Project 3: Magazine Spread

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For my magazine spread I chose to do the phonebot story. I chose this because it seemed the most interesting to me from the moment I heard about it. I also was able to imagine an conceptual illustration for this as soon as I heard what it was about. I decided on the name scams for scams because its simple, rolls off the tongue and adds intrigue for the audience.

Click the photo to see the full magazine spread

I chose the muted green color as my base because I felt like it fit well with the colors used in the illustration. I decided to go with a scam likely call because it is an image that anyone would understand. At first I toyed with the idea of it on the screen where it is still ringing and you have to choose to accept or decline, but with this story I felt like that wouldn’t make complete sense for the first thing you see. So I decided to have the phone call answered and put 20 minutes because in the story they talk about how one time a bot had the scam caller on for over 20 minutes. I also played with the location of the time, because on an actual phone call the time goes above the name of the caller, but as I drew the animation it looked like the time the call was taking place, so I decided to make it less realistic and put it under (where I think most people imagine the call time to be anyways).

My biggest problem I had with making this magazine spread is the length of the story. Since it’s such a short story I knew I needed to add more things to the spread. I knew I wanted a sidebar so that was able to easily take up two columns. I also knew that I wanted text boxes of things the bot can say that was quoted in the article to pop up on both spreads of the article to keep the continuation going. As I said prior this story intrigued me a lot that I even did some outside research on the company. This research helped me find the logo for the company that I was also able to add onto the second spread. The logo was sadly only in not the best quality but I still wanted to include it in my project. I decided to also add a tiny phone with the phonebot’s number at the end of the article to tie it all together and clear the dead space. I think this tied everything together on this page and also the previous spread while still giving information from the article.

Funny Bunny Logo Animation

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Click the ‘play’ button to view the video!

For the final project of J465, we were tasked with creating an animation for the publishing company logo we designed in Project 1. My company, Funny Bunny Publishing, is dedicated to engaging young minds through whimsical and imaginative narratives that nurture a sense of childlike wonder — something I believe can only be found within the pages of a book. The logo itself draws on the youthful and playful qualities often associated with bunnies, and I wanted the animation to reflect this same sense of joy that is emblematic of the company’s values.

To capture the playful spirit of the company, I decided to incorporate the distinctive “hop” of a bunny. I animated the position of the bunny in the logo to move up and down, mimicking its natural movements. To enhance this effect, I added “bouncy” sound effects, which I feel brought the logo to life and reinforced the lighthearted tone. The bounces added both visual movements and an auditory charm.

In addition to the bunny’s movement, I decided to animate the text by dropping in the words Funny, Bunny, and Publishing at separate times. This choice added depth to the composition. However, I struggled to make sure the words dropped in at the same speed. It took time to adjust, but ultimately, I’m happy with the result.

I applied a “Hand-Drawn” effect to the overall composition to enhance the playful tone even further. This stylistic choice gave the impression that the logo had been sketched in real time, complimenting the whimsical feel I was striving for.

This project was a really enjoyable opportunity to experiment creatively. Since this was my first time using After Effects, there were challenges along the way, but I feel accomplished. Moving forward, I hope to edit the logo and its animation, such as adjusting the font sizing and refining the design of the bunny itself. I would also like to animate the whiskers and the ears so they move separately from the overall bunny head.

Logo Animation

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Click here to watch the full animation!

For the final project, I wanted to create an animation that represented screenwriting or typewriters. My publishing company I created in the first project was centered around book-to-screen adaptations so I tried to pay homage to both the film and writing aesthetics.

I made some major changes from my initial logo. Although it was already very stripped down, I wanted to make it feel more cohesive, and include a more prominent illustrative element. I did this by taking inspiration from the silhouette of an old typewriter, sketching out the upper part of the carriage and the radial area where all of the keys feed into. This felt like the perfect way to include elements of the machine without recreating it entirely.

I also changed the original font. I had previously used courier, as it is the industry standard for screenwriting, but it felt a little clunky and cliche. I changed this to a simpler serif that I still felt represented that typewriter-feel without straying too far from courier.

This project was a lot of fun as I’ve been wanting to get into working with After Effects for years. After all of the exercises we did leading up to it, I felt a little more familiar with the program and some of its main features. I came into this class with zero experience with animation and I’m glad I was able to make some progress in the program.

Sandbox Publishing Animated Logo

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Click play to view my full video.

For our final design project, we were tasked with taking our original logo creation from the first project, and apply animation to it to create a smooth, animated brand logo. The video had to be ten seconds long and feature original animation that conveyed the aesthetic of the brand well. Thus, for my brand (Sandbox Publishing), I wanted to maintain the fun, creative elements that I had established early on and convey that through the motion of my image.

