I decided to make a video about my love story with coffee, because is probably the biggest aspect of my life that isn’t just myself. It is something that I really enjoy, spend a lot of money on, and schedule my day around. So, when I had to write something about myself, it was an easy choice to pick coffee.
The main structure of my story is this: I met coffee and loved him. I got a bad coffee so I thought he had changed. Turns out it was just a bad day.
The rest of my story goes more into depth about how we met, how much he means to me, and other things like that. The conflict in my story is that one day I got a bad coffee, and I thought it was coffee’s fault, and that he had changed, but it was just a fluke.
The main problem that I had with this project was figuring out how to balance everything. Between the images, voiceover, and music, I wanted to make sure that everything was clear enough. I spent a while figuring out how loud to make the two different sounds so that you could hear both well. I put a lot of effort into lining the images up with the song and voiceover so that they would make sense.
I am pretty proud of how the whole video ended up coming together. I think that the song I chose to use (LOVE by Frank Sinatra), fit the vibe of the video perfectly. The video is a good length, at just about one minute, so that it holds the viewers attention and provides a good story without being too long and boring.
If I had more time I would’ve taken some video. I spent quite some time collecting all of my pictures, and I felt that by using the Ken Burns effect I was able to get the idea across that I wanted. I thought that video might have broken up the flow that I had going on.
I really wanted to highlight the fact that Creative Commons is focused around imagery. The whole idea of Creative Commons is that they provide free imagery to anybody who wants it, and it can be used for any purpose. I wanted the main message of my commercial to be a call to action to donate to Creative Commons, in order to allow them to keep doing this.
The main problem that I had was figuring out how to achieve the effect with the fast layering of photos that makes up the main part of the commercial. I first attempted to do it in iMovie, but I quickly realized that it wasn’t working out the way I wanted it to. So then, I decided to use my prior knowledge from this class of making gifs to solve my problem. I simply took my images into photoshop, and made the layering into a gif, and inserted the gif into my movie. Once I did this, the effect looked exactly how I wanted it to. The only other thing that was a little difficult to do was find a song that I was allowed to use in my video, without copyright stuff. After a bit of googling though, I was able to track one down and download it.
One new thing I had to figure out in this project was how to record a voiceover and add it to my commercial. I tried a few things before settling on recording a voice memo on my phone, sending it to my computer, and adding it into iMovie from there. I also really had to set myself up to record a good voiceover – I had to go to a quite place where I was alone so I could focus. It took me quite a few tries to get it right, but eventually I got one that worked.
I really enjoy putting together videos on iMovie, so that was my favorite part of the project. I find it fun to piece everything together and add in transitions and music so that it all flows together as one thing.
I am very proud of how my commercial came out, I think the thing that really brought everything together was the song that I found and added on top of everything else. It gives it the feel of a real commercial.
If I had more time, I probably would’ve just added more photos to my sequence of layering photos to continue to add to the effect. Other than that, I am pleased with how everything turned out.
I wanted to create a presentation that effectively shared information about Lana Del Rey. I chose a black background in order to highlight the information and images in the presentation. I also wanted my presentation to be aesthetically pleasing, so I used fonts that matched my poster and her albums. I also wanted to have smooth transitions from slide to slide while the music played correctly in the background.
The first problem I encountered with this project was the fact that I did not have PowerPoint. So, I had to download the program, and then I was able to start. There were two main things that were challenging in this project after that – figuring out how to get music to play in the background of the presentation, and figuring out how to save the video and post it on YouTube so that I could link it here in my blog post. However, a simple Google search made it pretty easy to solve both of these problems. Beyond those three things, I did not encounter many problems with this project.
I enjoyed putting together the PowerPoint because it was fairly easy. I also enjoy my topic so it was fun learning more about her and putting together the information. It was fun to play with her aesthetic and put that into many different forms, and add it into all the different elements such as music, transitions, and colors.
