I want to take some time to reflect on my graphic design journey so far. I am now working on my final projects and my evaluation is coming soon. On April 18th to be exact.

We have worked on projects from a children's book, packages, restaurant brandings to a beer brand and packaging. I have found each and every project challenging and enjoyable. Truth be told, some projects were more enjoyable than others.

The project that I enjoyed the most was the children's book. I enjoyed every aspect of it from writing the story to illustrating the story. My story is about a little girl named Vallery who won't eat her vegetables and her responsible, older sister is always telling her to eat her vegtables. Through nightmares and being scared, Vallery finally tries vegetables and ends up liking them. I'm not much of a writer but I think that illustration also plays a big part in telling a story. I have loved illustration since I could pick up a pencil. I loved my children's books even before I learned my ABC's, so the opportunity to create my own book was appealing. As eager as I was to create my own book, I quickly learned how difficult it can be. It definitely helps you to appreciate the books that you read as a child, and not just see novels on a higher level. The difficult thing in creating a book is first of all to write the story. From there, you have to create a style that depicts the mood of your story and illustrate it in a way that conveys the story visually. The whole process of mocking up a book was difficult but fun.

Another project that I enjoyed was the beer branding. We had to create our own beer name and create a label for it. I created a beer called King Beer. I decided to keep it clean and simple by using a two colour solution: black and white. Black and white is not only simple and classy, but it's the maximum contrast you can get. By keeping the colour palette simple, I allowed myself to do some ornamental work on the label. I thought this suited the name 'KING.' I have a crown as well as finer detailed designs that frame the label. I enjoyed the challenge of creating my own label and coming up with a series design of the label, package and poster. I don't drink alcohol, so researching other beers and learning about label requirements was new to me. I had to design for a certain demographic- but on a topic that I had no experience in. I am proud of the work I did and the brand I created.

For my illustration class we had to create a series of five patterns. My topic was flowers. I created some colourful and some simple designs. No matter what the style was, the flower design was carried throughout the swatches. The next step in this project is to create a swatch book. I am enjoying the research and thought process behind it. It takes me back to the challenge of creating the children's book, in terms of managing and organizing layouts.

Other projects that we have worked on was a restaurant logo and menu. The logo design was one of my hardest challenges. I picked the name 'Elite' and that made it difficult for me to really envision what a logo would look like. I got so many opinions on what people thought of when they heard the restaurant name, and that gave me an overflow of information that confused me. I am still in the process of editing the logo to suit my liking. I had to create a menu for the logo. The challenge with that was selecting the food that would go with the type of restaurant. The other challenge was the layout of the menu itself, but it was useful because I got to use InDesign more. As teachers have told us through the year... if you're to know a program inside out, it should be InDesign. I find that to be true with each project. It's helpful with layouts but I am still adjusting to properly using the program.

Through all of the projects that we have done, I have enjoyed all of them. All of them have given me a challenge. Some of them I enjoyed more than others but I can't complain about anything that challenges me as a designer. My first evaluation went well but I was told to focus on one element in my design. I have tried to do that this year and tried to keep my work simple. My next step is to open up a little bit more and feel completely comfortable in asking questions and not being afraid of critiques.

Starbucks Logo

Fairly recent news to hit the design world was the changing of the Starbucks logo. What I didn’t know was that before the recent redesigned logo, there were a redesigns of previous ones.


Before analyzing the new logo, I wanted to look at the history of the brand and logo. The logo is made up of the siren, the rings and the text. The first noticeable difference in the first logo was the image of the siren. The siren has a double tail and went from a progression of a lot of lines in the drawing, to a simplification in the line work. The colour of the circle surrounding the image is brown and white. The name of the logo is also different. The name says” STARBUCKS COFFEE-TEA-SPICES. The original owners didn’t sell espresso drinks like they do today. The majority of products were coffee, tea and spices, as the name says.


The next edition of the logo is noticeably different. First noticeable difference is that the brown has now changed to green. The products offered in the previous logo are gone and now reads STARBUCKS COFFEE. Stars on both sides of the logo now replace the dot separators in between the words in the previous logo. The image of the siren is also noticeably different. The ring surrounding the image is now black. The inclusion of the black ring helps to establish the siren as a separate element from the outer title ring. The siren image has now changed to a cleaner lined drawing of the logo. The breasts are now covered (but the belly button is still visible) and the image is created with evenly weighted lines in the tails and hair.



