Good afternoon blôg! It’s been a minute, getting trickier to find time to update this. Last week I finished up the PSD Cutout training that Megan created. The idea was to use a mask to boost the contrast of the image so that the cutout portion could be easily selected. This went fine for the easy and medium versions:

The “hard” image was much more difficult because there were some white flowers that needed to be saved. Initially, when I did this cutout I made the contrast so high that the flowers were lost. After a bit of adjusting I was able to save *most* of the flowers:

 

Pretty tricky stuff. Using the polygon lasso tool to get some of the bits of background in between flower buds helped!

AI Shapes, AI Logo, and other KB material

Hi, this week, I mostly worked on developing the KBs and on a few different trainings.

In the earlier half of the week, I worked on the AI Logo training. Instead of the bunny concept that I had started a while back, I thought it would be cool to do something a little more personalized to myself. So, I tried making some logos from my last name, Zeng, in Chinese characters. I think the result ended up looking more like a face (specifically a person in a balaclava) than my last name. The training asked us to make a symmetrical logo, so I kind of lucked out there. These are the drafts.

I also worked on the AI shape manipulation training, and the outputs are below. It was really interest to see how you could use a bunch of circles to make a completely different shape with shape builder, and I am looking forward to using that technique as I continue working. I also really enjoyed the process of making the pattern using rotate and the degree tool. I did not know how to do that prior to this training, and I can see it being really useful.

And lastly, I worked on the banner for the Exporting file types training. I just looked at a bunch of the other banners actually, so I want to make this more interesting, but this is the start. Plus, I began imagining the concepts for the client briefs that will be used in the trainings, which has been very fun and creative.

That’s it! I have a lot of midterms next week, but then it will all sort of end on my birthday, which is nice. I’ve been watching these study with me broadcasts to help time my studying sessions, and I think it’s funny how I have to assume a different personality and identity to get work done at this point. Hopefully the pandemic ends sooooon.

SUMMER CLASSES 2021 POSTCARD

 

We needed to update the 2020 summer classes postcard to be ready for registration this year. I switched out the text, adjust alignment, added a gradient bar to the bottom, and brought in more of the green-blue color into the postcard. The file deliverable was a CMYK-colored pdf that would be ready to easily print. For the back of the postcard (right image) we had colored bars in places where the gradient. It was the original idea but it felt disjointed from the gradient on the front that we wanted to keep.

 

 

“The Russian Brahms”

This week I wanted to recommend a short and waltz-y piece from Nikolai Medtner, perhaps a less well-known composer. I discovered Medtner’s music last year, and I must admit that his music is not the easiest to listen to (I want to say he’s late Romantic, so some hints of contemporary there). This particular piece, Fairy Tale Op. 51 No. 3, is pretty easy to listen to, perhaps because of the lyrical quality.

TYPOGRAPHY KB

I added my section to this new training about the history of typography, very short and brief. Then went over the parts and elements of space and form of letters and words that are relevant for edits we make on type in our designs. Maddy suggested a side-by-side of adobe controls for the spacing with example text so this is what it turned out to be like.