For this project, we were told to make an 10-second animation using our project 1 logo. My publishing company is called Sunset Publishing, channelling calm and serene feelings. Because my design resembled a book and a sunset, I wanted the design to open up as if it was a book opening up, but when it opens, it reveals the sunset. Using Professor Layton’s advice, I changed the blue to a darker shade and made “publishing” in all caps. This was created via After Effects.
I had a fun time working in After Effects to create this animation because it was fun discovering all of the different things you can do with this program. Other than the other exercises in class that we completed, this was the first time I had used AE and it definitely took a second to get used to it. I feel that Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator are all sort of similar when it comes to their interfaces, but AE was completely different.
Overall, I am very proud of what I was able to create via AE even though I was not super familiar with the program. I had fun choosing sound effects that I thought would correlate with the theme of the publishing company and its mission that I wrote for the first project. Graphic Design 2 has been a super fun and rewarding class and I loved using my creativity to turn in some amazing projects. I am excited to show them off on my portfolio!
For this project, I wanted to create a visually compelling conceptual image that had never been done before. I thought of drawing a hand touching a phone from a bird’s eye angle, I thought of creating a collage of social media icons on top of an iPhone, but eventually I concluded I needed to incorporate a fingerprint into my image. This is why I chose to do my final idea, the icons masked into a drawn fingerprint.
Out of all the projects completed this semester, this was definitely the most difficult. I created clipping masks for each icon, and then had to piece them together on top of the fingerprint illustration. Every illustration was hand draw by me using the pen tool. It was frustrating at first to figure out why my clipping masks weren’t working, but eventually, after much trial and error, I succeeded.
Due to the contents of the article, plus the illustration, I decided to title this article “Personal Touch” as a callback to the fingerprint being the mark you leave after touching something, and after touching a mobile phone, your screen has visible fingerprints on it. I rewrote the deck to something I found more intriguing than the one we were given. The new deck I came up with was “Despite its flaws, social media’s ability to connect personally holds greater value” which I think does a great job of introducing the article’s topic and relates to the image.
The main color I chose to incorporate was blue. I did this because when I think of a color that is trusting and represents stability. Blue is commonly linked to trust, security, and reliability, making it an ideal color to highlight the value of authentic and personal connections on social media. Another idea with blue is that a lot of social media icons incorporate the color blue in some way, showcasing a subtle recall of popular brands such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. By only using the color blue, the colorful social media icons in the fingerprint stand out.
Overall, I am incredibly proud of my work for project 3. I think my conceptual visual was innovative, clever, and intriguing. I am very proud to be able to showcase this on my portfolio site and show others.
I chose Gert Sellheim as my influence because I was very intrigued by his work and I thought he had a very distinct style. As I was flipping through Professor Layton’s graphic design books in class, the “Australian Surf Club” sparked my interest because of the repetition and bright colors. I thought this would be the perfect designer to choose for this project because I was already thinking of ways I could incorporate the bike track and bikers since this is a Little 500 themed poster. I also liked the use of bright colors because I knew I wanted to include vibrant colors to represent the different teams on the track.
Australia Surf Club, 1936
Gert Sellheim is a German-Australian artist/designer who was born Estonia and moved to Australia when he was 25. The poster above was a piece of work that he created for the Australian National Travel Association, and this was also the poster I used as a a true inspiration for my poster. Sellheim created many other posters for the Travel Association, but the Australian Surf Club one was the most popular. Throughout his years as a designer, he also created the logo for Qantas Airlines, which is a jumping kangaroo and is still the logo that the company uses today. More recently, Gert Sellheim was inducted into the Australian Graphic Design Association Hall of Fame in 2019, 50 years after his death. Below are some of his other works.
I chose Sellheim’s work because I thought they were very original and stood out to me against the other works I had previously looked at. My design for the Little 500 uses Sellheim’s work as influence by using bright colors, repetition, and diagonals/slants within the work. I knew I wanted to create something with the bikers themselves and I thought using a track would make sense because the lines on the track show repetition, plus it is where the Little 500 actually takes place. When illustrating the bikers, I wanted to keep it simplistic. Just like the women in the Surf Club poster, I wanted to make them all look the same and make the illustrations minimalistic. The women in the original poster are completely identical but because the Little 500 has teams, I wanted to show that by the colors that the bikers are wearing in my poster. I chose to make the track at a slant, as well as the text in the top left corner because that is something commonly done in Sellheim’s work.
Additionally, it was a difficult decision to choose a typeface. I ended up choosing an art-deco style one because I thought that matched Sellheim’s work the best. He uses sans-serif, unique typefaces, and the one I chose mirrors that.
I believe that my work does a great job representing a modern take on Sellheim’s work. I incorporated many elements that Sellheim used many decades ago when he worked for the Australian National Travel Association. I think that if someone was given my poster as well as a piece from Sellheim, they would think that they were potentially completed by the same person. My poster uses elements that Sellheim hadn’t used before, such as the checkered pattern, but I wanted to include that to stay on the Little 500 theme. It was difficult to take inspiration from a piece of work, but not completely copy it, but I think my influence poster does a great job showing influence without copying.
Overall, I am incredibly happy with how my poster turned out and I am glad I chose Sellheim as my influence. This poster will look great on my portfolio.
I created Sunset Publishing because when I think of reading, I think of something very relaxing and tranquil. Watching sunsets is something I like to do in my free time to decompress and appreciate the sky’s beauty, just like how when you read, you appreciate the narrative written by the author. Because of this, I made my publishing company called Sunset Publishing to publish books that make the reader relaxed and carefree and help them escape life’s stressful moments.
While thinking of the concept, I mapped out some ideas on paper to somehow create a logo that incorporated a sunset as well as a book or a bookmark. I found it difficult to come up with a clever way to incorporate both ideas into one image, but eventually I came up with a sunset that is made out of the book pages if the book was held upside down. I wanted something simplistic and modern as well to emphasize that the books published by this company are not over the top or super bold in their cover design.
I had trouble choosing a typography that went well with the sunset. Originally, the sunset had rigid ends (not curved), but I wanted something more whimsical and carefree, so I rounded those corners. After doing that, I thought I should have a typeface that has rounded edges to correspond to the roundness of the sunrays. I think the type I chose works out well and looks like it goes along with my logo. The colors I chose were orange and blue because I thought that most sunsets have orange in them and blue is the opposite on the color wheel to orange. The contrast of blue and orange offers some dynamic contrast to the relaxed logo and message.
In the future, I would try to create a logo that is a bit more scalable. I did my best to work with this one and make it look good both big and small, but it was difficult at times. With books, sometimes the logos are super tiny, so I think I might have to rethink the rays/amount of rays if I were to complete this project again. I am proud of my work and could see this logo used for a real company.