The next logo's siren image has been cropped. Only the sides of the tail are now visible. My critique for this is that without knowing the history of the logo, you wouldn’t know what the sides are.  The double triangular shapes on the ends of the tail are hard to figure out when you don’t know from the old logo that it’s the ends of the tails. 


The progression of the Starbucks logo has come a long way. The new logo has taken out the rings with the text and now simply features the siren as the star. I liked the previous logo more than the new redesign. The way the green text ring fit around a black circle I feel helped to visually separate the elements in the design, while at the same time unified the design by enclosing them in the same repeated circular shape. Although everyone recognizes the siren as the Starbucks logo, even without the text, I think the name added a nicer look. It helped to unify the design and did not compete, but complemented the siren.

Inspiration

Art and design is about creating. Sometimes we come up with our own ideas and sometimes we are inspired by others. Ninety-nine percent of the time, anything we dream up has already been done. It has been done either better or worse than our own attempts. Sometimes these inspirations come to us intentionally because we go looking for them. As creative beings we seek inspiration. We look to what other designers and artists are doing to inspire our own work. We look at other work fields, at the media, at fashion and any other fields to inspire us. That is the beauty of creativity. It transcends all avenues and can creep up in any part of our lives.

I'm writing this blog because I have been looking and researching different forms of art and seeing photographs, paintings and drawings that remind me of one piece of art I may have seen, or one that I created myself.

I first created a hand drawn image of this and used pencil crayons to colour in the different rings. It was a long process, but I enjoyed  the meticulous work of drawing each circle and colouring in each ring with the appropriate colour. The purpose was o create an image out of circles while giving the whole image a look of depth with the colours of the bubbles. I later moved on to creating the same image on the computer. The process was also challenging. One might think it was easier because the computer makes things faster, but truthfully, it took about the same amount of time to create the computerized version as the hand drawn version did.

To tie in my point about being inspired by others, whether we sought that inspiration or not, I found the following image.

This portrait instantly reminded me of the colourful bubble portrait that I had previously made. Looking at the far picture from far away, one might be unsure how the image was created. This portrait was created by Zac Freeman was created with random little objects like buttons and little objects ppearing to be stuck meaninglessly- but from a distance is recognizable as a face.

I was interested in the fact that my bubble portrait and this portrait reminded me of each other. They weren't created using the same method but they still resemble one another in the circular elements coming together to create a whole image. This just goes to show my earlier point about being inspired by others and how mostly everything we create has already been done before in some way.

Las Vegas

This is a fairly short post compared to others because once I allow myself to go on on about this topic.. I'll never stop from the exitement.

It all started last summer when my teacher Vince assigned my graphic design 100 sketches. I was a little bit taken aback when I heard this number and wasn't sure how many ideas I would have. I decided that I would make it known on my facebook to my friends around the world (who love celine, and can't afford to see her) that I would gladly take drawing and design requests from them as a way to bring them some cheer. I began to get requests from literally around the world. This was one of my most enjoyable experiences, getting to know people and being able to share a talent. I also feel that it was a great experience in dealing with 'clients.' I encountered the sweet client who was ecstatic with whatever I did and the client who was critical of everything, and I feel I dealt with all of them in a professional manner.
One friend requested a full colour, Valentines Day, portrait of her pets to give to her husband. She was so pleased with it that she said no money could repay me and instead offered me an opening night Celine Dion in Las Vegas ticket and even booked a hotel in advance for me. Well! That certainly is better than money to me! On March 15th I realize my dream of seeing my favourite singer for the first time!

The moral of my story is, when you open your heart to others by using your talents, and never expecting anything in return, good things happen.

As an artist, designer and photographer, I am thrilled to be able to go to Las Vegas and get inspiration for my work. I am excited to take my camera with me to capture what I know will be an unbelievable week!

My Artistic Journey

Since this is a design blog, it’s only natural that one of my entries is about my love of art and how I ended up in graphic design. I begin my journey as a child and end with me today: a graphic design student.

