Visual Diary

In class this week we covered marketing campaigns and took a look at some good and bad examples. To be honest I didn’t have much to say on this because I don’t think I’ve ever really paid attention to the print media part of advertising campaigns. I could think of a good few tv adverts but I don’t remember any of the prints from those campaigns. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I don’t read newspapers or magazines. Bus stops usually have posters but I haven't taken one in years and there aren’t a ton of billboards where I live. There were some really great ones that people brought up in class that I decided I wanted to look at some more. Luckily there’s a website called AdWorld.ie that has a small archive of campaigns that have run in Ireland. I had a look through and the one that caught my eye was this one for Clayton Hotels back in 2016.

This week I tried to look out for movie posters for inspiration but to be honest I didn’t seem to come across any naturally. Since Covid closed the cinemas, I don’t think I can remember the last time I saw a movie poster. I have been looking online but I wanted to see some in the flesh so I dug out some old DVD’s to look at. One in particular caught my eye which was my favourite movie as a kid, Hook. It’s a really simple design as it focuses on it’s literal name by showcasing Captain Hook's hook shining. It’s slightly menacing for a childs movie especially with the black and red colour combo but I suppose that does reflect that it’s supposed to be aimed at children and their parents. The title font also includes a hook shape on the H letter and the red inside is notched as if it was a treasure map ripping at the edges. The genre of movie I’m picking won’t be the same as hook but I thought it would be interesting to look at how a movie was advertised in the days of trying to stand out among piles of other Video or DVD artwork when movie rental shops like XtraVision were still around. Also forgive the awkward reflection in the DVD cover, they are unmercifully shiny and no matter what angle away from light I took the image you could still see my shadow.

For our lab this week we had three tasks to complete: Use a mock up from http://dribbblegraphics.com/ and replace the placeholder image with our own, replace it with a video and lastly create a mockup placeholder smart object on top of a stock photo of a phone. This is a really useful skill especially in web design which I hope to build more knowledge in. I also noticed that websites like Redbubble have the same images for the likes of wall art but only the art piece changes, so they must follow the same technique. Below are the my three lab creations:

This week in the lab we covered saving and exporting in Photoshop as well as creating gifs. I was surprised we were covering this as I wasn’t aware they could be created in Photoshop and was a really fun exercise. The gif I created was very basic and a nod to the old DVD screensaver where the DVD symbol always looks like it’s about to perfectly hit the corner but it never does. I created some text with my name in a font called Permanent Marker and then created a video timeline. It was surprisingly easy to do so I’m really chuffed we covered this in the labs. Below is my gif:

Since our Image assignment requires us to take and edit images to tell a visual story related to a specific emotion, I have really tried to learn all I can from these labs. They seem to be really necessary skills to improve using Photoshop. At our lab this week we were using some familiar techniques to enable us to bring lightness (or darkness if that’s what you prefer) to an area in an image. In the image below it was to lighten the foreground of the image. Then we added another image that we applied Screen to turn the black background transparent and then we removed parts of the image to create a vignette to draw the eyes into the photo.

The next image, I edited the photo to lighten the person’s teeth. I think this a really useful skill especially if I am editing headshots. I do think I need more practice as I missed some of the back teeth on the left, which isn’t the worst thing in the world but to make the photo look less edited and more natural I think I could have captured more of the back teeth. I also think maybe I lightened them a little too much as they are tipping to a more grey tone which is unnatural.

In our last lab we covered layer masks and how we can utilize them to edit text or shapes to appear as if they are behind or wrapping around a person or object in an image. It was interesting to be able to see how the technique was very familiar to the techniques we used in previous weeks. I had made a mistake when practicing removing lines I drew around a person and was using a soft brush which was giving me an uneven line but I then switched to a hard brush. Below are the two practice runs of using these techniques.

After using the object selection tools to select people out of pictures in photoshop last week, I started to notice more and more uses of this technique in the media. It’s oddly satisfying to look at things now and think “I know how to do that!”. I probably couldn’t cut someone out of a background as good as this yet but I’ll keep working towards it! 

