On Campus Event

The Interdisciplinary Interaction Design Conference
Nov. 16, 2013
    The Interdisciplinary Interaction Design Conference (phew, it’s a long name to type out) was pretty much a conference where anyone, not just students, could learn the different types of work out there that there is for design students, computer science students, etc. It gave us perspective as to what to look for in the future, and also maybe how to handle it in a more positive light when things get a little sticky.
    There were four speakers at this conference; Justin Kunkle, Bobby Deraco, Joshua Buckwalter, and Millersville University’s very own Aaron Chu. They all have very different experiences in the work world and their input was all very helpful to hear.
    First was Justin Kunkle, the director of Strategy and Culture at his workplace. He pretty much works with people and how they interact with technology. He does those studies and research to help make websites and technology experiences for people more enjoyable. The one main thing that I wrote down in my notes that he said was “Never ask a client what they want. Watch them and see what they need” and making it easy for people to do the right thing when it comes to technology (he made sure that we understood that it wasn’t a moral thing.)
    Next was Bobby Deraco, whom like my father did not finish college. It’s people like this man that make me question the necessity of college for people like myself. He is a very successful man who gave us a list of things that he thought we should follow in order to be as successful as he is.
-Never stop Learning
-Data sells ideas
-If you think hiring a professional is expensive, try hiring an amateur.
-It cost $200 to turn a bolt. (It’s all about pricing how valuable you knowledge and skill is.)
-Think Code
-Your mom’s the user. (clear all bias)
-Chaos is profitable.
    Of all the speakers, I thought he was the most inspiring because of his amount of experience and how far he got on his own.
    Joshua Buckwalter, I didn’t really have much to say about him purely because all he really did for his presentation was tell us how this one project wasn’t really going his way at all. It was pretty much just a huge venting fest for this guy.
    Lastly was Millersville’s Aaron Chu. This guy is seriously impressive. He knows so much about everything that comes along with being a graphic designer, architect, computer science student, etc. He stressed that you should always be learning something new along with researching things you don’t know. This kid definitely made the graphic design teachers proud. He talked about his work and all his knowledge, and while I didn’t really take notes about what he said exactly, he’s definitely something that we all want to be someday after college; Successful!
    I liked hearing different sides of the spectrum that is graphic design. It relieved me to hear that I don’t really have to be 100% amazing at coding or designing if I’m just really good at illustrating. It’s nice to know that it takes more than one person to get one graphic design job because we are all good at only specific things. I guess it just put my mind more at ease than it was.

Scott Mccloud website complete

after hours of trying to figure out how to code.....the website is done. I used multiple youtube tutuorials to figure out how to make the horizontal menu-bar up top, how to set the background, how to have all the borders and whatnot, and it's finally come together. Not the most exciting website, but It gets the job done.

Scott McCloud

 

Scott McCloud is my artist that I am focusing on for this web page design project.

Above is a moodboard that pretty much sums up the person and achievements that is McCloud. I really focused in on his accomplishments as far as his "inventions" that he came up with. For example the "24 hour comic" challenge was actually started by him along with the infinate canvas, the big triangle, 5 card Nancy game, along with the rewriting of the "Bill of Rights for Creators". 

For the comic world, Scott McCloud has done a huge share of getting us all from where we were to where we are now as comic artists. From his How To books about comics to his actions on defending artist's hard work, he's done a lot.

CSS 101 part 2; In Class

We were suppose to walk ourselves through a CSS practice sheet and there were tons of codes showing the many ways that you can alter your HTML page.

A few of those things are for example making it so that when a user is on your HTML page, they can put their cursor over a link and the link will change color so that they are aware that it is in fact a link. Another little trick is that you can also write a code that will make it so that if they do navigate to that link, if they were to click back the link would have changed color so that the user knows that they have already been to that link.

They also had a lot of information about margins, padding and spacing. They had examples of the long way of typing it as well as the shorthand more practical way of typing margins. Along those lines they also showed how you can have a background that is repeated but also no-repeat, so you just have black background. There is going to be a lot of memorization that's going to be involved in learning to do CSS properly, but a lot is just repeated so it shouldn't be too bad. Just a lot of info at once.

HTML In class work

In class we are talking about how you create a HTML page.
Honestly I thought it was going to be incredibly hard but it's actually quite easy.

In Class Project!

We had been assigned to photoshop ourselves into an ad in a magazine so I chose this Downy advertisement.

It's suppose to look like she is jumping out of my closet and I was going to put a warning label in the top left hand corner warning buyers that this could happen if product is used.

404 Error Page

For the past few weeks I've been working on the 404 Error page for Red Robin. We were required to have a scanned image, a photograph that we took, and a piece from illustrator in our 404 page design.

