Week 9.2 "Amalga Poster"

This design is based on my earlier projects called, Amalgamated Industries. For this assignment we were given images of widgets that they distribute to other industries and were instructed to develop a simple poster design. I constructed the image in Photoshop; originally the image’s background was black with a gradient of gray. To change the background to white, I first turned the image into a smart object and by selecting the background with the magic wand tool I could isolate the background from the widget. By doing this anything I do to the image would only effect the background and not the widget itself. I then erased the background with the eraser tool so I only have the image of the widget in the document.

I then finished the project by bring the image into Illustrator and because of Illustrator’s vector system I could resize the image without losing in pixels or distortions of the image keeping the image clear and crisp. The texts were added last by positioning the text with a significant amount of space it will complement the white space and help the composition’s flow.  

Week 9.1 "Oliveight Items"

Hey, what’s going on everyone? Today I’m here to showcase two designs that represent the two companies I’ve been working.

This first design is of the Olive Eight Hotels merchandise. For this project we were instructed to develop concepts for merchandise that our given hotel may provide. I chose t-shirts, a hat, and a pair of water-skis. I chose some practical items like the hat and t-shirts to represent the typical merchandise a hotel may sell, as for the water-skis I wonted to represent some of the events that the hotel may hold and since they are located in a port city like Seattle water-skiing would best fit the settings.

As for the concept the logo and color skim are the same as the logos with a saturation difference to help the composition be less harsh on the eyes compared to the darker green in the logo. The items are all traced with the pen tool from a template and designed afterwards. Unlike the previous logo design I gave an extra design element to give the design a more edger and visual appealing to appear to target the younger audience. With the brush tool I used the chalk brush preset with a low opacity for the highlights. I believe that by applying lighter highlights to the darker elements and darker highlights to lighter elements I could get the design to pop or standout.

I chose this logo design to represent these products, because it takes up less space and is memorable when seen. The figure on the side is a scale reference to compare the sizes of the items.

Week 8.2 "Olive 8"

This logo is based on a hotel called, “Olive 8 Hotel.” I designed the logo to include two graphical olives to represent the “8” and a more less obvious olive to represent the “O” in Olive. This design is in a logo sheet format to help organize the different pieces. Just like the last logo design I designed it was done in Illustrator and is based on designs I’ve sketched on trace paper.

Some of the problems I had with this design were getting the “O” in Olive to appear more readable to the eye. Originally the “O” was designed to be an olive like the “8,” but it became lost in the design and it read as “Live 8” instead of “Olive 8."

Week 8.1 "Amalga Logo"

Hey everyone, this week I show case two sets of logo projects that I’ve been working on.

This logo is based off of a made up company we were given in class called, Amalgamated Industries Incorporated. The instructions were very simple we were told to develop a working logo piece that would be used for multiple media sources. We were given total freedom in the logos concepts.

I first started sketching on my tracing pad developing many different ways the company name could be formed using only text. Out of all the design I sketched I chose one and recreated it using Illustrator.

The logo is made up of the three letters of the company’s name, “a.i.i.”. The letters are all in lower case form and are stacked onto each other on separate layers giving it an interesting design. A trick I used to get the “a” to appear to be in sections was to use a clipping mask on another “a” and place them next to each other to form a sectioned “a.”  

The piece required a two-color format, a four-color format, and a black and white color format. By using Illustrator’s pantone color palette I chose three colors that would best represent the logo to finish it off.

One of the difficulties I had with this project was to keep all the letters aligned in each design, so by using the alignment tools in Illustrator I could easily get the design aligned the way I wonted.

Week 7.2 "Altar"

This piece is called, “Altar.” The main objective of this project was to formularies ourselves with the duplication tool and to experiment with the different paint effects. For this composition I made a central focus with the sphere at the center. By giving the spheres a reflective surface to give off the different viewpoints each sphere would have of the central piece it made the composition more interesting. The pillars in the composition were used to give the composition an appearance of an altar or some mythical place.

Difficulties I had with this composition were getting the spheres to become centered to each pillar. By using the centering tools in Maya the process became easier.

Week 7.1 "R.E.D."

Hey, everyone today is the start of week 7 and for this week I’ll exhibit some of my projects I’ve done using the Maya Program at school.

This piece is called, “R.E.D.” The objective of this project was to formularies ourselves with the controls that required positioning and to gain a sense of feel with the Maya program. Another objective of this project was to display a given color in text form within the composition that would appear appealing to the eye.  I chose the color red and I simply displayed the texts, R. E. D. throughout the composition. I experimented with reflections to give the piece a more interesting look.

The difficulties I had with this project was getting used to Maya’s controls. At first it was hard to position the objects within the composition, but with practice this process became easier over time.

Week 6.2 "Fruit Label"

This design is called, “Fruit Label.” For this assignment I was given a product and was told to design labels for that product using label templates given in class. I struggled with this assignment a lot; I really didn’t understand the construction of a typical label so through research I found out that labels are usually very basic, bold and understandable.

So in my design I used the basic shapes as borders and I gave them basic color to fill the empty space. My subject was called, “Canyon Farms.” They sell fruit drinks so on each label I designed specific fruits. In my composition each label is interchangeable and don’t represent one fruit design but any fruit design that is applied to that specific label. Throughout the design I kept each one simple just using colored shapes, gradient backgrounds and bold text.

