Personal Logo Draft

Tags

Adobe Illustrator, COM 210, draft, logo, RAWR

SEE EDIT BELOW THE GALLERY!!

I’ll edit this post later and add an explanation. Here’s a crappy end to my crappy week.

Ideas from my sketchbook.

One page of logo ideas after hours of Illustrator.

Logo Draft 2.1

Logo Draft 2 copy 1

Logo Draft 2 copy 2

EDIT: Alright, I’m keeping all the stuff I originally posted (i.e., the first two pictures in the gallery and my two-sentence rant above), but I’ve finally updated!

My first thoughts were to incorporate my name or initials into the logo somehow. I’ve always really liked my name and been fascinated with all the different ways it can be written. I was inspired by these sites, and also the concept of spinonyms (on the link, second-to-last on the list). After talking with my awesome mom some more about different logo ideas (and showing her my initial ideas), she suggested trying something without my name or initials. So I thought about what I would want to design a logo for that would still say something about me. I thought about doing a pun on my last name (my dad has quite a few), but couldn’t mold any of the puns I came up with to fit a business, so I dropped that idea.

I brainstormed lists of things that I could do/produce that would have market value; it was sort of like designing a logo for a small business that I might start. My main ideas were a small, personal music label (since I’m a singer), or a photography business (as I mentioned in my Graphic Collage posts (both draft & final), I’m an avid photographer. Also, to make the logo even more about me, I included the “blue moon” in the lens, because I was born on a blue moon. So that’s how I came up with Logo Draft 2.1. The camera design was inspired by this image., since it already had a moon shape in it. (Albeit a crescent moon… Being the stickler for details that I am, I couldn’t stand to misinform people by showing a blue crescent moon since blue moons are, by definition, not crescent.) Then, I wasn’t sure if the “moon” in the lens was obvious enough, so I added some speckles to the lens in “copy 1”. However, I think that just makes the lens look dirty when the logo is small – it’s just too detailed for scaling; but I thought I’d put it up anyway. After showing this new design to my mom, she suggested making the camera design simpler (see “copy 2”) – again, this would make it a lot easier to scale.

By the way, the “Pictures WORTH Taking / Moments WORTH Saving ???” was just two ideas for a tagline (and to connect it back to me some more – I couldn’t resist a name pun!). It’s not part of the logo, I just forgot to turn off the visibility before I exported the JPEGs.

Commenters, please let me know if you like “Logo Draft 2.1” or “Logo Draft 2 copy 2” better! I’m also thinking about doing a logo that is just the camera lens, but that version isn’t quite finished yet. Maybe it could be my secondary logo…

Cheers,

LW

P.S. For anyone wondering why I ask for my mom’s advice so much, here’s a couple reasons:

• She’s a graphic designer with a lot of experience.
• She’s designed logos for other people/businesses, as well as her own logo for her jewelry business.
• Most importantly, she’s my mom & I respect her opinion & advice!

Illustrator Tutorials

Tags

Adobe Illustrator, COM 210, tutorials

Having a lot of fun with these tutorials!

Graphic Collage Final

Tags

collage, COM 210, my photos, nature, photography, Photoshop

Click to view full-size!

My TA made some very helpful suggestions concerning the first draft of my graphic collage. I added more pictures, including one of myself (Grrr….). Anyway, I guess since I’ve already talked about some of the pictures in my first draft post (see link above), I’ll discuss what I changed, why I changed it, and talk about the new pictures a bit.

Obviously, I added three new pictures. Again, all of the photos (except the bottom right) were taken by me. (c) Lucy W. The bottom right one was taken by my dad, but I have his written permission to use it.) The three pictures on the right are all from two trips my dad, brother, and I took to the Portland Japanese Garden during a Winter Break. As I said in my earlier post, it had rained pretty hard the night before, so everything was covered in water droplets. This made for some really great photos, although sometimes it was hard to get my camera to focus on what I wanted it to focus on. For example, with the top right picture (the iris), I had to try several different angles to get the detail I wanted. As I said above, the bottom right photo was taken by my dad. We were actually shooting some photos of me doing yoga in different spots around the garden (it was for a PE assignment we had to do over break), and I think we had just wrapped up, so I was admiring these flowers, and my dad took a couple of pictures of me.

The last new photo, the black and white one on the bottom left, was taken in my dad’s apartment. He’s got this little cactus by a window, and this isn’t just some little cactus you buy on a whim at Lowe’s; I remember this cactus being in my (paternal) grandparents’ dining room too! Anyway, I was sitting by the cactus, taking pictures out the window, when I noticed this tiny spider descending from one of the spines. Again, it took a while to get the camera to focus on both the spines and the spider, and Photoshop definitely helped me tune it up even further. It wasn’t originally black and white, but I thinks it looks better that way since the colors were kinda blurry. I know it might be a bit hard to see the spider, but I felt like cropping it any more would just detract from the picture. It might stick out too much, since it’s the only black and white photo, but it fit really well with my theme of (and my passion for) noticing things that other people might not notice and capturing that moment.

