Project 1

Project 1A

I began by making some rough sketches of ideas with a pencil in my drawing pad. I decided on the flags because I knew that I would be able to successfully execute this idea in Illustrator given my limited experience with the program. So, in Illustrator I made the first flag using the line & pen tools. Then I joined them into a shape and chose a fill color. The flagpole is just a rectangle and circle grouped together. I constructed the letters by copying and resizing those three elements. I then played with different colors for each flag. Once I felt comfortable with my palette, I grouped the individual letters together so I could move them around the art board more easily. Then I created a second layer, made a rectangle to fit the entire art board, and experimented with background colors. The composition still looked boring to me so I made a third layer, scaled my elements up to create the background flag, and chose a contrasting color. Of course, I had to rearrange my layers for proper viewing .

So the concept here is the word "Flag" being represented by a series of flags on flagpoles. And then those letters are place on a larger flag that serves as a background element. I think I was successful as the palette and composition form an interesting design.  It reminds me of the graphics from the "Shrek" franchise.  LOL




Project 1B 01

So first, I typed my first and last name and chose Braggadocio as my font. Then I rotated (slanted) the text. Next I deleted the last letter (i) of my last name and typed that as a separate letter which I transformed by enlarging and skewing it so that it looked almost like a person looking down on the other letters.  Then I colored the letters and I repeated the colors in the lower left corner rectangle.  I added the grey letters in the background and the 4 lines (actually thin rectangles). I noticed that the text created a triangle so I repeated that in the lower left corner.  I added the pale yellow background by using the rectangle tool and moving to the back.

Project 1B 02

While I found this part of the project to be a little challenging I actually had fun with it.  Since the idea was to make something that doesn't represent you I figured I could just throw the rules out the window and do something that I normally would not do.  I think I kind of "broke out of the box" & grew a little here.  First what I did was type the individual letters of my first and last name in a plain, sans serif font so I could rearrange the letters around the artboard.  Then I jumbled the letters, grouped them together, and made several copies of that.  You can see them across the top and one at the bottom to mimic the "signature".  Then I started piling them on top of each other until they formed a column.  I grouped & stretched them & put a rectangle around it as a frame grouping that as well.  I made a 3 copies and scaled them down for the rest of the letters.  Using the same font I typed a "D", copied it, scaled it down and rotated it for the "a".  I slipped these behind the columns, then typed an "n", scaled it up to about the same size as the "a" and did the same thing.  I then typed an "o" and scaled it up to be the dot on the "i" . . . but I didn't like that, so I just put a black circle there.  Plus, I decided to keep it black & white since I'm a colorist and B&W just isn't my bag.