1. What did you learn?

For the final project of the class, I feel that my largest takeaways were the banner process and creating typography in the form of titles, as well as organizing the space of a location in an aesthetically sound way. The text, first of all, was created with attention to what fonts I wanted to use, how well certain fonts did (or did not) work together in communicating visual consistency, and overall, placing each piece of text in the right area to balance the weight of the map and also allow for easy recognition of what text is connected to what vector graphic. The process of choosing and creating outlines for my text was likely the most time consuming part of the project aside from creating icons.

1. What was easy?

The easiest part of the map creation for me was the location. As the project was assigned, I was in the middle of re-watching Stranger Things on Netflix, and the idea seemed too opportune to pass up. I immediately surfed the web for different reference photos of the infamous setting of Hawkins, Indiana, and I was really inspired to create a map that would be (mostly) accurate to Hawkins in the show, with some of my own artistic input for the style of the infographic.

1. What was challenging?

The real challenge of this project for me was a surprisingly tedious and rather secondary part of the bigger picture, which was the Live Paint tool used to create areas. For whatever reason, possibly the way I set up my roads and my overall workflow on this piece, the live paint tool was extremely uncooperative in painting definitive sections of the map. To compensate for this issue, I actually went in with the pen tool and made my own manual sections for every colored green piece visible in the project, which worked pretty well as an alternative, even though it definitely added to my time to complete this project.

1. How could your submission be improved?

The one thing I really wanted to do with my final on this was to bring in some Photoshop corrections to the piece to add to the theme of Stranger Things. I had the idea to add an overlay of a crumbled or distorted texture under the graphics to make the map look real. Although I didn’t get to do this for my submission, I still might go back and see what texture/color corrections could be made to really make the map feel like it’s a part of the Stranger Things world.

1. How could the professor improve the assignment for the next class?

Professor Dunkle made this project really straightforward, and his tutorials were more than helpful to me for setting up this project as far as layers, reference photos, banner creation, etc. If I had to give any constructive feedback for this particular project, I would say that maybe Ben could have us create a completely fictional map from scratch as an added challenge, but also as a way to invoke even more creativity and see just how realistic of a destination students could envision and bring to life.

1. How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?

I definitely see the subtle typography in this project as a great piece of knowledge to apply to future assignments. There are so many examples of typography in graphics, and especially in advertisements. Since text is so ubiquitous and such an integral part of the visual art we see today, I think understanding how to incorporate text, when to make it prominent or subtle, and what fonts to use and pair together are all skills that I learned throughout the project creation process.

1. How did a specific reading or video inspire or help you?

I used a reference fan photo of Hawkins, Indiana for my own map, and also looked at a lot of Stranger Things art and concept art to create my own piece of Hawkins and get an appropriate color scheme:

http://thechessboardfactory.blogspot.com/2016/08/stranger-things-map-of-hawkins-10.html

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/570479477792740328/

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pn8RgFmFLbC8ZQ7SfkWlYUs_O4Q=/1400×1400/filters:format(jpeg)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16615354/STLeavingIndiana_Netflix_Ringer.jpg

For the icons, finally, I used a reference photo that Professor Dunkle posted on the project tutorial slides:

1. What did you learn?

Throughout the project’s creation, I learned how to utilize negative space for logo design. Specifically, I was able to get a logo made with the pen tool to create the shape of a cow’s head and face, then I made a path for a bottle-shaped space and used the subtract function on the pathfinder. Overall, I was really happy with the logo, as it came out with good symmetry and communicates the brand really well.

1. What was easy?

The concept of the project was really easy to work with. A simple milk carton template was fun and interesting to design for and then, eventually, to make into something tangible. I would also say that the color scheme was easy for me, because I wanted to come up with colors different from what you’d normally see in a coffee creamer product (warm reds, oranges, brown, etc). I decided to go a bit unorthodox with the pink/red/blue colors.

1. What was challenging?

For me, the challenging part was folding up the net shapes into the actual carton. I had some trouble with some of the edges and taping them together, and unfortunately my paper got crumbled up a bit in the process. Nonetheless, I was able to get some shots of the final product that seem good enough for a mock-up advertisement.

