Here you can see summary of the final versions of my work in semester 1 –
Presentation of my logo:
Business card:
Letterhead:
CD/CD case:
Month: December 2013
Correcting photos for photo essay in Photoshop CS6
When I have chosen photos I want to use for my photo essay, it was time to correct them in Adobe Photoshop CS6. Like I said in my previous post, I intend to have them in black/white colours (read my previous post to find out the reason why).
Screen shots of my working screen:
1. After I cropped the chosen photo, I selected ‘Adjustments’ and then ‘Black & White’.
2. It came up with quite a lot of different ‘Presets’ so I went through them all and chose the one that I like the best – ‘Maximum Black’.
3. I thought it was a bit dark for my liking so I selected ‘Adjustments’ again and then ‘Levels’ to control levels of black and white colors in the photo.
4. When that was all done I still thought that I could do a bit more to make it a bit lighter so I selected ‘Curves’ and made it a bit lighter.
5. All I had to do at this point was to save it and the job was done.
Final version of the photo
I corrected all my photos by choosing the same settings.
Taking photos for my photo essay
Today was the day when I started to take photos for my photo essay.
The camera I used was ‘Nikon D3200’. (picture downloaded from Google)
It was quite difficult to do if I’m honest – try to take photos from different angles, make sure that the light was OK etc. While taking photos, I realised that I had a little problem as quite a lot of them were blurry. The problem was the MISSING TRIPOD!!! That’s why I had to use other things I had in the room with me like a chair, table, even a bottle to support my camera so I could take nice photos. It was like a little adventure that took more than 2 hours to finish.
After I got home and had a look at all photos (85) on my laptop, I wasn’t very happy about them as a lot of them were very blurry but I could still choose 17 great ones.
Overall, it wasn’t a too bad experience and I was quite happy about the photos that I’ve decided to use for my photo essay.
Creative part of my brand identity – CD case/CD
For creative part of my brand identity, I decided to create a portfolio CD with a CD case.
A little research about designs on the internet gave me ideas on what I want to do. I typed into Google ‘CD case templates’ and found these two pictures that I really liked and wanted to do use them for my design:
This gave me an idea how I want my CD case to fold.
After a little discussion with my lecturer about designing ideas, we came up with a better idea how to fold a CD case.
Screenshot of the layout (working screen – Illustrator CS6):
Theory of artwork
Before I start to talk about the theory behind the artwork, here is the final version of it –
- For the front page of my CD case I decided to use exactly the same design as I used for back of my letterhead (for more information read article below).
- The back of my CD case is a continuation of circles but without the grey line through full page as I didn’t think it was necessary to use it there again as it creates a nice flow of the design. The circle space I used for my contact details (the exact font is used that I used for my logo).
- On the top, you can see a lot of different words with different sizes and colours. The reason for it is that I decided to fill inside of the case with words that are appropriate for the industry I will work in and also for my personality so when you open the case, it will tell you a little bit more information about me but still not enough as main information will be on CD and little booklet of my work put inside.
- The text on top is in a different font, it’s more bulky that gives the connotation of not being scared to try and experiment with different things within the industry. Different sizes of font are used because I wanted to highlight important words that stand out from others. Using different colours are used for the same reason as the different size of font.
Final version of the case:
CD design
For my CD design, I downloaded from Google this picture as I needed to create my own template for designing:
I uploaded it into Illustrator CS6 and created a circle on the second line and also in the middle circle for the hole and covered it with my design that I used for back of my letter head.
Screen shot of working screen:
Then I right clicked the mouse and chose ‘Arrange’ and ‘Send to back’.
At the end I hid the background CD template and the final version was done:
Letterhead – designing process
When the design of my business card was all done, I started to create the letterhead for my branding. The reason for it was that I found out in my research that brand identity has to have the same design; it has to be linked together. The design that gave me an idea how the layout of my letterhead is going to look like was this:
(the picture found on Google)
I opened Illustrator CS6 template that we designed in one of graphic lectures.
As you can see on the picture, I used ‘Bleed’ (set up to 5mm). Bleed is not a designed part of artwork and allows you to run artwork to the edge so we ensure that the ink is printed to the edges and not cut off.
This is the final version of my letterhead design.
Back side of the letterhead
My lecturer gave me an idea to design back of my letterhead.
Theory behind it/color scheme:
The reason why I’ve decided to use a green background is that it is the main and brightest color in my logo design so when you fold a letter in to the envelope, the first thing you will get after opening the envelope will be a nice bright color (something unusual). The grey line across the full back symbolize wrapping – again, it creates ‘wow’ moment after opening envelope as it gives a nice contrast with the green colour. The reason for the grey colour is that I used it in my logo as a second colour. The logo itself is in white because it wasn’t readable after using it on the green background as the colours are the same. The circles that you see on the design are there because of the theory of dots in my logo so I felt the need to include them in design of every part of my brand identity (symbolisation of my business and people coming to me for designs, attracting people to my company).
Final design of back of my letterhead:
Changes I made to my business card design – final version
This is the final version of my business card design after changes that I was intend to do —>
Research about the topic for my photo essay/photographer
It is always a good idea to do research before starting to do any work. So this is what I did.
I typed into Google ‘ composing of music’ and it came up with so many different pictures but here are examples of a few of them that I would like to do myself. All of these pictures have techniques that we have been looking at in semester 1 and have to demonstrate in our photos.
By taking photos with this topic I would like to show to the viewers my passion and love about the music as it’s been a massive part of my life since I was 8 years old. My photos are going to be black and white as it is symbolic to black and white keys on piano.
Photographer that I like
The photographer that I have always liked is Lindsey Byrnes. She takes great photos of celebrities and music groups, her photos have emotions and this is what I really like about her work.
Few photos downloaded from Lindsey Byrnes’ website:
The site after changes
In my last post I was intended to make a few changes into my site. I managed to do them all so here is the result
I downloaded social media icons from this site: www.creativenerds.co.uk
1. index.html
2. about.html
3.portfolio.html
4.gallery.html
5. contact.html
Designing process – part 2
After my last post about how I created container with reduced opacity, I’ve designed nearly a full website.
Screenshots of pages:
- index.html
2.about.html
3.portfolio.html
4.gallery.html
5.contact.html
After discussing design of the site with my lecturer, I’m going to make a few changes to the site.
These will be the changes that I intend to make –
Text:
- no italic font (not easy to read)
- titles the same size as size of navigation
- get rid of all underlines
- get rid of the web address in contact.html
- text in footer area: 2013 Designed by Veronika Lesnakova – the same size as size of main text
- get rid of text: Connect with me
Color:
- change red color in navigation into green color (the same green that I used for my logo)
- set borders in gallery to the same green color as navigation
Icons:
- change text in footer for links into icons – wordpress, facebook, youtube
Container with reduced opacity
In this post, I’m going to explain and show how I created container with reduced opacity on my site.
All you really have to do in your CSS sheet is add ‘background’ in to container (I named it ‘middlebox’ in my CSS) and set up choosing colors in numbers in Dreamweaver. Then pick color you want in palette of colors. It will automatically add right numbers into code (I chose black). To reduce opacity of color, reduce last number in code. That is all you need to do.
Screenshot of CSS code:
Screenshot of the result:
I did the same thing for ‘footer’ but opacity was set up to higher number 
so this way you get darker effect as you can see on the picture above.
Veronika Lesnakova 