Besides adding more photos, I decided to change the outlining rectangles to rounded rectangles. I just felt like the sharp corners were a bit too harsh. Hmm… Not much else to say. The only suggestion my TA gave me that I didn’t follow was the idea to crop the smaller pictures into different shapes (e.g., circles, hearts, etc.). I didn’t want to do this because I feel like it would have detracted from the mood of my collage, which is kind of quiet, calm, and contemplative. Adding goofy shapes would disrupt that mood. I don’t know; if you’ve made this far through all my rambling, please let me know in the comments what you think would improve my collage!

Cheers,

LW

Graphic Collage Draft

Tags

COM 210, my photos, photography, Photoshop

Finally! I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to focus on. There were so many paths I could have taken with this project, and that (along with being anxious that my rudimentary Photoshop skills wouldn’t be enough to achieve what I wanted) caused my inner perfectionist to start freaking out.

Anyway, I finally decided to focus on my love of the outdoors, specifically macro photography in nature. Yes, I know the squirrel photo is technically not a macro, but it fits with my theme of taking detailed pictures of small things. The squirrel photo was taken on a running trail in the Hazel Wolf Wetlands Preserve. My dad and I were walking around the lake, and I spotted this little squirrel climbing up and down this tree. When the squirrel noticed us, it seemed to get really angry; it was chittering and squeaking at us while it scrabbled around on the tree. It really seemed like it wanted us to go away, because the squirrel carried on until we walked away. I ended up with 35 of the 70 pictures that I took on that trip were of this squirrel alone!

The Japanese maple leaves picture is from a visit to the Portland Japanese Garden. It had rained the night before, so many of the plants were covered in beads of water. Another photo I was thinking of including (below) probably shows the water drops more clearly, but I also liked the color of the maple leaves photo.

The flowers (bottom right picture) were actually found growing in the sand on a coastal Oregon beach near Seal Rock. Very tiny and delicate!

I didn’t do a lot of editing on any of the photos, mostly just some Levels adjustments (I increased the temperature of the squirrel pic quite a bit). I also cropped the two smaller photos.

Just in case it wasn’t clear, these are all photos that I took myself! (c) Lucy W.

Again, sorry for the lateness! I’d still appreciate critiques!

LW

Photo Collection

Tags

COM 210, my photos

This gallery contains 11 photos.

Photoshop Tutorials Assignment

Tags

COM 210, fun, Photoshop, tutorials

This gallery contains 7 photos.

I had a lot of fun with these tutorials; although they were a bit boring at times. My favorite was …

Continue reading →

My Blog topic

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COM 210

Hello! For my COM 210 class, this blog will be all about me. I decided to make this my topic because I happen to be the world’s leading expert on myself. 🙂

Also, I believe there are many different ways to look at oneself; and my goal is to get to know myself better via the various assignments in this class. (After all, just because you’re an expert in something doesn’t meant you can’t learn any more!) During this semester, I plan to look at several different ‘facets’ of myself and try to line them up with the various projects we will be doing in class. For example, since I love music and singing, I might make that the focus of my “Audio Story” assignment. Although, since our professor hasn’t posted the instructions for that assignment yet, I’m not totally sure how that assignment will work, but I’ll find out in due time, I guess!

Actually, I think I’ll put a “draft” of my ideas for the various projects we’re doing right here.

1. Graphic Collage: For this one, I think it would be nice to just do a broad overview of my life. Things I’m interested in, hobbies, family, pets, school, what I want to do, etc. Or, since I love photography, maybe I could just do a collage of photos I’ve taken! I’m not totally sure how much of a “collage” this project will be in the traditional sense of the word, seeing as we’re using Photoshop… to me, “collage” implies a certain amount of tactile stimulation, as well as visual.
2. Logo: I’m not too sure about this one, but I’m thinking about playing around with my name… My mom, who is a graphic designer, suggested that I look at the positive and negative spaces in and around my initials.
3. Audio Story: I already kind of went over this above, but what the hey; it never hurts to elaborate! Like I mentioned above, I’d love to incorporate my musical life into this; I’m just not sure if that will fit within the requirements for the assignment. I’ve had some experience with audio recording and mixing in a Songwriting and Sequencing class I took in high school. However, in that class we used the Sibelius and Pro Tools programs, and in this course we’ll be using Adobe Audition.
4. Video Project: I like the sound of this project a lot, especially since we’ll be using Adobe Premiere Pro! I’ve actually used Premiere Pro before, in a TV Production class I took in high school, and I think one of my favorite parts about the whole video-making process is editing. Since I already know the software, I think that will help give me more time altogether, on what is basically our final project of this course!

Anyway, that’s about it for me. Until next post,

LW