font Baskerville because there are many different weights of it and it is a nice, simple font. I have gathered photos from an advertising project I did this past year which was also focused mainly on different desserts

#GraphicDesign #magazine #sweets

For my magazine design, I’ve sketched out ideas that are for a baking magazine. I chose baking as my magazine theme because I have a huge ‘sweet tooth’. This is why I also sketched out an idea for that to be the title of my magazine.

#GraphicDesign

Kelli Anderson

After watching the Disruptive wonder for a change: Kelli Anderson, it gave me a new perspective on design. She started off by giving the basic vocal used in design such as type, shape, color and texture. She said that these words enable us to make things. She also talked about how the world we live in is full of order and when we start to experience things over and over, it starts to lose its meaning. She demonstrated this in her example of redesigning the New York Times. Her and a team of people decided to design stories in the NYT and watch and see how they react differently to it. They made it so that it was printed, looked and even smelled exactly how the magazine would usually look. The reactions of the people proved that these are not stories they see everyday and how surprised they were because the world for a moment was not ‘in order’. I thought this was really interesting and unique because they were trying to grab peoples attention like most designers do but in a different way than normal by shedding some positive light in the news.

#kellianderson #tedtalk

The famous typographer that I will be making a postcard for is Matthew Carter. Matthew Carter was born in London on October 1, 1937. He is the son of Harry Carter, who was a type historian. Carter entered the business of type design following in his fathers footsteps. When Carter learned punch cutting, there were very few type designers. In 1965, Carter joined Mergehthaler Linotype in Brooklyn where he worked with Mike Parker on adapting the Linotype library. Years later in 1981, he left Linotype to establish bitstream, which was one of the first digital type foundries. He made his living exclusively designing type and worked in every medium that existed in the era of Gutenberg such as metal, wood, film and digital. A few of many typefaces he designed include Bell Centennial, Carter Sans, Elephant, Fenway, Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma, etc. Many of his designs were privately commissioned for companies personal use. Some of his accomplishments include becoming a AIGA medalist in 1995 and that seven of his typefaces are in the permanent collection of the MOMA as of 2011. Carter sees two tendencies in type designers, they either have a strong visual personality or their work does not elaborate a strong signature aesthetic. Carter has a strong visual personality within his work because all of his typefaces flow together and in a way you can tell which he has designed.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Carter#Typefaces

http://www.printmag.com/interviews/an-interview-with-matthew-carter/

https://www.aiga.org/medalist-matthewcarter

fontzone.com

http://typedia.com/explore/designer/matthew-carter/

#matthewcarter

When I was assigned the objects project, I knew I wanted to create something that had to do with the fall/october. I thought ‘BOO’ was a word that everyone could correlate with october and halloween time. Every object I used has to do with halloween. I used googly eyes to shape in to the letter B. I used a spider web to form one of the O’s. And of course I had to use a pumpkin for the last O. To give it a more halloween feel, I added a few other object such as candy corn, I spider in the middle of the web, and pumpkin lights. I used the pumpkin lights as my main source of lighting to give it a more mysterious feel. I put the objects on a white background so that the color orange throughout the photo would really pop and catch your attention. The letters are meant to all be capital letters because I wanted it to feel as if the word is being shouted at you so you would be scared, which is what most people are trying to do when the say BOO! The two objects I used for the letter O didn't give me much room for flexibility, but the letter B I was able to be more flexible and play around with. I really enjoyed this assignment because it was fun to make something with our hands and see a more creative light to typography by making letters out of things you wouldn’t normally see them as.

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