I took my Sandbox Publishing logo and separated all the different parts of the image to be their own unique layers in Illustrator. Then, I put them into After Effects where I could adjust them individually as I pleased. I settled on the idea of having my shovel “dig up” the sand in the book, which would pour the sand out the bottom and reveal my logo underneath. The first part of this was pretty simple. I had my sandbox/book plop down into the frame, then my pail, then my shovel. Using positioning and rotating keyframes, I had my shovel then lift up and move as if it was digging into one of my sand hills. I found a grainy-looking fade-in animation preset for my text which made it look like it was being built up out of sand. Last thing left was to actually have the sand pour out of my book.

Unsure of how to start this, I turned to the web, looking up tutorials on how to create sand-like motion in After Effects. After much searching, I finally found a helpful video explaining the effect “CC Particle World,” a preset that created a firework-like motion of particles that was easily adjustable. I matched the color of the effect to my sand, and changed the motion from an outward burst to a directional line, where the particles would fall downwards in a straight line. I played with the size and shape of the particles until they felt like sand, and then set the in and out points and where the speed of the falling sand should ramp up, then slow down. I also added a “bounce” effect to my sand, where once the particles hit a predetermined “floor” position I selected, the sand would bounce and spray up for a moment before disappearing. This gave it a realistic feel that acted the way that sand really would if you were to pour it on the ground. I put my sand layer behind my book to create the illusion that the sand was bursting out of the book from the bottom, and timed it with the fade-in of my text.

Overall, I am incredibly happy with how this animation turned out. I think it is fun but looks professional, and the sound effects I chose to go along with it (just some sand sound effects and an upbeat background music selection) all paired really well to make a full video.

Conceptual Illustration: Old Tech

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CLICK TO SEE FULL SPREAD

Almost immediately, after looking at the stories, I wanted to do the Old Tech story. I thought it had the most creative freedom and the content was very interesting. I made myself sit down and for 20 mins write down every piece of tech that I could think of. Then I did that process once more but only thinking about things that symbolize the idea of “old”. After this 40 mins session, I looked at my two lists and tried to think of ways I could use and of the elements. I wanted the imagery to not be too obvious that it would be unoriginal, but I also wanted the idea and themes to be easy to recognize. I first landed on the idea of the dentures in water, in my mind they mean that someone is old and they have a simple enough shape to mimic. Then I went through my tech list and tried to mentally place items in the glass. I eventually landed on the older rotary style phones because of its shape looking like the top denture in a glass. I modeled the glass, phone, and dentures after real subjects and added highlights and shadows in order to make them seem more 3D. I wanted it to be realistic enough so that people aren’t confused at first glance. Then I based the typography and the name of the story off the illustration. The name came from the idea of a “bit” of nostalgia, where I replaced the bit with bite, referencing the dentures. The color came directly from the phone’s reference in hopes of tying them together. For the font, I knew I wanted a sans serif because then it is less likely to steal the show from the illustration. To finish off the type, I italicized the “bite” so that people would hopefully notice the wordplay. The piece still felt disconnected, so I went back to my references and saw the wire that connects the receiver and the phone and decided to model a brush off the design. This worked on two levels: it allowed me to connect the two pages and it allowed for some of the white space to be taken up above the title. The final decision/intention I had for the spread was to figure out the footer. I despised the way a traditional footer looked on and around my image. After much trial and error I rotated the text and it fit. I think it not only serves its purpose, but it is also a rule bending move that DEADHEAD Publications would be proud of. Overall, I am super satisfied with the result. 

CLICK TO SEE FULL SPREAD

Conceptual Illustration – Personal

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For this project, I decided to design for the personal article choice that is about connecting with those we have lost through technology, specifically social media.

At the beginning of my design process, I first gained inspiration by creating a design inspiration board on Pinterest where I gained insight into how I wanted my piece to look, which was collage-style. I was also really inspired by pieces Professor Layton showed in class that had a collage aesthetic, as shown below.

Illustration by Mike McQuade for POLITICO
Illustration by Mike McQuade for POLITICO

I wanted to bring in a “hand-made” quality to my conceptual illustration. For this, I first sketched out an idea for my piece, which involved hands reaching out from phones to touch one another. The idea for this sprung from wanting to highlight the importance technology has had on keeping connections close for those that are far away or may have passed and you want to continue to remember and commemorate in your life. I searched on many websites to find stock images and decided on hands that are sticking their pointer finger out to each other to indicate that they are reaching out to each other. They are coming out of phones because it symbolizes how even though they may not be near they can still connect through technology. It was difficult for me to decide what else to do to the conceptual image once I had the basic hands and phones down. I ultimately decided to add circles and rectangles around the image to give it more of a collage and “scrapbook” feel as though someone was putting stickers all over the page. Aesthetically to me, it felt right. I chose greens and blues for the colors in this piece because I felt they were calming and also represented Earth-like colors to me, which I wanted to draw upon because the piece highlights how you can connect with others on technology, even if from across the world!

