1. What did you learn?

When working on this project, I learned much more about what Illustrator has to offer. Aside from adding several strokes to a line, I improved my skills with the Pen Tool, warped objects such as the banner seen above, and learned how to combine different shapes to make one, unified object.

2. What was easy?

The easiest part of this assignment was adding the labels and tracing the map. I know that tracing with the Pen Tool takes some time to get used to, but after a few mistakes here and there, I was able to trace parts of the map in a realistic fashion. Not to mention that once you have your line segment, you can always edit it at any point, so using the Curve Tool and Anchor Point Editor allowed me to polish any misaligned edges or bumps along the way.

3. What was challenging?

The most time-consuming and difficult part of this project was definitely the symbols. Until I was able to submerge myself into using the Pen Tool efficiently, trying to draw the shapes wasn’t easy. To assist with this, I headed over to Google, looked at various kinds of of 2D images to get a reference of what I wanted to create, and then went about it from there.

4. How could your submission be improved?

One thing that I would’ve loved to continue developing/fixing if I had the time would be the junctions for the roads. If you look closely, you can see that for a few roads, the one end of the road doesn’t fully merge itself into the other connecting it. Since you have to look fairly close, I decided to leave it, but in the future, I would make sure to take more time and tweak this part a bit. Besides that, everything else turned out the way I had originally hoped.

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

Once again, I really don’t see the need to change anything. Each requirement for this project was doable and allowed for us to explore Illustrator to an extent.

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

In work scenarios or other assignments, I would be able to use the Pen Tool to accurately trace a path or object. Also, I could make basic symbols needed to indicate someone or something.

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

The main inspiration that sparked this project was my trip to San Francisco and Yosemite in 2019. Out of every place I’ve been too, this definitely cracks the top 5. Plus, I could now cross this item off of my Bucket List. When brainstorming for this assignment, I initially felt that the Bay Area of San Francisco alone was too “large-scale”, in which at one point I was tempted to scrap this idea and look for a different approach. In the end, I’m complacent that I didn’t, since not only have I actually been to this location, but it was very enjoyable being able to “recreate” my trip and reeling in all of those memories to forget the cataclysmic times of change that was 2020.

1. What did you learn?

Prior to this task, I hadn’t touched Illustrator that much, so I was dipping my toes in when working with Illustrator. So far, I’ve learned how to trace layers, create textures and text fields, use the Pen Tool to trace objects, and the Pencil or Brush Tool to make strokes. I also was informed about some size-altering tools such as the Scale tool, which is another way to enlarge/shrink the size of objects and the Width Tool, serving its role for adjusting the width of strokes made with the Pencil/Brush Tool.

2. What was easy?

I found that using the Pencil Tool was actually very straightforward, mainly since there are options to smooth out your rough strokes, especially the edges and curves. This came in handy when drawing the coffee cup. At first, my drawing was very crude and wasn’t clean. After simplifying the path using Object > Simplify feature, my concoction began to look much better. The final touch was adjusting the width of the stroke to give it more of a paintbrush feel, rather than a geometric feel.

3. What was challenging?

There were two components of this project that gave me a bit of trouble, those being the pattern and assembly. Since the purpose of this object is to contain coffee creamer, I wanted to continue this theme throughout the carton and give the consumer the impression that this is a dairy product. In light of this, I decided to do a cow-based print. Creating the shapes wasn’t bad, however, making the pattern feel seamless was totally different. In the past, I’ve always had an issue with making a clean, consistent pattern. I had to rearrange my pattern multiple times in order to achieve this look. After messing with the opacity and modifying some of the shapes, I was finally able to produce a pattern that I was happy with. The other part that I struggled with was bringing this object from 2D into 3D. Building the base and the sides of the carton was pretty easy, but pinching the two top flaps together to form the top of the carton was tricky. However, I was able to work this out and while the top doesn’t look perfect, it still looks like the opening flaps are of that as a real carton. For this step, I’d recommend having an actual carton next to your “mockup” variant. That way, you can see how to fold the the carton so it looks as realistic as possible.

4. How could your submission be improved?

As mentioned above, I feel like I could’ve adjusted my tint for the pattern. The black cow spots don’t allow for much contrast between the pattern and text, such the “OPEN HERE” label and barcode. Aside from that, I think my carton looks fine. Also, if I had more time, I would probably tweak my coffee logo. I’m not all that thrilled with it as it doesn’t really stand out and the “half and half” text is a “coffee and cream” shade instead of a vivid color like crimson, but for the time being, it isn’t the biggest issue to me compared to the pattern.

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

Just like the previous assignment, I don’t think much needs to be changed. Although the building process wasn’t easy, that’s something that can’t be altered that much, so overall I think the starter file and layout for this assignment was pretty straightforward and easy to understand.

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

In future assignments or work scenarios, I would continue to focus on the pattern aspect of things as I feel like that’s my weakest point in this project. I would keep in mind useful techniques for the Pencil Tool to draw faster and more efficiently. Anytime I’m given a logo or something to trace, it seems that the Pen Tool should suffice for this step in design.

