It didn’t occur to me to post these before, but why not?

We have a teacher here at the Art Institute who, in lieu of a final exam, asks us to throw together documents with certain technical specifications to prove we know how to use the software. He tells us repeatedly that he won’t be grading on design… which is, of course, a thinly veiled invitation to design THE UGLIEST THING POSSIBLE! (cue Bach’s toccata of doom.)

WARNING: READ BEFORE VIEWING
A very small percentage of individuals may experience seizures when exposed to certain color combinations or display typefaces. Certain conditions may induce previously undetected symptoms even in persons who have no history of prior design sense.

I scored 100% on both of these.

Illustrator final (PDF)
I was young and insecure and couldn’t fully let go of certain design principles.
Subtly ugly at best.

Indesign final (PDF)
You have to know the rules to break them. Tons of progress in this area.

Have your conversations ever turned into lengthy monologues puncutated by “and then we moved to…”? Does geography class make your heart pound? Have you ever wished you could instantly show, not just tell, about your past? If so, Life Maps are for you.
They are pocket-sized, ready to pull out at a moment’s notice for a journey through your past.

I created my own Life Map for Indesign class.
This is a difficult piece to display electronically, but I’ve done my best!

Here you can see some of the steps of the map unfolding. My hometowns are centered within each panel and appear to seamlessly connect as I move outward from the center. The steps you don’t see include panels with memories from each place lived in… if you want to read those, come find me (I really do keep this handy!) or my parents. They also have a copy.

This is the back cover.

portfolio package teaser, printed on transparencies

accompanying cover letter and resume

This is the final project I threw together for Indesign class. I love the visual possibilities afforded by transparency, layers, light, and reflections. Some of you might remember that I made a 35mm slide lamp shade for my bedroom at one point – influence? Probably. Also, this alludes to the old method of printing designs onto transparencies and projecting them onto light sensitive paper to in order to enlarge them.

The first published version of Beauty and the Beast was a rendition by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in 1740. The best-known written version was an abridgement of Mme Villeneuve’s work published in 1756 by Mme Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont.

In the last two weeks, I have taken a translated version of the 1756 text, illustrated, and bound it into a 5″x6″ book, pictured above.

Pretend you’ve untied the blue ribbon, and peruse below. Viewing in fullscreen is better!

I designed a restaurant menu…

… that when opened, reveals this:

And unfolded once more, becomes:

Wine selection on the back.

I almost wrote “Whine & Dine.” Sigh. This one really was a shot in the dark; I know nothing about magazine layout — yet.

Check it out, this one actually clashes color with my blog! I’m branching out!

Class: Electronic Design
Assignment: Create a standard tri-fold brochure about “magic” – whatever that means to you.

I learned two new things from the Holy Spirit while working on this project.

The first involved the  background on the white panels. From pretty early on, I had a vague image of it in my mind as well as the term “wedding dress.” My assumption, however, was that the idea in my mind was not fully developed enough to be important. I only knew that it looked a little bit lacy, so I searched for lace pictures online.

I found one that maybe said “wedding dress” and had it in my document for a while. It was really far from what I imagined initially, though. In the end, I felt led to trash it and actually sketch out my original thought, even though I only had the very basic form. Seeing it on paper, I was really surprised by how perfect it felt! I recreated it in Illustrator, plugged it in the brochure, and voila. I’m not going to underestimate my mind’s eye so much now.

The second big thing was the body text that goes in the four wavy frames. I had also built the frames early on and put filler text in them, because I was very unsure of what the true content should be. I was anxious about what my teacher and classmates would be thinking when they read it, and getting NOWHERE. Then I was given the thought, “this project is an act of worship to Me. What would you write in here if no one else was going to see it?”

Talk about relief! I made a new text box and started writing to Jesus instead of to men. It flowed. But here’s the confirmation, and I kid you not – when I pulled the inspired text into the wavy text frames, it was exactly the right length to fit there. I love Him!!

By the way, I don’t try to make projects that match the color scheme of my blog. Really, I don’t – it just happens.

… Et ça recommence! After three weeks of wonderful break, I’m back at it, at least part time.
I’ll be taking Techniques of Photography and an Indesign class until October.

Indesign is part of the Adobe Creative Suite; it’s the program that facilitates layout and multi-page documents. Our first assignment was to make a zoo brochure of sorts on an animal of our choice. A friend introduced me to pangolins earlier this month, and I knew I had to do it!

Because of time restraints, I basically just threw this together. The point was not so much the content, but the mechanics of creating a simple book in Indesign – which I already knew, thanks to Yearbook class in high school.

Enough disclaimers already. Please sit back, relax, and be wowed by the poetry of the Pangolin.
[issuu layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fcolor%2Flayout.xml backgroundcolor=F7E1B7 showflipbtn=true documentid=090723035114-c28bbb7061814554b8921fd64a135ea9 docname=pangolin username=Adomissioner loadinginfotext=The%20Pangolin showhtmllink=true tag=pangolin width=590 height=464 unit=px]