Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Illustrator Logo


We started using Illustrator to recreate a logo that we drew by hand. The logo that I decided to use was a combination of a pill and a piece of candy. The pill is in the center as the piece of candy would be in the wrapper, then on the ends there are the pieces of wrapper. I decided to alternate black and white on the separate pieces so that the different sections were all more visible. The ends of the wrapper had lines like they would if it were real but they weren't very necessary so I removed them. Also since the ends of a wrapper are generally bigger than the candy i decided to make them much larger then the pill. But when they were significantly larger then the pill the whole image didn't read correctly. So I made them larger then the pill but not as large as they had been. When I was using Illustrator I found it fairly easy to recreate the hand drawn logo. Having the scan of the original and using it to redraw the logo made it easier to keep it more natural but also to improve those parts that could be better. While at times I did find it difficult to make some of the tools in Illustrator work how I needed them to I eventually completed the logo of the pill and candy.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Logo

When we began making our logos I was apprehensive because I had never began a drawing of anything by making lists of words. Once I started making the lists I still didn't quite understand how this would work. I spent a long time drawing out little pictures for all of the words that I had written out. When I had all of these images drawn up we started to combine them. I found it hard to figure out how to combine very different images into one. But then it began to come together and it became easier to see connections in two separate images and combine them. I made several combinations but the one that stood out the most was of a dress and a curving road. While it did begin with a swimming suit instead of a dress but the shape of the dress worked much better with the way the road looks. After many different alterations to the shape I came up with one that both showed the curving road going into the distance and the image of a dress. While I didn't know how this way of working would go when I began I found as we went along that this process was very helpful for getting your thoughts in order to make a better logo as your final product.

Gestalt

Gestalt psychology shows that the mind can create a whole image even when it is not all there or can see an image even though it is simply a group of lines. There are four main principles that make this easier to understand.
The first is Emergence. It states that an image can just be seen and that there is no actual explanation for it, it is simply there. The next is Reification which states that all of an object doesn't have to be visible in order for the whole image to be visible. An example of this is from my Drawing 1 and 2 classes. we had an assignment where we were onlt supposed to draw the still life by using the corners of the objects. This was to teach us how to empahsize lines but also that an entire object doesn' t have to be drawn for the whole object to be visible. Even though there were only corners it was very apparent that they were drawings of boxes and gourds. The third is Multistability which shows that one can see two images bounce back and forth in a single image. This appears in optical illusions where for example you can see a vase, or a face on both sides looking at each other. The last is Pragnanz which says that humans like things to have an order so we manage to find one in everything so that it is easier to digest and understand.

Story Graphic

With the story graphic I began with the theme of "Impressive outcome". When I thought about something that had an impressive outcome all I could think about was something growing, and I began to think about a tree. They begin as seeds but they grow into massive trees. From this i came up with three images, one of a seed in the ground, one of a small tree coming out of the ground, and one of a fully grown tree. These three images became my first graphic.
But this image contained three separate images and they were all only lines and not really any shapes. To make this graphic work better I combined the three images into one image and I made it into more one shape. The second image contained a fully grown tree with the image of a small growing tree inside of it and a seed under the ground at its base.