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

As I stated earlier, the only inspiration for this project for me was the theme of a farm, consisting of cows and dairy. The company for this product is Byrne’s Farms, a long-running company, so something rustic like a farm, complements this packaging perfectly. This is why I did a cow-spotted pattern instead of something as simple as stripes or complex as coffee beans. While the coffee bean pattern is creative, the product is dairy-related. After thinking about this concept for the overall theme, I decided to apply it to my carton, hence the cow-spotted pattern. Other than that, I can’t really think of any reading or video that influenced my approach when constructing the carton.

1. What did you learn?

While engaging with this assignment, I was able to learn more about layer masks and different tools to combine images into one “collage”. Mainly, I focused on improving with the Pen Tool. So far, I really like how universal and flexible it is, compared to the Magnetic Marque Tool.

2. What was easy?

Similar to the last project, modifying the images wasn’t bad, which involved filters, layer masks, and other tools to create a unique looking image. These steps didn’t take a whole lot of time since as with the last project, I’ve had multiple times to use these instruments and experience the process of trial and error.

3. What was challenging?

The biggest challenge with this project was being able to arrange each image and your texture/background so every image could be seen and distinguishable from the others. The issue with this is that it is difficult to make the whole picture look nice, since not every image “complements” each other. This is where the tools and other blending methods came into play, but even then it was not easy. Despite this being the case, I feel like my finished product fulfilled my expectations, but I think my collage could be improved.

4. How could your submission be improved?

Regarding this project, having to mask out an object with the Pen Tool was a bit strange. The only defined “object” was a mountain range in one of my photos. I felt like while it was good practice using the Pen Tool and the concept of negative space, I felt like the object didn’t really belong in my collage. With that in mind, I understand that it is a good technique to have in mind. Also, my texture could probably be touched up or exposed a bit more, but at the same time, I like the fact that it is partially “hidden” in my collage. If I had time, I most likely would’ve added some text or animation to bring my collage to life.

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

There isn’t much that could be done to improve this assignment. However, I feel like we should try another technique to coincide with the negative space concept. For instance, maybe have a few other methods for different objects that are not “complete” or tricky to define, such as a mountain or cloud, to make these objects more “apparent”.

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

In the future, I will keep in mind the idea of negative space and other techniques with the Pen Tool, as with most things in Photoshop or other software, there are tons of possibilities to create something that seemed beyond imaginable.

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

For this project, I used the same images that I did for Project 1. The inspiration is pretty much the same, but for this assignment, I was going for a “postcard” theme. Even though it’s a screensaver, I loved the idea of merging/blending images which made me thought of a postcard that contained three images and had a gradient between each one. I thought this was such a cool effect, which encourage me to replicate it, as seen in this project. This makes you feel like you’re looking at one complete image, but with fading in/out each individual image, you attain the effect that every image is different in one way or another. I like to think of it as each image “sifting” into the next. It’s pretty difficult to explain, as it’s something that can be seen only when you look at this “technique” in action.

When working on this project, I learned some basic skills regarding Adobe Photoshop, including image modification and optimization, plus I also had a brief look at Adobe’s open-source web companion “Brackets”. In Photoshop, I was able to tinker with brightness, saturation, color correction, and layer masks. Within Brackets, I fulfilled a few lines of code that would display my web-optimized images and thumbnails in a webpage format.

2. What was easy?

Having the ability to retouch my images was really fun and opened the door for creativity. Things like adjusting the vibrance or lighting of the image wasn’t that bad. Even cloning certain parts of the image to hide “imperfections” was pretty straightforward, since I have had experience with this in the past.

3. What was challenging?

The trickiest thing about this project was the image optimization. Unfortunately, due to my images being quite large, I had to sacrifice quality for size, which made some of my images look a bit “pixelated”. However, it isn’t that easy to notice and I think for the original files being larger than I had expected, they turned out pretty well. Also, I had some problems getting my web images to display on the website, but I quickly realized that my web images had the incorrect file name. Once I managed to rename them properly, everything worked, meaning clicking on each thumbnail would redirect to the corresponding image.

4. How could your submission be improved?

I feel that the lack in image quality, some being more noticeable than others, is something to take into consideration for the future. I tried using a separate image-compression program, but nothing seemed to work that well. Had I been able to decrease the file size of the raw, un-edited image, the web and thumbnail portions would’ve turned out way better.

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

I feel like we learned a lot of skills while working through this assignment, however, I think it would be fun to explore Brackets a bit more and possibly change how the thumbnails were arranged. I’m not a huge fan of how one thumbnail is dead-center on the bottom row. Instead, the image should be shifted one to the left. This would make for a more uniform thumbnail display.

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

In future assignments or projects, I will make sure that I have more of an idea/grasp on image compression and how to properly optimize images to retain quality while maintaining a small file size.

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

The inspiration for this project relates back to my trips to two National Parks, Yellowstone and Yosemite. Although we’re supposed to take images with a high-end camera and in real-time, due to COVID-19, I thought that it was a neat and safe idea to gather some images that I had saved from my phone (iPhone XR). These images aren’t that old (2 years at most) and capture some nice landscapes of these two iconic, scenic locations. All of the primitive images looked normal to begin with, but as I enhanced them accordingly in Photoshop, each one resulted in a “cleaner” image. Think of it as applying a second, fresh coat of paint over the first, dried coat. The “second coat” fills the gaps and “holes” that existed in the previous one. Overall, I am satisfied with the outcome, as I feel that my altered images as a whole are dynamic and unique.