When I was about three and a half years old, I came to Canada from El Salvador with my mom so I could meet my father for the first time. My mom had to go to school to acquaint herself with the English language and much to my demise, I had to go to daycare. My screams of anguish for having to be in this horrible place away from my mom were only soothed when I got to paint or create things with my hands. I painted my ‘masterpieces’ and my parents proudly hung them in the basement. I guess to show me their support but not to ruin the décor in the rest of the house. According to them I never painted stick people like most three year olds so they figured I was ‘good’ on some level.

Whether they thought I was good at art or not, they knew I loved it and that’s what mattered to them. I have always questioned them why they didn’t enroll me in art classes- but the only explanation I get now is that they wanted me to take my own course in my interests. And I did.

As I grew I was always fascinated with books because I love to read of course, but also because I knew that someone had taken the time to create that and someone had drawn the images that I spent hours admiring and trying to draw as exact as I could and tried to redraw in my own way. I spent hours watching ‘Art Attack’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDPoAKWVoFk) and “Pappyland’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjr46fxAQXc) because I wanted to do what they did. I wanted to draw. I wanted to create beautiful things out of paper maché and I wanted my parents to please sit still for hours while I tried to draw them. I was intrigued by shapes, and colours and was always very aware of what a difference contrast or just blending one more colour made.

By the time I was in the third grade I had established myself as the school artist. I was picked by teachers to participate in random little competitions and had my art entered in contests and took part in a large mural that was displayed at the Butterfly Conservatory in Niagara Falls. That project killed me inside because I was given an image to draw: howling wolves. I had to paint it as true to the original picture as I could and the original image was so dreary and grey looking with no colour. I suppose that was a lesson to be learned in the difference between a big A artist and a little A artist in that I had to please someone else with my work rather than my own eye.

In highschool when most people are discovering themselves and trying to figure out what their interests are to choose electives, I already knew I wanted art and graphic design classes through my four years in highschool. I loved art class because it was a stress reliever. Just putting on some music while I filled an empty canvas, so to speak, sparked my imagination. 

Graphic design was a little bit different for me because I had always envisioned something in my mind and was able to recreate it on paper. Designing on computers was different because it took more effort to create. I found it enjoyable though because I could play with design and start over immediately if I wanted to. With colour illustration I couldn’t make a mistake even though pencil art was more forgiving. As I painted to please others when I was younger, I was now designing to please my teacher. It was a new concept for me and I enjoyed the challenge. I learned that coming from a fine arts background didn’t have to hinder my design ability. If anything, it helped and gave me a greater satisfaction to be able to merge the two skills in order to design in a unique way. I found satisfaction in my designs and apparently they pleased my teachers too. It wasn’t work (in this case homework) to me because I loved what I did and that’s what mattered to me.

The last year of highschool came and I had to make decisions on where my post secondary education would lead me and what career I wanted to pursue. My dad had a major role in affecting the decision I made. I decided I would become a teacher because I had always had a great respect for teachers. I thought that my dad would approve of this more than a career in the art field. I went to the University of Waterloo and studied for a year but it just wasn’t for me. Just like when I was younger, what really satisfied me were hands on activities and the theoretical learning in university didn’t satisfy me.

I made the hard decision of telling my dad I was going to leave university and surprisingly he gave me his blessing to let me do what I wanted. After all, it’s my career he told me. I applied for the Design and Communications Fundamentals program to get my portfolio together so that I would feel prepared for my graphic design interview. I applied to the Graphic Design program the following year and set my heart on this goal of getting into the program. Hard work on portfolio and my wishing paid off because I was told at my interview that I would definitely be getting a confirmation letter.

I’m looking forward to seeing where this program leads me. I am in second year now and although it gets harder every semester, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I enjoy the challenge and now I am applying design elements to my illustrations. The artist in me is becoming or has become a designer and the designer in me is becoming a better fine artist.