1. How could your submission be improved?

I think I could maybe try another print on the carton. Other than that, though, from a design standpoint, I kept the main logo page pretty simple, with just the logo and company name along with a gradient background. Even though it’s pretty minimalist, I like that it contrasts with the patterns pages on the other two sides of the box.

1. How could the professor improve the assignment for the next class?

Professor Dunkle does a great job with this project in getting us to think like designers for a real product. The only thing I can really think of is maybe printing on some poster paper or even using cardboard to mitigate some of the structural damage suffered when assembling the carton.

1. How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?

I hope to work on a graphic design team in my future internship, so I could definitely see the logo design and overall spacing out of vectors to be a useful skill to apply to future projects I could be paid for.

1. How did a specific reading or video inspire or help you?

I was pretty inspired by simply the idea of organic farmers and local business around Buffalo to create my company for this project. I would refer to a documentary like “Food Inc.” as inspiration for the concept. As far as the designs go, negative space logos really inspired my own logo, and I have a couple references linked below:

https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/530791506082582902/

During project 2, I learned a couple of new techniques for image compositing that I was not familiar with prior. For instance, the marquee selection and “blowing up” of a piece of an image is a great way to get an abstract-looking background, or to pull colors from the image you want to retain in your new composite. I ended up using this technique on my landscape composite image. To accomplish this, I first pulled a tight selection of my original self-portrait shot to get some cool colors. Then, I used those colors, a blue and purple, as a gradient in my final composite.

2. What was easy?

The easiest part of this project was the lack of structure, which sounds counterintuitive, but actually really helped me think of my photos more creatively. To come up with my idea, instead of worrying about exactly how I wanted to arrange things, I just looked for objects throughout my Proj 1 portfolio that all had similar characteristics: the guitar, the guitar picks, and the guitar amp. In this way, I could create a surreal-looking world in this composite where the perspective and scaling of such familiar objects are warped and altered to fit around the subject (myself) in a new and interesting way.

3. What was challenging?

The challenge of this project came with layer management. When you have a lot of layer masks within a single Photoshop project, things can become disorganized quickly. When I have an idea, my workflow usually gets pretty messy; I like to execute on ideas as fast as possible in real-time so I can see if whatever is in my mind will look good or not in practice. Because of this, there were times where I looked back and realized I forgot to properly name a layer, or misplaced an adjustment layer, etc. This being said, I am happy with how both of the final images turned out.

4. How could your submission be improved?

Typically, there is always a stronger image and a weaker image when you’re creating multiple artboards. I think, in my evaluation, that my mobile background is weaker than my landscape. The landscape does a better job portraying how far you can stretch the boundaries of compositing, and I think I could have taken it a little farther in my mobile background. At any rate, though, there is definitely a time and place for adding more elements and leaving some out, and in my judgement, I took my mobile background as far as it could go without looking just outright messy. If I could go back on my submission, I might try a completely different mobile background (I will note that I still used the elements of compositing in my mobile, such as a custom pattern, text, etc., but it is much more subtle).

5. How could the professor improve the assignment for next class?

As I mentioned in my last feedback for Project 1, I wanted Professor Dunkle to have us incorporate more graphic work into our first project so it wasn’t just photography. Now that I have the hindsight of this project being the next in our class sequence, everything has come full-circle, and I think this was a great second assignment to build off of. For the next class, it might be interesting if we had to incorporate a vector design or logo as a part of the deliverables, and put them in both the landscape and mobile background, but employ them differently in each composite (just an idea).

6. How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?

I’ve always really liked the idea of image compositing/collages as projects to take on, and I could definitely see how something like this could be used in a digital media department for a company. Professor Dunkle showed us in class during his demo how this kind of design is used all over corporate media, whether it be in websites or on social media pages, and it makes perfect sense. The combining of photography and texture serves as a great template for a visually-engaging company website or social media profile banner. I hope to work in this field after I graduate, so this project was definitely eye-opening when it comes to knowing how to work through a project like that for an employer.