Tips: Usually when you want to represent anything edible you would use real photos of the subject. I chose not to in my design I wanted to be deferent and to experiment with this idea.

Week 6.1 "Carpentry"

Hey guys, another week and two more works to post. For this week I’ll show you some logos and labels that I’ve worked on in Illustrator so enjoy.

This design is called, “Carpentry.” For this assignment I was given a profession and was told to design a logo for print, which we would use to represent the profession we were given. We were also told to use our name as part of the composition to get us to experiment using type within a logo’s design.  The composition is in a standard logo layout, which gives different views and styles of the designed logo.

This is the final logo design. Its main focus is the right angle ruler and the lowercase B within the design.  I used Bauhaus as a typeface to complement the simple design with a simple and interesting type. I found it cool that the lower case B resembled a tape measurer so I used it in junction with my name to complete the project.

The only difficulty with this project was how to design the logo. To solve this problem I mostly sketched out all the drafts on tracing paper and brought it into illustrator and worked from those designs.

Week 5.2 "Got Milk?"

This composition is called, “Got Milk?” First, I would like to thank this person for patiently modeling for this piece, which took about two and half hours to complete. The objective of this work was to portray a “Got Milk?” ad for a magazine. This composition is mostly made up of the image itself, but for editing purposes it was taken into Photoshop to touch up small things like the milk mustache, which was done with the brush tool with low transparence to give it a realistic feel. The text was also done in Photoshop and is the actual text for the “Got Milk?” advertisements. 

Some of the difficulties I had with this composition were the glare and shine within the glasses, which was removed using Photoshop’s healing brush tool.

Week 5.1 "Skyfall"

Hey guys, today’s showcase will consist of works that revolve around photo manipulation.

The first is called, “Skyfall.” The objective of this composition was to convey a statement that is considered a cliché. This piece represents the cliché, “the sky is falling.” The composition is of two images one of the sky and another of a puzzle both of which I acquired from my school’s photo stock sources on the server, so I could avoid any copyright infringements. The two images are on separate layers and by selecting each puzzle piece with the magic wand tool I could make them small templates for parts of the sky. By using the puzzle templates as an overlay on the sky image I could trace and cut them from the image making them independent. Then I finished the composition off by applying the puzzles on different layers, and moving them to my desired positions.

Some of the difficulties I had with this composition were getting the layers to appear correct on screen and getting the sky onto the puzzle pieces and making them appear out of place, three dimensional and falling from the sky. 

Week 4.2 "Night-Flower"

This piece is called, “night-flower”. As you can see their flowers, but not ordinary flowers their night flowers or black flowers that have color tints and shadows.  Another successful composition as with the “biplane2” the objective was the same just with a different event being represented. The theme of this composition was a flower show and the same basic principles applied only the use of color, shape, and the main object. My concept was to have a chalkboard feel with a hint of color. The concept is basic two flowers on a black background. I wonted the flowers to look sketchy like a drawing and combined with a black background gives the flowers a glowing effect making the colors of the flowers stand out. Having the background completely black would make the composition dull and lifeless, so applying a white on black backdrop would balance the composition out and at the same time complement the concept design.  The backdrop was designed using a leaf pattern brush and styled as an arch around the flowers as a focus.

The difficulty I had in this design was the position of the flowers and how I would keep the background from becoming tedious. Deciding how to design the flowers was very difficult as there are many ways to do it, but I decided to something different and familiar to me.

This composition turned out great and it gave me more interesting way to do things, it even gave me a new idea to have this project redone.

Week 4.1 "Biplane"

Well hello, this is Bryan speaking to all my up coming fans out there. Don’t mind the cheesy opening this is my first blog and I’m not comfortable talking about myself yet, but I’ll give it my best shot.

This blog is to help me expand my horizons as a designer by displaying and articulating my work. I am a student and throughout my career of being a designer I find myself continuously learning the trade through trial and error, which can only help me continue to grow. The works I post are some of the work I have done and are quite proud of. I welcome criticism and tips on how to better myself so enjoy.

This piece is called, “biplane2”. Why "biplane2" well trial and error that's all I can say. It is the final product of one of my many projects last year and one I’m very proud of and learned a lot from. For this project the objective was to develop a poster using an object that is represented in an event through the use of only color, shapes, and the object if necessary.  In my composition I used color and shape to represent an air show. The concept’s style is based on posters of the 50’s or Art Deco style. For the clouds it’s basic circles with light and dark value applied to different layers. I used this to help the background stand out but not distract for the main focus. The biplane is a collection of shapes mostly rectangles and circles. To help keep the shape consistent with the shape of a real plane I used an image of a plane as a template. I wanted the plane at an angle and placed near the edge of the page to give the composition a dynamic feel instead of placing it in the center, which would give it a plane and flat. 


One of the difficulties of this project was keeping the plane’s proportions accurate. When dealing with shapes they tend to look flat and non-dimensional to deal with this I used two colors for both the clouds and plane to help give the shape dimension.

All in all I find this to be a great composition that worked for the assignment I was given and would like to do something like this again.