December 2016 – My Small Hands

Audience/Message: My audience is prospective employers looking to hire a visual designer. My message is to convince those employers that I would be an asset to their company and that my designs are unique.

Process: I started out not having any idea what kind of a backdrop to do. I wanted some continuity, but nothing too repetitive. I chose to go with lines that were overlapping using colors from the designs. I started by having the the lines overlapping and set then neatly lined up with the corner. I decided that that looked too boring and there was nothing fresh about it. So after some playing, I decided to group the four lines and then rotate them at different angles on each slide. It took the design that I really liked and pumped it up and made it feel more fresh and unique. I then saved the slides as jpegs, and then as pdfs to upload into a slideshare.

Critique Report: I critiqued Elizabeth McDonald’s, Seattle Benson’s, and Kelly Coppin’s slides. Seattle critiqued mine and complimented my color scheme and the organization of my slides but didn’t give any suggestions for edits.

Font Name/Category: Title: Brush Script Std (script) and Adobe Fangsong Std R (serif). The slide texts are Brush Script Std (script) as well.

Message/Audience: I chose to do my magazine spread article about my own conversion story. I wrote it and realized that it could really go in either the New Era or the Ensign. The audience would be any young teenage or older LDS member. The message was to convey through my conversion story that not every conversion has a huge, emotional story behind it; sometimes a moment filled with peace is sufficient.Process: I thought drawing up four sketches would be overwhelming, but as I got to my last sketch, I really felt the creative juices start to flow. I can appreciate the process of multiple sketches and not getting discouraged or just settling with the first sketch. Again, the sketch map made it so much easier to just insert images into the layout. InDesign is a little less intuitive for me, so I struggled with it a bit more than PhotoShop, but I can see its benefits. I had to do multiple prints and even change some of the colors to get it to turn out how I wanted them to be when printed.I wanted to keep similar shape lines with the ovals, but I felt that the line in the wall behind the girl and the hard lines of the edges of the Book of Mormon allowed me to get away with the rectangle shape on the left and the square quote box with rounded edges. I think the quote box tied it all together.I chose teal, indigo, and gold colors. I used the eyedropper tool on the Book of Mormon to match the shade of the quote box.

Critique: I was critiqued by Sister Larson, Cristiano Trindade and Seattle Benson. They all suggested that I adjust the spacing in the quote box, and with Sister Larson’s help, I learned how to ignore the text wrap option. Sister Larson and Seattle both thought that the bar on the left may print out too dark and suggested that I lighten it or adjust the color. I did that as well. Sister Larson suggested that I work on my title. I played with the fonts and feel better about it. Since I changed to font of my title, I felt I needed to change the font of the quote box so that the complemented each other.

Font Name/Category: I used Vladimir Script (script) for the title. Perpetua (serif) for the byline and quote box, and Arial (san serif) for the copy.

Sources: Book of Mormon, Girl reading scriptures, Young Women Medallion