Emily Scherer

Cuisine: I used the typefaces Sacramento and Barlow/Barlow condensed because I thought they paired well together and wanted my word cuisine to look fancy and then the other words to be pretty basic. 

Sports: I used the typefaces Tangerine and Josefin Sans because the same thing I said above, I wanted the word sports to look fancier than the other words like London. 

Architecture: I used the typefaces Gloria Hallelujah and Gill Sans because I wanted the word architecture to look like it was built like a building and had character and then I wanted the word London to be basic and show off something similar to London’s typeface called Johnston that they use on everything with their underground subway system and maps. 

History: I used the typefaces PT Mono and Lora because I felt like they went together really well and complimented each other and gave a more basic vibe because there wasn’t a need to make anything fancy on this frame.

1. I learned that the typography that you use actually matters and there are ways you can space out the words or condense them to fit the space without having a lot of margins. I learned to use up my space and fill it up with the text. I liked how in this project we had to combine things that we learned in class like the typography and the color schemes. 

2. What was easy for this project was picking the place I wanted to base it on because I love London and all the aspects of it like the cuisine, architecture, sports, and history, and thought it would be a fun place to base my stamps on. I also thought placing the pictures and the typography went pretty smoothly and didn’t have too much trouble with where to place it while also using the rule of thirds. 

3. What was challenging about the project for me was finding a color scheme that works with my images and the place I chose and also doing a different color scheme for each frame. I would have to make a rectangle with a color in my color scheme and put it behind my photo to make it fit in more. 

4. My submission could be improved by possibly improving the typography to fit the boxes more because sometimes there is blank space around it. I did go and fix my submission after I already submitted it because I only had one generic color scheme for each frame and was too boring so I added more color schemes to give variety. 

5. How you could improve the project for next time could be to emphasize more about the different color schemes because I wasn’t sure If we needed a different one for each frame or if I could stick with just one and I realized it was for each frame because it said something in the google slides, but I don’t believe it says it in the actual instructions. 

6. I will apply what I did on this project to future scenarios because I am sure when I have a job someday I will need typography for a project I will have to send my boss and is just a good skill to have. Also knowing how to create a color scheme will come in handy if I am on the creative side for a marketing team. 
7. The reading that helped me with this project was “Alignment Principle of Design” because it showed me examples of what is good alignment and what is bad alignment and what I should try to avoid doing. Also showed me how useful a grid can be when trying to create good alignment.

Emily Scherer

Metaphor: Apple of my eye

1. I learned from this project how to combine two pictures in a creative way. I had to think outside the box and not just stick with a simple design. It got me out of my comfort zone and forced me to use photoshop and not just stick to Figma. It made me more comfortable with my abilities to use photoshop and learned things on there I didn’t know before and was able to successfully combine two images to represent a metaphor. 

2. What was easy for me was creating the pattern for the background because I just used two icons on iconify on Figma and just put the apple in the middle of the pupil of the eye to show the metaphor “apple of my eye”. It wasn’t too hard to make a pattern for the background of the image because I just duplicated it once I had a pattern and then also lowered the opacity to make it transparent and could see the image on top. 

3. What was challenging for me was having to use photoshop because I haven’t really had to use that very much and was confused about how it worked. I had a hard time trying to figure out how to make my eyeballs in the trees different sizes. I continued to work on figuring it out and was successful.

4. My submission was improved after submitting it because I tried to do it without photoshop and it didn’t look as good as it could have so after the feedback I remodeled it and changed what I had before which was cartoon eyes to real life like eyeballs and had to merge it into the tree instead of what I did before with just placing the cartoon eyes on top. 

5. How you could possibly improve this project in the future is to maybe not even allow Figma for this project so people are forced to use photoshop to advance their skills and get more advanced-looking work. 

6. I will use what I learned from this project in the future because I will need the knowledge of how to use photoshop and Figma in my future classes so I won’t fall behind and will help me with my future job someday if I am on the creative side of an ad agency. 

7. The reading “Exercise 11.2: Visual Metaphors” by Amy Gillard inspired me and helped me come up with my project and gave me examples of what it is supposed to look like and had something to base it off of, but then still did a completely different thing. It also showed me how mind mapping is a good way to brainstorm different unique ways you could represent the metaphor. For example, for mine, I did an apple and an eye which is the most basic thing you can do, but after doing a mind map I realized I could do so many other things like an apple tree but instead of apples falling from the tree it could be eyeballs.

Emily Scherer

Urban city- Analogous

Seascape- Complementary

Arid desert- Triadic

Outer Space- Split complementary

1. I learned how to create a color scheme like split complementary and match it with a landscape like desert. 
2. The easy thing was creating the shapes and design of the frames to match the landscapes like extraterrestrial I made planets and stars. 
3. What was challenging was to create a color scheme with one color and different hues because I felt like I kept wanting to choose different colors. 
4. My submission could be improved by fixing some of the rules that I may be breaking like don’t be a wimp and make things bigger and also not have things so symmetrical and diagonal symmetry. 
5. You could improve the project by adding two color schemes in one landscape to make it a little more challenging. 
6. I will apply this to my future job because I will know the color schemes and how to design a website with a working color scheme. This will be beneficial instead of choosing random colors I think look good together
7. Design principles: Smashing magazine made me have a different perspective because I never thought too in depth about the use of color and similarity and contrast and how important it is. 

What I learned was the use of different shapes and how a simple shape like a circle could represent a spider. I realized that you don’t have to make a descriptive photo to show what you are talking about and can use some basic shapes and people still can understand what it represents. It also made me understand the gestalt layouts because I was able to make my own examples. 

What was easy for me was creating the shapes to match the rhymes because it wasn’t very hard to come up with a pattern and a gestalt layout to match the rhyme with just using basic shapes. Which was interesting because I thought that would be the hard part because of how we couldn’t make the pictures descriptive. 

What was challenging for me was making sure I wasn’t breaking any rules like the margins inconsistencies and what was called being a wimp and the rule of thirds. Also not always having things symmetrical but to make things off-center. I struggled with this and found that I did these things a lot and then had to go in and change it to make sure things aren’t breaking these rules. 

My submission could have been improved by making things bigger and taking up more space instead of having a lot of white space between things. 

You could improve this assignment for next class by saying that each box needed at least 2 gestalt layouts and the student would have to figure out which ones would work together to make a pattern that would represent their nursery rhyme. 

I will use my knowledge from this project to help me in future scenarios and jobs by being more prepared for the projects to come because I know a lot more now than I did at the start of this project. It will help me in future jobs because I will know how to make basic designs and have it represent a story or a song without having to give it too much detail, which is what I would do if I didn’t learn what I did while doing this project. 

I used the student examples and the readings to help me create my project and help me know what it is supposed to look like and see if I was on the right track. The website thoughtbot had a reading called “Using Gestalt Principles for Natural Interactions” by Carolann Bonner and it helped a lot because it gave me simple definitions of what the gestalt principles meant and how the shapes correlated with each other.