It Takes All Sorts to Make the World...

Sometimes you just feel like making something.  You have no control over when, where, or how the inspiration strikes; it just does.  And you're left with the choice of letting it go (i.e. going to bed when it's late, listening to that lecture, or whatever real life issue is pulling you away) or saying to hell with the repercussions and riding it through (i.e. staying up into the wee late hours of the night to get it done).

The Latter of which is the direction I went last night, (and I have the bags under my eyes to prove it).  ;-)

But there comes a time when things just click.  And the idea in your head is clear.  And you know what your doing and why your doing.  And although things might not work out for the best (the idea in the light of day maybe wasn't so great, or the medium you're designing for might not be the best for your design)... at that moment, everything is coming together.  Your ideas are traveling down from your brain, through your fingertips and translating perfectly onto the screen.  (Ok, I'm exaggerating.  Nothing ever comes out perfect, but you get the idea).

And so, after working through those hours that change the night into morning, here's what plopped out.

2' x 3' College Promotional Poster for RCC

and for fun here it is in Spanish!   :-D

The Headline is a quote from the Spanish Novel Don Quixote

I know it isn't perfect.  The headline isn't large enough to attract from across the room, and the silhouettes in the clouds come out way too dark in print to be noticed. 

But I look at it, and it says what I want it to say. It feels the way I want it to feel. And, most importantly, it tells the story I wanted to tell... Of that time in your life when you're very young, and you think about your future... and you can be anything you want to be.

......... I don't know.  It probably does none of those things for anyone else.  But I like it ;-)...

Happy Earth Day!

In honor of Earth Day,  here's an environmental poster I made a couple months back. 

1.5' x 2' Poster Printed on a Wide Format Ink Jet

Let's all take a moment to remember to plant trees, recycle, put the toilet seat down, and do all those things that help keep our world a happier more livable place. :-)

HAPPY EARTH DAY, EVERYONE!

If you love the Earth, comment below! ;-)

A Mess of Text

When I'm designing, text is one of the hardest things for me to deal with.  I never know where to put headlines, date, important information.  And I'm constantly struggling to find interesting ways to present text, or fit it around my main graphic.

I think part of it stems from my basic philosophy when it comes to text.  A philosophy that's based on the principle of "I'll deal with it later" which ultimately culminates into "OH MY FREAKIN GAWD, WHERE THE HELL AM I GONNA PUT ALL THIS TEXT!" by the end of the project.

When I design a poster, graphic, or whatever, text is always an afterthought.  I concentrate on creating a graphic first, and once that's done, try to fit in all my text.  It's a bad habit, and I know I should give more thought to the words while I'm coming up with the main design, but, yeah. I need to work on that.

And it's especially a problem when the thing I'm designing requires a lot of text.  Which was the case with a business card that I designed for a client. 

With this project, he wanted a  bunch of information on his business card.  It didn't take to long to put together the graphic, but when I started to think about placing the text feel a little overwhelmed.  If you don't place these kinds of things correctly, you can quickly create one of those super gaudy newspaper style ads.

FOR THE  ENLIGHTENED LOVE OF PEACEFUL SIDDHARTHA, WHERE THE HELL AM I SUPPOSE TO LOOK!!!

So what I ended up doing was ranking my text based on importance.  And since I didn't want to go crazy with bright colors and contrast, I decided to primarily use text size to create emphasis. 

Front

The name obviously being the most important bit of information is presented largest.  Then the text gets smaller in accordance to how I prioritized the information. 

Back

Originally, I had the lower text smaller in comparison to the phone numbers, but ended up enlarging the "Free Estimates" line a little for the sake of balance.

All in all I don't think it turned out too bad.

So how do you guys deal with text in your designs?  Are you a slacker like me and don't think about it till you have to?  Feel free to share how you deal with the problem in the comments section below ;-).

Riverside International Film Festival Gala

So, last Friday was the Riverside Film Festival Gala, and it was pretty fun.  Not only did I finally get paid (SCORE!!!), they gave out free champagne (DOUBLE SCORE!!!).  And my fellow poster winner, Will, and I took full advantage.  So much advantage, in fact, that I took a whole bunch of disgustingly shaky shots, and didn't even think to include myself, or my fellow contest winners, in any of them until after the night was over.

But here are some of the ones that came out. 

The Main Hall

These nice people produced a movie called Santiago, which was AWESOME!  Go check it out if you get the chance.  www.santiagothemovie.com

The Che' Wall

The only thing I can think of that was bad about the night was the crap movie they decided to open the festival with.

Don't be fooled by all the name actors in it.  The reason they're raising their hands is because they're drowning in the massive amounts of sappy over-sentimental SUCK that's coming off the screen! 

But I met some really nice people, "Networked" a bit, and any night I can get free champagne is a good night. ;-)

Don't forget to comment below!

Faking Resolution Using Photoshop Filters

A lot of people think that they can just pull an image off the Internet and it’ll look great printed on a regular sheet of paper.  But the vast majority of the time this isn’t the case.   Most pictures on the web have very low resolution, (the standard being 4 x 6 in. picture at 72 dots per inch (dpi)) and that totally works for the monitor.  You don’t need much resolution on a screen for a picture to look good.  In order to get a decent looking print, however, you should have somewhere between 200 to 300 dpi (even 200 might be pushing it).  

Don’t believe me? Try it.  Just pull an image off a website and try printing it at 4 x 6.  Tell me if you don’t get a pixelated piece of crap.

But, to continue, I got a job from my production class to produce an invitation card for a house warming party.  The client wanted to use an image of their home for the cover of the card, and of course, the image was at screen resolution (96 dpi at 4 x 6 in). 

Click on Photo for Larger Image

So what do you do?  In the idealist of circumstances, I’d be able to talk to the client and explain to them why the picture was a bad choice and ask for a higher-res image.  But since I was only given roughly an hour and a half to get it done, I’d have to try and make do.  And that meant trying to up the resolution using Photoshop filters.

There are a lot of different styles/effects you can achieve from layering different Photoshop filters.  And you can use these effects to get a somewhat nice looking stylized image (like a sketch, watercolor, or even psychedelic vibe).  For this job, I decided to go for a drawn/colored pencil style.    

Click on Photo for Larger Image

I first resized the picture to the size of the card cover (8.5 x 5.5in) and duplicated the image layer multiple times.  I would use a different filter on each layer, and then blend the layers using the blending modes.  I forgot to label what blending modes I used, but I think it was a combination of watercolor, graphic pen, and a blended pointalized fill layer (filled with black).  A thing to keep in mind is exposure/brightness.  Especially if you’re using a lot of the multiply or “overlay” blend modes, because they’ll make the image dark really fast, so don’t forget about your adjustment layers like curves/levels/brightness, to adjust accordingly.

Click on Photo for Larger Image

The end result is by no means perfect, but at least the pixelation is well hidden in the guise of a stylized drawing.

Thanks for reading, and remember to comment below!