For the title, I actually sturggled for a while as I found it difficult to come up with a name that would bring together the whole piece. I landed on Humanity Behind Tech because in the piece, the author Nick Bilton dicusses how he usually writes about the negatives of technology and how this piece actually dicussed a positve which I thought “Humanity Behind Tech” would be fitting because this time he gets to finally highlight a psotive of techbology, an aspect of it that brings people together.

For the whole layout, I ultimately decided to go simple to save space for the words and to unite the conceptual image of the piece with a more simplistic layout that gave space to the main imagery.

Overall, I enjoyed making this piece and found that it pushed me out of my comfort zone, as I don’t make many magazine spreads. Next time, I would spend more time on the overall layout of the piece and put more effort into the imagery on the second spread.

Sunset Publishing Animation

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Click the play button to watch the animation.

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!

Conceptual Illustration – Personal

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Click to see a PDF of my full design!

For this project, I designed a conceptual illustration for the “Personal” story. This story is about how social media’s personal touch outweighs its downsides. It highlights examples where social media has helped people to feel connected to loved ones who have passed away. The story conveys the message that although these people are no longer with us physically, social media helps keep their memories alive in the digital world. I wanted my conceptual illustration to convey this same message.

I began my creative process for this project by sketching different conceptual images that all convey the message of the story. I eventually decided on this image of a social post of a family on a laptop. I felt it effectively illustrated the idea of connection via social media with loved ones who have passed. In this family photo, I added a halo above the father and also pixelated him while leaving the mother and son unpixelated. I made these design decisions to convey that the father had passed away, but social media kept his spirit alive and connected to his wife and son.

Next, I decided on the headline Connected Through Loss. I felt it effectively reflects the story’s message while also grabbing the attention of the reader. Lastly, I formatted the layout of these magazine spreads. I used blue colors from my illustration throughout both magazine spreads so that everything in the article was visually tied together. Additionally, I feel like blue can be related to heaven, and therefore relates to this story about social media connecting people with those who have passed on.

Overall, I am happy with my final design for Project 3. Designing a conceptual illustration is more challenging than many other graphic design projects I have worked on. I felt that it encouraged me to push my creativity even further than usual, however, I had fun working on it and am proud of the way it turned out.

Retro Technology – Conceptual Illustration

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For this project, I chose to illustrate the “Old Tech” story. The article explained how technology is always advancing, and yet some older pieces stick around long after they’ve become obsolete.

The most difficult part of this process was deciding how to represent the technology best. The concept of revival or resurgence was challenging to design without feeling too cliche or overly illustrated. After lots of trial and error, I landed on the idea regrowth, shown through plant imagery. This seemed like a simple but effective way to illustrate old objects finding new life. I also decided to focus the deck on Generation Z as I felt it was the most important part of the article. Yes, these pieces of tech have stuck around with the generations that used to use them, but it’s the new generation who are causing the resurgence, thus making them most important to the story.

This is the first spread, click the image to see both in full.

When working on this spread, I was so grateful for the large amount of good quality photographs of the technology. This lead me to focus on photos as opposed to full illustrations for my concept. I wanted to highlight the technology existing in a modern space, and high quality photographs felt like the best way to do so.

Once I had all the images together, I had to tackle fitting them together with the story. The story was shorter than I had expected, leaving me with more room for the side bar and quotes. After lots of rearranging, I found a balance between the sidebar information and the copy that felt even.

The minimal style of this spread felt like the best way to keep the technology as the focus. There was an iteration of this project that had leaves crawling all around and through the story and sidebar, but in the end it was too busy, and I felt that it took away from the intricacies of the old technology.

This is the second spread, click the image to see both in full.

The color scheme lent itself to the spread easily. Although the light blue and green may not seem like an obvious choice for a technology spread, it worked perfectly with idea of regrowth and resurgence, and was easy to weave through both spreads.

Overall, I truly enjoyed this project. I have spent time working with layouts in past magazine and yearbook work and I was excited to work with it again. A lot of the design work I do now is purely social media based, so it was refreshing to get so much space to work with.

Personal Touch

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Click the image to see a full PDF version.

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.