EGD E-Learning

For this weeks EGD e-learning, we had to finish 1 out of 4 tutorials that were posted on olive. Since I'm quite a new of photoshop, I decided to just do the easiest tutorial and learn more of the basics. Even though it was stated as an easy mode tutorial, it was nothing but easy for me. I found it hard to understand quite a number of the steps but after consulting youtube for photoshop tutorials, I was able to figure most things out. 

I find this tutorial extremely useful as one of the things that they focused on was how to use brushes to add in texture and dimension. At first, my piece looked really dull and 2D as it was all just a solid black colour. However with the brush tool, I was able to splatter some portions of greys, black and white all over the piece. The splatter effect also helped make the piece look as though it would have an interesting texture if you were to touch it.

I also plan to use this in my EGD advertisement as now, there are a lot of white spaces and the piece looks very 2D and it does not stand out as much as I would like it to.

EGD Assignment Update Part 2

For the words "DEMI LOVATO" and "Featuring the single "Give Your Heart A Break"", I used the font Gills Sans because it looked similar to the font used on the cover of Demi's album. I also changed the spacings in between the letters to mimic the design of the album cover. This was done using the tracking tool. The outside of the album was also outlined so that it would stand out more from the background. This was done by drawing lines around it and then changing the stroke size. Lastly, the line that says "Now Available On iTunes" was also changed so that it would be the same length as the bottom side of the album. This helped make it look neater and it was also done using the tracking tool. 

For the other parts of my poster, I was planning to maybe use some brushes to add some texture and dimension to it. I got this idea after learning how to use the brush tool in photoshop during this weeks elearning. It not only helped to cover blank spaces but it also made the piece look more vintage and less 2D.

The Fault In Our Stars

Recently I got the chance to watch The Fault In Our Stars and I was impressed with not only the movie, but the poster. The one thing that I really liked about this poster was the layout of it. To me, the words and the images have been placed perfectly and they not only balance the whole thing out but they also compliment one another. If you were to draw a line horizontally midway in the poster, you would be able to see that it is balanced. The top with the image of the two main character and the bottom with the words and the background of the grass. Another thing that I really like about this poster would be the colours. Everything looks to bright and vibrant and it is definitely what caught my attention in the first place. The way the colours both have contrast but still manage to compliment each other. An example would be the cool blue of the words against the vibrant green of the grass. To me, this poster was just designed just as perfectly as the movie was directed.

EGD Assignment Update

So far, what I have done is that I have used PhotoShop to isolate certain images so that I could use them without the background. In order to do this, I used the magnetic lasso tool. At first I was having a lot of trouble with this tool as I could not select the whole image and some parts would get cut out. However, I've learned that in order to fix this problem, all I had to do was to increase the frequency so that the computer would be able to pick up more shades and tones of the different colours. Next I used the line tool to draw lines on the right side of my advertisement. I did this as it is the same design that can be found on the DEMI album CD. This would help link the advertisement to the album and also it was a good way to fill up the blank spaces without overpowering the main point of the whole poster. Lastly, I used text tool to add in some words. 

Next, I will be adding in more typography to give my audience more information about the product. However, I need to remember that it cannot be too fancy or it may overshadow my images which are suppose to be the main focus of my advertisement.

Lyric Videos

I used to think that graphic design only applied to posters or advertisements but now after learning more about it, I can see that it is important even when creating a video. Lyric videos to be exact. When an artist releases an official music video to one of their songs, it is up to graphic designers to best portray the song through pictures and words. This can been seen very clearly through the lyric video that was recently released for 5SOS's new song "Don't Stop".

Another type of lyric music video that is very common would be those that only contain words. Now, with the help of graphic design, people are able to creatively flash the lyrics on the screen instead of just rolling them out in a form of credits like they used to do. Designers are now able to arrange the words so that they flow and this not only makes it look better, but some words can also be portrayed differently in order to give them more emphasis. An example of one such video would be the one made for The Ready Set's "Young Forever".

Demi

 DEMI album cover

DEMI CD design

After having more time to think about my EGD project, I have decided to change my entire idea and do a poster on Demi Lovato's album, Demi. While I was overseas I managed to go to many CD shops and I got to see many albums from different bands. One thing they all had in common was that the graphics used to design these albums was simply incredible. Most of the albums that I saw had very simple designs and the designers made sure that focus would not be drawn away from the artist. I plan to adopt this feature when doing my poster as I do not want people to notice other things before the artist. In order to achieve this, will be using white spaces in my advertisement to capture the attention of the audience.