Week LI

Flyer GSD360 for Spring ’23

This week, I started off with the original grid concept, at a tilt.

I also tried a tilt (shear), but didn’t love how the photos looked, and wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend the time tilting every individual frame separate from the clip-masked photo.

My other idea was to manipulate the photo background and caption block separately, which led to this. I made the photos smaller, tiled, and gradient-mapped.

Further clarification led to keeping the bahausy geometric elements and simplifying the design, plus making a wider one for screens.

GOV 312L US National Security

Project: Course Graphics – GOV 312L US National Security
Client /Prof: Jason Brownlee
completion status: WIP
staff guidance: Maddy K, Suloni robertson
STA team members: N/A
description/plans: TBA
To be completed: 12/5/2022

For this course, so far all I’ve done is draft some studio backgrounds. The professor wanted something that shows contrast between inconsistent points in American foreign policy, so the photos such as Rumsfeld greeting Sadam and the gulf war are juxtaposed. I played with sepia and greyscale, and various types of noise texture.

The studio team helped us test the backdrops, and we’re probably going with the noiseless sepia (now a purpleish-grey).

Fall 2022 STA Poster

The video STA poster has gone through a few tweaks, but nothing huge. Mostly, the color has changed.

Meanwhile, I’ve started the project STA poster. This one was more unconventional, because one STA doesn’t have a photo available. My very first idea was… some sort of comic book pop-out effect?

I was told to tie in the team’s work/materials more, which I don’t know much about myself, but based on the logo it has something to do with paperwork and logistics, so I replaced the background with a stock photo. I also had forgotten the color shift, so… draft 2!

One big thing is that I need to redo the placeholder illustration. I was suggested to try vector graphics, which I’m not very good at, but I may be able to steal Lorena’s template.

Not a whole lot for one week, but the second poster has taken a bit of planning and communications. I also worked on more French slides, which I won’t note here yet, because most of it still needs to be redone.

Week XLVIII

UTFC – Green Screen: 5.4B Getting Around Town List

Most of this week was spent on the poster, but I did rework some older slides to have a number graphic and a superscript suffix after them. I tried to find stock photos with the numbers in them, and match the style.

Fall 2022 STA Poster

I started this week with a template (the top and bottom bars) and a late-submission photo, bringing the total from 13 to 14 figures to fit into this more limited vertical space somehow. My first thought was: shrink everything and do a simpler 2-legged zig-zag.

Because of the large amount of empty space, De’sha suggested I try something closer to the older zig-zag with 3 legs.

.Scrunching it up vertically actually made it somewhat more difficult to discern. I decided to try maybe…

A gradient shadow between the “wedges”? But there’s so little space between the STAs that it’s still barely visible. Then I started getting really crazy. Circular layout?

De’sha suggested making larger film strips and putting the photos inside, but my first attempt was too small and inconsistent. This was a bit of a process, with creating a useable vectorized film strip and cutting the photos out individually.

The next one was a little better, at least I think so, because I’m still waiting on feedback for it as of writing.

The layout itself has been the most time-consuming thing, so I’ve avoided touching the color scheme too much for most of these drafts, but this one gave me some time to actually test some stuff. I’m trying to keep it limited to the basic colors still, but give it as much flair as I can.

Week XLVII

This was a short week, because I missed 2 days due to a Epstein-Barr virus. Fun! I’m still a little under the weather, but not infectious airborne, so as long as I don’t lick too many people or surfaces around the office I should be fine.

UTFC – Green Screen: 5.5B City Activities List

So, this has been an interesting exercise in subjectivity. It turns out it’s a little difficult to select rights-free, high-quality stock photos of often very specific French vocabulary words that don’t have an English equivalent, and are also in the city of Beirut, Lebanon, which seems to have a dearth of any stock photos. Some of them I simply had to use the more aesthetically pleasing French equivalent. What’s sad is that I love Middle Eastern Architecture, but photogenic stock photo sites are heavily biased towards European cities 🙁

Not only that, but from my understanding, Lebanon and Beirut in particular have been handed some unfortunate economics recently. From my brief historical research, Beirut was apparently once referred to as the “Paris of the Middle East” before a civil war a few decades ago, and more recently, a massive industrial accident and subsequent national economic decline. Not a lot of stock photographers heading there lately, I suppose. 343 Unsplash results for “Beirut” and 10,000+ for “Paris.”

Well, the monument photo is still very pretty!

Fall 2022 STA Poster

Technically started this Monday of week XLVIII, but I’ll post a brief update here.

In addition to the complete staff poster, we’re making individual team posters this year, and I’m in charge of Video. Since the overall theme is European Soccer, the idea is for the poster to kinda look like this.

All I’ve done so far is cut out the ‘action pose’ photos for the video team, but the stack of layers does look like some kind of quirky collage already. Maybe I’ll just use this.