I am proud of how quickly I was able to put together this presentation. I feel as though my presentation effectively conveys what I want it to, and is interesting for an audience to look at.
If I had more time, I would’ve practiced my presentation a few more times to make the timing of the slides more precise. I’m not super positive how precise the timing is, so it could probably be a bit better.
With my poster, I really wanted to capture the aesthetic of Lana Del Ray while also successfully engaging the viewer and giving them all of the information that they could need about the concert. I did my research by going to Lana Del Ray’s website and looking at how that was designed. I also got my image from the gallery on her website. I decided to use this image because I thought it was a very powerful image of her face, but it was also fun with the sunglasses. I also felt like the image had a particular emotion that I liked for a concert poster. I also mostly looked at her albums covers and used those as inspiration because I feel as though those are the most commonly known pieces of art related to her.
The most challenging part of this project was figuring out which information I needed to include and finding out how to fit it all without taking away from the image. Once I figured out all of the information that I needed, I decided to put it at the bottom so that her name stood out at the top, and I was able to create a hierarchy of information by placing the more important things alone so that they were bigger in order to stretch across the page. I wanted all of the text to be flush left to right, so by having less text would require the text to be bigger, and if there was more text it had to be smaller. The picture also had a solid background so the poster felt a little empty, but I was able to solve that by adding some clouds to the background.
I enjoyed playing around freely with the information, and working with Lana Del Ray’s aesthetic. I am very proud of how the poster came out because I feel like it is very clean and clear and easy to read. If I had more time, I might have played with the text a little more, but I think it also works being simple.
I wanted my gif to tell a little story within itself. Because I combined fall and space in my e-collage, I thought I could create a transition between the two as my story. I really liked how my digital collage came out, and I liked my font poem, so I wanted to marry the two in a nice way. I decided to leave each piece as it was, and combine different elements from each together (i.e. a few words with a piece of imagery).
The biggest problem I encountered during this project was the learning curve that came with creating a gif. Once I figured that out, it took me many trials to make a successful one. I had to delete everything and start over at least 4 times because I kept changing my mind. Once I started to get the hang of it, I was able to make edits without deleting everything. and it made it much more efficient. Once I had the technical stuff figured out, my biggest problem was figuring out how I wanted to combine the text and images to make the gif flow best.
There was a lot of new stuff for me with this project. I have never before created a gif in Photoshop, so I was very excited to learn how to. It was very fun to play around with a new aspect of the program. Now, I feel like I have gained a valuable skill that I can use going forward. I really enjoyed spending time exploring Photoshop.
I am very proud with how this project turned out. I put a lot of effort into making a lot of different movements, and I think they tie together smoothly.
If I had more time, I probably would have spent a little more time making the transitions smoother, and make the different elements fade in and out. However, I am very happy with how it turned out. I feel like I put a lot of effort into matching up different elements and making them move independently.
I wanted my e-collage to feel like fall, without being the cliche image of fall that we all imagine. I had many different photos of fall in my camera roll from over the years, so I was able to use those in the background, and the road in the front of the image is also from one of those photos. I really wanted my collage to look almost realistic, but not quite. By combining elements in ways that they don’t usually interact, I was able to achieve this.
The most challenging part of this assignment for me was figuring out how to fill the space without any text. I knew that I wanted a background of fall leaves, so that it tied into my font poem, but then I wasn’t sure what else to add on top to make it more interesting. There is a designer I follow on Instagram who creates digital collages, and they use a moon as the center of a lot of their designs and I was inspired by that. However, I wanted it to be a little more simple and grounded, which I was able to do by making the road so solid.
I really enjoyed the freedom of this assignment. I liked being able to take whatever I liked and put it together in whatever way I wanted to. I didn’t have to make things realistic, and I didn’t have to follow any rules. It was fun to be able to create something different.
I am very proud of how I was able to put together this assignment. I didn’t have to spend too much time thinking about how I wanted it to look because I had an idea right away. I like how seamless everything is, and how you can’t totally tell how everything has been cut and pasted.
