Category: Practical Exercises.

In this blog post I will be discussing two self-promotional image posters created using Adobe Illustrator. The approach to these designs was to promote myself through exploring feelings and ideas that I think are vital for a solid future, and to do this I created illustrations and used images that I have taken. First Self-Promotional Poster The design for the self-promotional poster incorporates multiple ideas that I am passionate about and would like to embody in future designs. The poster includes friends, family, live music, Christmas and Hull. As part of the festive period, every year I go to a music concert in Hull with my friends and family. The idea of the poster is to be a promotional poster for Hull, which is something I would be interested in continuing with, advertising why Hull is a great place to visit. When looking through photographs I had taken at concerts, this one stood out for this design of a snow globe due to the confetti representing the snow in the globe. Second Self-Promotional Poster I aspire to be a primary school teacher, so for the second self-promotional poster I decided to create a design that would include topics that I believe are vital to teach the younger generation. The building represents a school, and each room contains a ‘pillar of education’. The first pillar shows that children should always feel welcome to ask questions. The second is yin yang, this was to represent the lesson of harmony. The next is learning about mental health and what steps to take when dealing with a traumatic event that happens in their life or someone around them. The fourth is friendship, knowing how you should be treated and caring for others. The final symbol represents caring for the environment. These are all subjects that primary schools may be approaching however, I feel that more time needs to be spent teaching these points to help the future generation.

In this blog post I will be reviewing how two self portraits created using Adobe Photoshop display my personal goals in graphic design. First Self Portrait For the first Adobe Photoshop self portrait I have created a checkboard and put myself in each box, using a photograph taken by a friend. The reason for choosing this image is due to the happy memory of where I was when it was taken, I was supporting my friend at her graduation fashion show. Friendship is very important to me and helping others with their work is a skill that I have been commended on throughout my career. I adapted each image of myself to have a different effect, be that colour, grain, or warp, but left the middle image untouched. This work represents my colourful and fun personality but is also a visual representation of the multiple creative ideas I have running through my mind at once. Second Self Portrait Crozier and Greenhalgh (1988) suggest that “contemporary self-portraits should reflect self-presentational concerns, that the spectator will expect to glean certain information about the self from them.” In this Adobe Photoshop self portrait I am trying to convey the message to the spectator that I am a happy, creative individual that loves being in nature. The chosen image was taken on a recent holiday to Cornwall, to inform the viewer of my love of nature I decided to use an image of a canvas painting that I created using acrylic paints for my background. This was painted when spending an afternoon with my Grandpop, meaning that both images used within this self portrait were again taken at times when happy memories were being created. Through my designs this is something I am passionate to share with others, to bring happiness to others through work I have created is a dream. References Crozier, W. R. & Greenhalgh, P. (1988) Self-portraits as presentations of self. The MIT Press, 21(1), 29-33.

In this blog post I will talk about two contrasting self portraits that I created using Adobe Illustrator. First Self Portrait For the first self portrait I have used Adobe Illustrator to create a simple replication of myself, it is based off a photo that was taken at a Thai restaurant my boyfriend and I visited before seeing my favourite band, music and food are two of the things that I enjoy in life most. Through the illustration I have tried to capture my happiness. The colourful lights in the background represent my joy in this moment, they also assist in showing my fun, bright and light-hearted personality. Through creating this self portrait, I have realised that throughout my future in design I would like to bring others joy and relief from the stresses of the world. Although it is important to spread word about important worldwide issues, when looking at other creatives designs playfulness and fun is what I am drawn to most. For the second Adobe Illustrator self-portrait I created an abstract piece, I focused on the features of my face that stand out to me the most when looking in the mirror. The large ovals around my eyes represent my tired dark circles, the patches represent the shadows and highlights of lighting due to my face shape and the mouth is wonky to replicate my wonky mouth when smiling. These stand out to me as flaws however through this design they have become fun, colourful and are the key to this design being interesting. Gogol (2019) makes the point that it is common for artists to create self-portraits throughout the ageing process. The background has a psychedelic feel which represents both my sometimes-chaotic brain and one of my top played music genres, psychedelic rock. In the future, I want to continue using bright colours and would like to create designs that connect to music. References Gogol, M. (2019) Aging displayed in self-portraits of artists. Innovation in Aging, 3, 180.

In this blog post I will be discussing two typographical name logos I designed using Adobe Illustrator, each logo says something about me. First Logo The sans serif font selected for the above typographical name logo is ‘Ziclets Medium’, which is a heavy weight uppercase font that is rounded, bubbly and fun. The kerning for the font was adapted to be closer together and the colours were changed to be bright and bold. By choosing this font the personality traits being communicated are friendly, colourful, energetic, fun, and enthusiastic; the curvy strokes used for this font perfectly represents these. Knight and Glaser (2012) describe the meaning of visual language as text and imagery creating a meaning through its visual appearance. Throughout my life I have been described as a sweet person which is why I was drawn to this font, through its visual appearance viewers are able to understand this meaning. Second Logo For the second typographical logo I chose the font ‘8 heavy’ because of its 60’s style, I then manipulated the font to make it wavy and 3D, which made it look like the liquid in a lava lamp to again bring in the 60’s feel. When deciding the theme of this typographical logo I wrote down words that describe me and the things I care or worry about, among this list were the following words caring, loving, thoughtful, environmentally conscious, and political climate. I then drew connections from caring, thoughtful, and loving to the summer of love which is a famous social gathering that occurred in 1967. The 60’s was also a time with a myriad of political issues and revolutionary movements against the government in many countries. I feel strongly about the current issues with the political climate and wanted to draw from the 60’s to represent this. To bring in the environmentally conscious aspect I chose for the typography to be green. Being environmentally conscious has been a concern of mine throughout my life and to be able to spread a message about the importance of environmental issues through my future designs is important to me. References Knight, C. & Glaser, J. (2012) When typography speaks louder than words. Smashing Magazine, April 2012.

In this blog post I will be evaluating two conceptually designed personal logos that I created using Adobe Illustrator. First Logo For my first conceptually designed personal logo, I chose to design a pepper shaker. The pepper is being shook to spell my name, Holly Pepper, I chose a grain effect for the font to ensure that the letters look more like pepper granules. The dual meaning to this conceptual logo is that Pepper is my last name, and it is my name that’s being shaken out of the pepper pot. Traditional pepper shakers usually have small holes on top in the shape of the letter P, to further bring my identity to the logo I chose to change these to H P. However, there is an inconsistency to this part of the design, the clean lines to the font do not fully demonstrate the way pepper would be poured. This logo represents my fun and quirky side whilst clearly displaying my name. Second Logo The evolved version of my conceptual logo shows the same pot of (Holly) Pepper, except this version contains pink and black peppercorns; however, they aren’t peppercorns, they are little icons of the things I love and that are most important to me, these are the things that make me Holly Pepper. This includes illustrations I created of my boyfriend, our dog, a disco ball to represent dance, a CD of my favourite songs and pizza, which really represents any food. Please see each illustration that is included to the right. These items are the things that bring me joy and through my designs I would like to bring happiness to others. I chose colours that I thought popped and have chosen to have pepper shaker label as the darker colour and the name in the lighter colour, whilst studies suggest that positive image polarity is easier to read, Cushman (1986) found that polarity did not affect reading comprehension and speed when reading on screens. References Cushman, W. H. (1986) Reading from microfiche, VDT and the printed page: subjective fatigue and performance. Human Factors, 28(1), 63-73.