The Photoshop techniques we learnt in our lab this week was using the object selection tool to move, remove or isolate an object from an image. We also used the clone stamp tool to help copy parts of the image to hide imperfections. The tools we covered are ones I imagine most people think of when they envision using photoshop. More practice definitely needs to be done to refine my skills with these tools.

The lecture this week on Imagery was really helpful to me as I recently got a dslr camera and want to know more about taking better photos. Although a lot of the tips were directed at how to make the best of your smartphone camera, there were still a good few general nuggets of info that I could apply to my digital camera. One of these was shooting in Raw instead of JPEG. I had vaguely heard from looking at other photographers that they shoot in raw but didn’t really know what they were talking about. But since now I know that it takes in as much information as it can to easily allow you to edit your images and doesn’t apply any colour tones to the image, I can understand why it’s the professionals preferred choice. Another nice thing to hear was that we shouldn’t get discouraged if we start shooting in raw and don’t think the images are very good and that a lot of beginners can get frustrated shooting raw at first but it’s a process and skill that can be worked on.

In the lab we covered various image editing tools such as brightness, curves and content aware fill. I think one of the parts of the image editing skill that I will need to work on is knowing when I need certain tools and when too much is too much. Regardless since I really wanted to try out every tool we covered I used each one to edit this next image. The second one is the original. You can see the content aware tool did a good job of the sky but some of the bottom right started to see a bit of pattern repeating. I purposely left as is to demonstrate that the tool won’t always get it exactly right.

This hand soap is something I look at everyday and don’t think much about but now that I’m actively looking out for different designs it’s funny that this became a bit of an inspiration. With the music poster assignment in mind I was keeping my eyes open for a way I could convey the relaxing and sometimes epicness of Indie music. I got my band and album name for their tour from an online generator and the album name was “Underneath the celestial ether”. 

Above is my product of our latest lab. In the lecture we discussed the elements of typography and the subliminal messages that they convey. I did my best to keep this in mind when practicing in the lab. After watching Dara explain how to do the effects like mirrored text, RGB split and making text look glitch, it just had almost a creepy feeling to it so I decided to do a Stranger Things kind of style since, you know, creepy. The actual font of Stranger Things (ITC Benguiat) was €45 so I decided to go with something free instead. That led me to this font that is very Law and Order vibes called Playfair Display SC.

I kept things very simple with this lab just because I really wanted to make sure I was getting familiar with all the tools needed and try to use the shortcuts more. By the end I could really see the difference in how quick I was doing things like cmd T for Free Transform etc... 

I definitely could have been more even with the eraser tool on the inverted text but I do also like that the unevenness makes it seem as though it’s reflected on a natural body of water. The glitch was probably the trickiest part for me just because I forgot to rasterize it but after that it was smooth sailing,

In our lab this week we covered gradients and clipping masks in Photoshop. Above is the product of my messing around with those tools. The image inside the triangle is from Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/xHhaFZb_ln0 which really inspired me as I really enjoy images of nature and I especially liked how saturated the colours are. I then used the clipping mask to contain the image within the triangle.

Then I decided to play with the gradient tool on a layer underneath the triangle. The way I chose the colours was by using the colour picker to grab the three main colours from the image (dark green from the forest, Beige for the sand and dark blue from the sea). For the direction of the gradient, I again wanted to follow the direction of the image by setting the gradient at an angle. 

For my first blog post and first week back as a student I thought this book was a befitting example of visual communication that speaks to me. The most obvious statement I could make about the design of this cover is that it very clearly is a cookbook with various flat graphics of food and kitchen utensils. I also think the use of the flat art gives it a more modern feel which would appeal to the target audience of young students. Not forgetting the image of a pizza slice which is the epitome of what a student typically eats. Flat art is something I really love the look of, especially since I’m currently a Software Engineer and would see this type of style all the time.

The use of reds, oranges and yellows, I can only assume, were chosen for a similar reason to why McDonalds and other fast food logos use those colours. According to a lot of food marketing and design blogs those three colours are best for invoking attention when it comes to hunger. Jen Davidson Design has a great image that breaks down what each colour can mean in relation to food sales.