If I had more time, I might have looked for my own moon image, or searched for better quality images, however I am still happy with how it turned out as is.
I knew I wanted to do a haiku as my poem, because I think they’re the perfect length. I saw this one, and I liked it because it created a strong image in my mind. It also gives off the vibe of autumn, which we are moving into soon. I thought this poem was simple, but pretty.
For the first line, I used Futura Extra Bold Condensed. I made the word “whisper” slightly larger, and less opaque then the other words so that it felt like a whisper behind the other words. The second line is Bodoni book, and I chose this because I think that Bodoni is a very sophisticated font, and the second line sounds sophisticated to me. I used Futura Condensed Medium to start the third line, but used Mellony Dry Brush for “gust of wind” because I thought the calligraphy felt free and flowing like a gust of wind.
Because the poem is a haiku, I decided to keep the poem as the three lines it is written in. I created some movement by staggering the lines instead of centering them.
One problem I encountered was how to fill the background space. I knew I wanted a black and white image so that the focus would remain on the text. I decided that I wanted a photo of a leaf, but I wanted it to be somewhat abstract so that it wasn’t just a picture of a leaf in the background. By zooming in to the texture on the leaf, I think that I was able to fill the space well without distracting from the poem.
I am very happy with how my font poem turned out. It was very easy for me to create, because I am comfortable with Photoshop. I was proud of how quickly I was able to do this because I showed myself that I do I have a solid understanding of the basics.
With more time, I probably would have just looked longer for a poem. Since the poem itself wasn’t the main focus of the project, I didn’t spend a super long time searching for one.
With my contact sheet, I was aiming to create a clean, appealing sheet that would be easy to look at and understand. When picking out the photos I would use, I tried to stick with photos that had similar color schemes so that the contact sheet as a whole would be visually appealing to look at. I also tried to pick a range of photos – landscapes, animals, buildings – so that I had a little bit of everything represented.
I think the most challenging part of this assignment was keeping everything organized. As a design major, I am pretty familiar with Photoshop so I was able to do most of the edits fairly easily. However, making sure that I had each image completed and linked properly into the file took a little bit of time. The only problem that I encountered was figuring out how to place the edited photos in the contact sheet so that the text wasn’t obscured. I solved this by moving all of the images up slightly so that they were still mostly in their box but the text was visible.
I enjoyed playing with all the different images and seeing what happened with the edits. I have never used the filters in Photoshops before, so it was really fun to play around with those and see what each one did to the image.
I am proud that I was able to do this assignment fairly easily. Since I am a graphic design major, I am expected to be able to use the Adobe programs easily, but sometimes it’s the small things that slip through the cracks. It was interesting to go back to the basics and see that I did know how to do them.
If I had more time I may have picked better quality pictures, but otherwise I am happy with how this turned out. Because I have Photoshop on my computer, I had a lot more time to work on this project than the other people in the class.
For our final project we created a matching game using a few of the important concepts we learned about in Comm 165. We completed many matching quizzes over the course of the semester, so we thought this was a good way to tie in that method of learning. There are five categories, and cards that have aspects specific to each. Players will then match the blue (aspect/definition) cards to the red (category) cards.
The first category that we created for our game was “Mind Maps”. Mind mapping is a topic that we focused on for a while in this class. There were periods of trial and error in the beginning, and students were not grasping the full concept of mind mapping. When creating a mind map, one must draw attention to the subject by placing the subject in the center of the page. Once the subject is crystallized, the mind map must consist of themes that relate to the subject radiating from the central focus. These themes must be capitalized and underlined. They should also be one worded themes to avoid overloading your map with random words. These branches should form a connected nodal structure, bringing the map together as one.
