Excercise 2

My magazine layout is giving me the most trouble out of all the exercises and projects that we have done so far this semester! I do not know why but it just seems like everything I do is too simple? I look to my fellow classmates and see what they are doing and I say to myself “Why didn’t I think of that?” Maybe because I’ve never really looked at a magazine layout and how everything flows. Maybe it’s because I am not very imaginative when it comes to magazine layouts. Whatever that causes may be I do not like this one bit!

During class, I am happy that I expressed my unhappiness with Amy! She was not only able to give me input about my progress but she was able to put it up on the big screen and everyone in class was able to give me their input. Other then the kerning and spacing of my layout, I am very appreciative to everyone that was able to critique my work. I definitely will take everyone’s input into consideration when finishing up my project!

So for the next class, which is the last work day for this exercise I am going to try to incorporate the feedback I got from Amy and my fellow classmates. I am going to work on making the title stick out more. Some ideas for that, 1) I am going to make the picture bigger and by doing that I will make the title part of the picture with white letters. I am also going to make the title bigger!! Hopefully with the dark back ground and white letters and the colorful “color” will make the title stand out more and not get lost in the picture. 2) I am going to work on the spacing with columns. Once Amy helped my move the spacing of the columns over it made the whole column flow better and easier to read!

I also read the article in the last class and possibly stick to certain colors since the article talked about what each color means since my first approach of placing random pictures in the article didn’t really flow very well! Hopefully after spring break I will be able to quickly finish my article layout so I can move on from this excercise!! Yayyy

Exercise 1

Trying to recreate the sense of movement in the painting for "The Poet" was both simple and frustrating. The painting by Egon Schiele seems very dark and gloomy as if the person is trapped in a dark place. The placement of the head and angles that his limbs are placed suggest that he is cramped possible trapped in a tight place. Trunk of a car or in a small cave?

The simple part of the painting is that it uses a lot of dark colors and in the painting and makes the observer use his or her imagination. Schiele makes the face, chin and hands very visible along with what looks to me his white pants. The way he uses the dark red in the background as if hes trying to make an outline of his body but not making it obvious. I feel like the more I look at "The Poet" the more I see in the position of certain reds in the painting.

The frustrating part of this exercise is only being able to use a square shape and having a limited number of the squares that I could use. I definitely found myself using an excess of 20 squares in my painting because I tried to be as detailed as possible. It took me awhile to pick and choose what would come off to have less squares. After a few minutes I decided to pay more attention to the shades around his body then the details of the body and face. I used a similar color of red that was seen in the painting trying to make an outline of the body. I also saw there was a hint of blue in the painting as well and I through two shapes of blue which made it stick out.

Tuesday when I am in class, since it is a work day I am going to try to realign all the red to somehow create a outline of the body. I think once I am able to create that outline, observers will have a clearer idea of the person in the painting is in cramped dark place. I will also try to have the blue in there as well just to have it pop out a little. My goal will be to spend less detail on what is obvious to the eye and more on the blackness and red of the painting. After all I am sure Schiele spent more time placing strokes of red and faint white then on the details of his face and hands.

Project 1

Coming into project 1 I really had no clue what to do. After watching the videos in class and doing some research on my own I was able to compile some ideas. The next step for me was very difficult. The process of thinking of what I want to do and actually making it happen are completely two different things!! I’m not sure why the ones I came up didn’t pan out. It could have been from my lack of knowledge of the program or frustration. After a few trial and errors I was able to make an idea come to life on In Design.

My idea only needed two shapes, spheres and squares. The idea is very simple and played off the game bingo. I wanted spheres to have descriptive words of my lifestyle and what I believe in. So for example one sphere would have the word “GYM” because I like to go to the gym. Another sphere would have the word “Food” because I love to eat! So I wanted those descriptive words all piled up like it was in a container and it only had a small hole that would let one sphere out at a time. The spheres would fall onto what looks like steps that will bounce off and land at the other corner. The first three spheres would have the letter “P”, “T” and “H” for my initials. So one by one all the descriptive words of what makes me who I am would fall one by one next to my initials!!

The steps would represent my nationality, which is Samoan, written in the ascending stair case and the word “STRONG” would be on the bottom. The reason why I put “STRONG” on the bottom of the pyramid because it represents that I can handle all of who I am and the pressures of being an individual. And plus I am freakishly strong! I also wanted to fill in every block of the pyramid with a letter that eventually spelled something out horizontally and vertically but that was just too hard with the ascending and base word I already had. I also thought of putting words in each box but it was just too busy and did not appeal very well to the eyes.

The word “STURDY” can be seen at a diagonal which holds all the spheres in place in the top right. I’m not really sure why I put the word “STURDY” there, I couldn’t put strong because it was already on the bottom. So I figured I needed another acronym of strong and thought “STURDY” would fit and I believe it does!

            I am not really sure why I picked the colors I did. I just picked the colors because they worked very well with each other and it made everything stick out. So I’m not really sure if my work reflects my personality. I did it because it looked appealing to me.

            Over all I am pretty satisfied with what I was able to think in my head and relay it on In Design! I really didn’t think I would enjoy this project but I really did! I feel like the more I learn about the program and what I can and can’t do the easier it will be to make my ideas real!