50's Phenomenon

The final portfolio piece for Graphic Design 2! A book cover design in PhotoShop. I had so much frustration with this piece—I had to do it 5 or 6 times! My photoshop files kept giving me trouble :(
Anyway, we were given a list of 3 titles and the rest was up to us! The only requirement was that it be done in PhotoShop, and that it be obvious that it was created in PhotoShop. I wanted the design to hold together when the front and back of the cover were both seen at the same time, so the large "1950" was the beginning of this piece, then I researched and found photos of significant events / fads from the 50's in America and added them in.

Customer Communication

This is my Illustrator piece for the Graphic Design 2 portfolio. We were asked to create a design (without text) that portrayed customer communication. We had to select our own customer and context and after trying absolutely everything I could think of, I selected the communication between a pastor and his congregation.
My original idea incorporated Michelangelo's hands (Adam and God) and I wanted to echo the position in the hands of the other figures.
I picked the more simplistic, shapely style to keep the figures more detached and in order to allow the viewer to connect with them more [and I tend to be so realistic that doing this more abstract style was actually harder for me]

Cooking the Books

My first portfolio piece for Graphic Design 2. We were given the article and then told to create a magazine layout for the piece. I struggled with this piece more than any of the other pieces. Layout isn't my strength and I always second-guess myself.

Climb Every Mountain

PhotoShop project. We had to do a merge of two or more photos (I did 3) in Adobe PhotoShop. The major concerns were light—same strength and direction—and quality. The hardest part was finding images that would work! After that, putting it together wasn't too hard at all. Hopefully the merge was successful—obviously the goal is to make it appear as though the final product actually happened.

AC logo—finished

Here's the final product. As you can see, my previous brainstorms came up pretty empty! haha, but at least I finally found out what worked (sort of...). I was really excited about this piece, because both myself and my professor liked it and we worked out some of the issues that I had with it. But during the critique on Thursday it was revealed that my classmates were less than thrilled. Actually, I got very little positive feedback. Almost none. It was pretty pathetic to see my professor try to defend me. So yeah, talk about frustrating. But hopefully because I was able to satisfy the customer, I will end up with a better grade. Update soon hopefully!

Updated: 10-26-2010
I got an "A"!!! And it is up on the work of the week board!
I'm super excited, haha—I needed this ego boost

Logo — Art Center

In my GD class this week we are creating logos for the art center. Not as easy as it should be! Here are some of my thoughts, I'm not completely sold on any of these concepts so I would really appreciate some feedback :)

CD Cover

This is my slightly modified CD cover for GD 2. I liked my idea originally, but I am not completely sold on it anymore
The blue/gray underlay has been added and will probably disappear again, but I was told that I did not push my idea enough (once again) so I tried it. But I admit, it makes me dizzy!