One category of the game we created is storyboards. Storyboards were something we learned about and focused on in class. We created our own storyboards as one of our blog assignments. For this category of our matching game, we put the aspect/definition cards as “moment to moment”, “action to action”, “subject to subject”, “aspect to aspect”, and “non sequitur”. We chose these as the aspect/definition cards to be matched with the red storyboard card because these were a big focus for us in class when we learned about storyboards. These were the transition names that we learned about, in order to create our storyboards using them. We formed our storyboards around these transitions, choosing photos that together would create one of these. Since these aspects were a big part of our learning about storyboards, we felt they were perfect for our game.
Another category our game focused on is “Explanation Graphics”. This method of visual and sensory learning works well together with the material we are learning because it is interactive, repetitive, and features multiple themes and topics discussed in our Comm 165 course. We included critical aspects of this concept such as Schriver’s Model of storytelling which describes combinations of words and images within a frame: a) redundant, b) complimentary, c) supplementary, d) juxtapositional, and e) stage-setting as well as Gestalt’s Principle of proximity: things that are close together are perceived as being grouped together. These definitions tie together with Explanation Graphics in regards to reflecting the different storytelling/narrative modes and demonstrating clear, concise information.
For the category of simple tables and graphs, we wanted to make sure to include the many different aspects that this category includes. There are many different options for what you can do with a table or chart, so we wanted to make sure to include all of these options in this category, which is shown in the option that includes pie chart, bar graph, and line graph. However, there are many qualities that tie all of these different visuals together, and these are shown in the options of displaying quantitative and qualitative data. The combination of both types of data is something that was stressed in our blog post on simple tables and graphs, because the having both types present and working together is integral in having a successful chart or table. Finally, the most important aspect of a table or graph is that it provides an effective and simple visualization of the data, which is the final match for this category. We felt that these four statements summed up the category of simple tables and graphs well.
The final category of our game focused on flow charts. A flow chart describes a process, system of model through shapes and lines. Earlier in the semester, we created flow charts explaining the advisement process to new students. A flow chart begins with a topic or idea, such as the advising process. This idea is put into a rounded rectangle. This shape is called the terminator, as it signifies the beginning and end of the process. In between the terminators are rectangles and triangles that help explain the steps. The rectangles are used to show the steps in order and triangles are used to pose a question. From these triangles stems arrows saying yes or no. Depending on the individual’s answer, this determines if they need to go back a step or if they should continue through the chart. Flow charts are useful in communicating the details of a task or process, documenting each stage of a process, and acting as a blueprint of a process. When learning about flow charts, we learned about Occam’s Razor Principle of Parsimony, which says to “never increase beyond what is necessary the number of entities required to explain anything.” This idea was helpful when creating a flowchart because it is important to simplify the ideas in order to not complicate the process. All of these statements were included in the game we created, as they are important to understanding a flow chart and how it works.
Mind maps, storyboards, explanation graphics, simple tables and graphs, and flow charts were important topics that we spent a lot of time learning throughout the semester. When creating this presentation, there were many decisions to be made. Upon beginning the assignment we made the decision to create a matching game because we felt it was the best way to explain and test a person’s knowledge of the topics. We then decided to use more than one matching card for each topic to enhance the information being provided. We originally were going to use one information card per topic, but felt that each topic needed more explanation. The audience for this assignment was someone who had never taken the course. By creating a matching game, we are providing the information, while also giving them a tool to test their knowledge once it is learned.
INDIVIDUAL REFLECTION
With our final project, we were really working to create a visual that summarized everything we have learned so far this semester in a fun, creative way. We wanted the project to be very easy to understand, but also interesting and engaging, since it is a game. With the presentation in mind, we wanted to make sure that it was something we could talk about clearly and understand when we were presenting to the class. We also wanted our project to be different from the others, not just the first idea that popped into our heads. We decided on making a matching game, because we felt this fit the project guidelines perfectly.