Stumble Across

I recently ‘stumbled upon’ a very entertaining site. Coincidentally it’s called www.stumbleupon.com. I found the site to be not only an entertaining pass time on the internet- but a very useful resource when it comes to getting design inspiration. To use it, you simply sign up with your email and check off the different types of topics you ‘re interested in stumbling upon. Topics range from design, advertising, and interior design to women’s issues, celebrities, conspiracies and many more. The thing that I find the most useful is that I have found different sites that I would have never come across by googling a topic.

As I ‘stumbled’ along the site, I found some Photoshop tutorials (http://tiny.cc/fsbh) that I found useful because I don’t know the program very well. One of the Photoshop tutorials showed how to create an image out of text. (http://tiny.cc/1q2sb) I was able to work through the tutorial and create my own image. There was a mistake in one of the steps but because I had been working through the other steps and could not only follow the steps, but understood them, I was able to finish my image on my own. (http://tiny.cc/33q8f and http://tiny.cc/vzvdt)




Another thing I stumbled upon was a video (http://tiny.cc/t72k7) of the making of an advertisement for Canon Pixma Printers. The concept behind the advertisement was paint sculptures that were photographed while vibrating sensors made paint droplets ‘dance’ and intermingle in a beautiful display of colour.

The reason I like this site so much is that it opens up the world of the Internet to me and by selecting all the topics I am more likely to stumble across interesting finds that I normally wouldn’t think of looking for on my own. I realize that in order to inspire my designer mind I have to look beyond a narrow field of vision and venture out to look at various resources.

'My Kid Could Paint That'

Today I bought and watched ‘My Kid Could Paint That’ (directed by Amir Bar-Lev.) The documentary follows a four year old named Marla Olmstead and her parents. Four-year-old Marla started doing abstract paintings in her diapers on the dining room table. Her parents decided to display them at a friend’s restaurant as a joke and surprisingly the public wanted to buy them. The fact that a four year old painted them didn’t deter many people from buying them, or paying thousands for them!

What I found refreshing was how Marla maintained her childlike innocence through her fame. When asked, by the documentary interviewer to speak about her art, she clearly refused and decided to ask him to help her make a puzzle instead. The documentary takes a turn when there is speculation by the media that Marla might not be the sole creator of her art and that her father either does them for her, or helps and guides her through each thousand-dollar painting. This torments the father because it is evident that it will hurt painting sales. It also doesn’t help the fact that his dream is to make his daughter big in the art cities of Europe. My heart goes out to the mother who clearly wants to protect her daughter from the media and openly struggles on film with the downside that fame brings.

Critics wonder if Marla’s work can be classified as art if she is able to create it but can’t express rationale behind what her work means. A lot of skeptics wanted proof that they were in fact Marla’s paintings and wanted to see live footage of the creation of a painting. Every time cameras would go into the home to videotape, Marla became nervous and couldn’t create a ‘good’ painting. Later on, the parents provide footage in a film called ‘Ocean’ of Marla creating one her better paintings. Marla’s work is compared a lot to the work of Jackson Pollock. This comparison brings about positive critiques from those who believe that abstract art is considered real art. There is also, of course, negative criticism from those who believe abstract work doesn’t deserve to be called art.

I tried to keep an open mind throughout the documentary. I thought that by the end I might have made up my mind on whether to believe that they were indeed her paintings but I couldn’t. I was left pondering what my real thoughts are on modern art and whether or not I believe abstract art can truly be considered art. Whatever, the documentary makes you feel, you can’t deny that four-year-old Marla is an adorable little girl.

live, love, design

I have been feeling nostalgic recently. For inspiration on how to write and illustrate a childrens book for class, I dug out some of my old books. Gazing at the illustrations brings me back to my childhood and the hours I would spend reading and re-reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and The Frog Prince, among many others. I now see the impact that those books had on me as a designer and illustrator. I would gaze adoringly at the detailed, realistic illustrations that would bring me into the world of the story and simple cartoon drawings wouid make me wonder what I would look like as a cartoon. For some reason, I would look critically at those “simple drawings ” and wonder why the illustrator even bothered. If they could not draw realistically, then what was the point in trying. These thoughts shaped the way I strived for my idea of perfectionism in my illlustrations.  Everything had to look just so and the colours had to blend just so. I found that fun and challenging to try and emulate realism. Now I find it challenging and fun to try and find a different illustrative style for my childrens book.