7. How did a specific reading or video inspire or help you?

When I was looking through some other examples of image compositing, I came across some band websites that I thought had some really cool examples of texture and photography combined. Here are a few that are worth checking out:

https://www.imaginedragonsmusic.com/

https://www.twentyonepilots.com/

http://www.jonbellion.com/

I was also inspired by some previous work I did for my own band, Shadowlite, where I actually did a very similar project, making phone backgrounds for fans on Pinterest. Here is an example of those backgrounds:

Throughout the duration of my project and curating the portfolio with photos that all had a deliberate theme, I learned a lot about editing styles that bring together otherwise unrelated images. The focal point for my project was my passion for music, but I wanted to show different stages of, perhaps, the songwriting process, or how I make music. For instance, one image is a still portrait of myself with a guitar, and another shows a close-up of my MIDI keyboard. In order to make both pictures look similar in content, I played around with layers and opacity to have two pictures in both images with overlays. Here’s an example of this…

1. What was easy?

I think the easiest part of the process for me was picking a theme that displays my personality. I like to think that I wear my passion for music on my sleeve, and I saw this personal-portfolio creation as an opportunity to show that to my classmates or anyone who is interested. Since my room in Buffalo is pretty much a home-studio, it was easy to grab my music gear, set up a tripod, and try to capture some of my interactions with music production in a genuine way.

1. What was challenging?

The challenging part of this project was trying to keep all of my images in the same world of music-making. I feel that there’s only so much you can shoot of the same idea before things get redundant or less intriguing, so I eventually branched out for the last few images I shot, and turned to different subjects that would show my personality (e.g. coffee mug, rubix cube, etc).

I also found that some editing took a long time to perfect, and I get very particular in retouching my photos, taking careful consideration of exposure, color-correcting, levels, saturation, and so on. Even though this editing in Photoshop was challenging, it’s also what I love about shooting, so I’d say it was worth the extra time spent on smaller details.

1. How could your submission be improved?

My submission could surely be improved with more editing. While I think it is important to edit a group of photos that belong together simultaneously to ensure they look as if they’re a part of the same project/portfolio, there are often times where I’ll go back to my finals and see some error or editing mistake that I either could’ve fixed or done differently. Albeit, I’ve also learned that editing photos is an imperfect science; you can never really “finish” the photo, but you can get it to a point where you believe every possible technique that is applicable has been applied, and so you submit that best attempt.

1. How could the professor improve the assignment for the next class?

I think Professor Dunkle made our first project really engaging and fun, since the subjects/theme can be anything we want. That freedom is something I thrive off of, and I think it was a perfect first project to tackle. That being said, maybe in the future, the assignment could also feature some vector images to go with our camera shots to add some dynamic that extends beyond photography solely.

1. How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?

Adjustment layers, adjustment layers, adjustment layers. This is ESSENTIAL for photo editing. For years, I kept editing and retouching my photos right off of my original layer, which was destructive. The benefit of using an adjustment layer is that if you don’t like the edits, you can simply delete that adjustment layer and start over. It is a super simple and effective method to retouch photos, and I will surely never not use them again.

1. How did a specific reading or video inspire or help you?

I really love Brad Heaton’s work. He is the photographer for the band, Twenty One Pilots, and I referred to his Instagram page for inspiration. His handle is this for anyone interested: @bradheaton

The photo I took was of a snow tree branch, similar to the subject in my Unsplash photo. Some differences in these photos come down to the quality of my phone camera, which is worse than the Unsplash’s camera quality, which was likely shot with an SLR. However, my iPhone’s quality was surprisingly decent, as the photo did not become extremely pixelated when zooming in. I would comment that the Unsplash photo is “better quality” because of its depth of field and a distinct green tint which contrasts well with the snow and snowflakes visible in the foreground.

1. Compare your photos with the scans. What are the differences? Why is one “better quality” than the other?

Unfortunately, I was not able to access a scanner, but in following with the Zoom demo, it was obvious that scanning images provides obvious benefits in the overall quality, such as retaining brightness and detail when scanning at a high DPI. The scanned PNGs are overall sharper and better quality than any “second generation” photo taken with a camera.

1. What could you do to improve the quality of the images acquired by each method?

To improve the quality of the images I shot, there are a couple of things to be done to remedy the final product. First, I could shoot in manual with an SLR camera, tuning the settings to appropriately capture my shot. I could also use artificial lighting if it were appropriate to properly light my subject. Further, I could take the raw photo into Photoshop and enhance smaller details like blurs, sharpness, brightness, saturation, etc. using the software.