The biggest problem we encountered with this project was the logistics of the game itself. Once we decided that we wanted to a matching game, we had to decide how we were going to make it. It would be easy to make a small scale matching game, but we knew that this was something we would be presenting to the whole class, so we wanted it to be large and legible for many people at once. We began by using poster boards and cardstock for our different categories and definitions, which was fairly easy. When it came to putting it all together though, we had to spend quite a bit of time trying different things out. We went through many different theoretical options of how the game would be played, whether we wanted to tape the blue cards to the poster board or cardstock, whether we wanted to hand out the blue cards or have people come get them, etc. We ended up decided on handing out one card to each person, and letting them come up and place the card on the correct poster board, where the category would be.
Our “AHA” moment came when we decided what we were going to do for the project. As mentioned previously, we knew we wanted a fun, simple, creative visual, so we decided to go with a game. This would make it interactive and fun, while still being educationally valuable. We decided on a matching game, because we thought it tied in everything perfectly. Also, matching is something that has recurred many times in this class over the course of the semester, in both quizzes and exams, so it was a concept that is familiar to the class. It was a very logical way to organize all of the information to be seen at a glance, but is still challenging to put together. Once we decided what we wanted our visual to be, we were able to move forward and work very well as a team to complete this project.
All parts of this project related heavily to what we have learned in class. Not only was the content of the game directly taken from material we have learned in class, but the process of putting the game together required us to draw of concepts we have learned throughout the semester as well. It was easy enough to look at definitions and facts and put those together, but the challenge was using the visual forms and concepts we have learned to create a final visual that was successful. As a culmination of the class, this project required us to draw on everything we knew, and not necessarily use it all, but decide what worked best for our situation.
With more time, I think our group may have invested in better quality materials and higher production. We created this game by hand, and while I am proud of what we have created, there is always room for improvement. However, better quality production would have cost more money, which was something that did place a limit on us. With that said, I am very happy with the way our final project turned out.
I wanted my visual resume to reflect as many aspects of myself as possible. I thought about all of the things that are on my normal resume, and tried to find a way to incorporate all of those things into this visual resume. I wanted it to be very organized and easy to follow, but also interesting to look at and engaging. As with any resume, I wanted the important information to stand out to a potential employer taking a quick glance, with the less important information still easily accessible.
The biggest problem I encountered while making this visual resume was trying to get it to all fit on one page. I knew that I wanted to have a mind map as my central form, with each branch featuring a different form of visual information. It worked at first, but I quickly realized that I would have to very carefully place my information and move lots of things around in order to make everything fit on an 8.5″ x 11″ surface. While this was not a constraint for the project, it is something that I have been told many times about a resume, and it was important to me personally to have it all on one piece of paper for easy viewing.
My “AHA” moment came when I decided that I wanted to have the mind map as my central form for the resume. At first, I was having a hard time figuring out how to tie everything together so that it was all connected, and when I realized that I could do it as one big mind map, it became very easy. As mentioned, it was still difficult to make sure everything fit on the page in the mind map form, but the mind map gave me a lot of freedom to move things around on the page however I needed to make it all fit.
To complete this visual resume, I had to draw on almost everything we have learned in this class up to this point. I had to think all the way to the beginning of the semester when we learned mind maps, right up to the graphs we did a few weeks ago. I made sure to create each visual form in the correct format. One of my favorite things that we have learned about in this class is the concept of Occam’s Razor. I really like the idea of not using any more information than necessary to present an idea. I personally enjoy looking at things that are clean and simple, and creating things like that as well. This theory makes a lot of sense to me, and it is something that I have incorporated into my visual resume, as well as all of my other assignments. I also considered my use of color to show importance.
I’m very satisfied with how my visual resume turned out, but if I had more time I would just add a few more branches to my mind map. Each branch that I have added presents a lot of information, so adding more would only be beneficial to the overall resume. I could have maybe added a line graph for another set of information, or provided a timeline of my time here at Roger Williams. However, I feel that what I have created provides a very full picture of myself and my academic career, so I am not worried that I am missing any important information.
Bailee Maston 