As you can see it's not too exciting. So I decided to make my design family friendly and fun just like Red Robin Restaurants. I happen to work there so it was easier to design an error page for them because I knew the meaning and motto behind the business.
 Here is my scanned image…

Photograph…

 

And a rough draft of my illustration. 

Then after messing around with ways of saying "hey, you typed in a page that doesn't exsist.....try again!" I finally finished my project and ended up with this…

It's family friendly, easy to use, and screams Red Robin in my opinion.

Week 6A

Here is my selected magazine picture to manipulate on Photoshop! We were assigned in class to change up the photos coloring for greyscale, RGB, and CMYK. Then the last part is to recreate the professor's chart of coloring. Below is my chart done using Photoshop and Illustrator.

Finished Calender

This is the end product of my sheepish calender design.

5A: Calender project Is ALMOST DONE!

FINALLY!!! All flat colors are done and in. Now to start a whole new process of adding shadows to make this a fancy looking Calender that is Website worthy!!!

Also, I know I was told to make it simple and not really have anything around the borders but I figured putting wool there wouldn't be the worse thing in the world. Also, making numbers out of knitted string was probably the second most fun thing about this project. That and finally illustrating on the computer.

Calender project update

So, I would say that I'm about 65-70% done with this design. I've started the flat coloring and am now sketching out the yarn ball design that I want to have as the border of my comic. I'm going to include later the speech bubble and text along with the calender days after I am completely done with the coloring. I must have spent at least 3-5 hours on just the color for this. I am also debating having the sheep skin color as the background color for the outside. I still have to show a background in the scene also so they aren't just floating around in space! So much to do, so little time!

Week 4B: Calender Progress

So this is a very rough computer drawing of my calender design. Yes, I am still working on her boots. The reason for them looking so blah is the fact that I'm using a mouse to draw them on the computer (they weren't in the original sketch that I have.) I'm adding her feet so that I don't have to get rid of the sheep's feet because I feel they are necessary to show his shivering. After this is completed I need to start working on the Flat colors for this little illustration.

Week 3B

Since we were instructed to take our own original photos for this Calender project, I went to the Oley Turnpike Dairy and took multiple photos of Sheep and one of goats. Where I got really lucky is the fact that the petting zoo had a sheared sheep (which goes along with my idea). I will be taking other photos of those bus stop benches with a girl sitting and knitting soon; I just have to get knitting needles and yarn from my mother first!

My main idea for my October themed calender was to have a girl knitting on a bus bench and a sheared shiver sheep to come over and ask her for his coat back (the wool yarn). I'm thinking of placing the name "Mary" somewhere to insinuate "Mary had a little lamb". I want to have a cold-like feel to the coloring and a comic scene type feel to the illustration. I plan on drawing it out on paper, inking it with sharpies, then scanning it in and working on it on Illustrator. 

October Mood Board

This is my October moodboard. The sub-theme I kinda came up with from my mindmap was along the thoughts of the weather becoming colder, so because of that we all start wearing sweaters and I personally get my sweaters from my mother who knits. Then I corolated knitting with wool and then sheep from wool. That pretty much sums up this entire mood board. I also added some fall themed stuff in the design area of my moodboard because I couldn't get my mind off the fact that October is a month in the fall. I'm not sure if I'll use fall in the final draft of my calender design but I will get to that eventually.

Mindmapping for October

Our in class assignment for today was to create a mind map. An open-minded free-flowing chart of words and ideas all centered around the main topic which was "October". 

Summaries from Lydia

Lydia Summary
Two things about colors: CMYK = Cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black). These colors are made for print. RGB = Red, green, and blue. These colors are made for web and screen graphics Fills and Strokes video was about exactly that: Fills and strokes. Fill is pretty much everything within an enclosed path while stroke is just the color of the path line. Next was paths which is the skeleton of any shape/design and anchors which are that skeleton's joints that connect everything together. In that part of the video assignment I found it cool that while you are creating a shape such as a star, if you hit the up arrow you can add more points to the star. Very awesome! Then the man moved on to joining and averaging paths which are pretty much the same thing  (merging two anchor points together to just make one joining path. Last but not least was the scissors and knife tool. That was just review since the professor went over it in class. scissors is more percise while the knife tool is more free flowing for things like curves. 

Tracing logos and figuring out Illustrator

In class we were assigned to remake eight logos using Adobe Illustrator. You would think a little class assignment like that would be easy, but for me it was the exact opposite.

I must have asked for help 3 times before I had to walk out of the room to calm down from being so frustrated! Fortunately I got some extra help from an Illustrator friend. Turns out that when I was trying to manipulate the pen tool to create curves around the original logos I wasn't switching over to the selection tool but was trying to use the pen tool to move the handles. Whoops! After I realized that, tracing and filling the logos was easy as pie.

If anything I learned from this assignment how to use the pen tool, what anchors/handles/and paths are, how to fill certain paths, how to merge two different pieces together to make one logo, and how to trace on Illustrator.