Final Project: WEB ADS!

The semester for MSIT 3810 has come to an end. It’s been a great learning experience, and my skills with Photoshop have truly improved since January. Thank you to Professor Simmons for her help, advice and knowledge.

Throughout the semester, I have been working on my final project. As you may recall, I decided to create promotional goods for my sketch comedy show/group The Kevorkian Slips. Rather than go on and on with what I attempted or tried to express, let me just show you the work I’ve done! I’ll be showing what I’ve done through multiple posts (one for print flyers, one for web ads, one for website layouts, and one for an animated video I created).

Without further ado, here are the web ads I created for The Kervokian Slips:

Final Project: ANIMATION!

The semester for MSIT 3810 has come to an end. It’s been a great learning experience, and my skills with Photoshop have truly improved since January. Thank you to Professor Simmons for her help, advice and knowledge.

Throughout the semester, I have been working on my final project. As you may recall, I decided to create promotional goods for my sketch comedy show/group The Kevorkian Slips. Rather than go on and on with what I attempted or tried to express, let me just show you the work I’ve done! I’ll be showing what I’ve done through multiple posts (one for print flyers, one for web ads, one for website layouts, and one for an animated video I created).

Without further ado, here is an animation I created for The Kervokian Slips:

Final Project: WEBSITE LAYOUTS!

The semester for MSIT 3810 has come to an end. It’s been a great learning experience, and my skills with Photoshop have truly improved since January. Thank you to Professor Simmons for her help, advice and knowledge.

Throughout the semester, I have been working on my final project. As you may recall, I decided to create promotional goods for my sketch comedy show/group The Kevorkian Slips. Rather than go on and on with what I attempted or tried to express, let me just show you the work I’ve done! I’ll be showing what I’ve done through multiple posts (one for print flyers, one for web ads, one for website layouts, and one for an animated video I created).

Without further ado, here are the website layouts I created for The Kervokian Slips:

Final Project: THE PRINT FLYERS!

The semester for MSIT 3810 has come to an end. It’s been a great learning experience, and my skills with Photoshop have truly improved since January. Thank you to Professor Simmons for her help, advice and knowledge.

Throughout the semester, I have been working on my final project. As you may recall, I decided to create promotional goods for my sketch comedy show/group The Kevorkian Slips. Rather than go on and on with what I attempted or tried to express, let me just show you the work I’ve done! I’ll be showing what I’ve done through multiple posts (one for print flyers, one for web ads, one for website layouts, and one for an animated video I created).

Without further ado, here are the flyers I created for The Kervokian Slips:

The “Rant” Response/Design Expanding Communication As A Tool

As I was reading Rants + Rave editor in chief Aaron Kenedi’s editorial (featured in Print Magazine, Vol. 64, No. 4, August 2010) assigned for our MSIT 3810 reading assignment, the following quote on page 41 really stood out to me:

“Design as an art form and communication tool is more formidable now than ever.”

We can easily see this quote apply to the popularity of phone apps, as Khoi Vinh highlights in the article “New Balance: How Apps Are Changing The Way Designers Create On The Web” (featured in the same issue of Print Magazine). This further explains why in our final projects for the course we must include some form of digital representation. The web and new portable technologies have become the new and most used ways to access information. As technology enhances, so does its design.

It’s important to remember how every detail, every texture, and each use of color can affect the message being enforced through the design and image. With that in mind, I realized that the web site design layout I’ve created niggt need enhancement in order to portray the message I’ve been trying to portray with my digital and print flyers.

First, take a look what I originally created for the home page of my web layout:

 

Now, take a look at what I added to the background of the head banner:

 

Both versions have their pros and cons. The original is sleek and relatively simple (nothing too distracting), however it lacks a connection to the print and web ads that I’ve created. The second/experimental one gives the site that connection and a little extra edge. My only fear is that it may be too distracting or too much.

What do you all feel? Which style do you prefer better?

Reading Assignment: Brainstorming To This Point

I particularly found Elizabeth Resnick’s discussion about brainstorming (more specifically through thumbnails on page 19) from Design For Communication: Conceptual Basic Design Basics. Reading her instructions of how to go about creating thumbnails reminded me of the experience I went through when creating web and print flyers for my final project.

It took me a little bit of time to discovered the red bar idea (that replicates a sense of prison or jail bars) and the type of blending mode I wanted for it. At the same time, I thought I had come to the conclusion that I would use screen shots from the skits as the background image. However, after I created the big print flyer that featured each cast member’s mug shots from the intro, I realized that my original purpose of the ads were to highlight raunchiness/grittiness of the show. While the screen shots did so, they also gave away key visuals of the actual skit. It gave away premise more so than entice the audience to further watch.

Thus, this process took me from creating the image below (which uses the screen shot of the skit) to the image above (featuring a cast member’s mug shot and a funny tag line).

After observing this transition, what do you think?

In case you also want to see more of what I’ve done so far for the project, you can check out what I just posted on the MSIT 3810 blog as well.

Reading Response/ Creating A Button

Information Architecture: Blueprints For The Web’s third chapter starts off with a direct but extremely important point that must be implied to creating websites:

“It’s a simple fact: when you have a certain amount of stuff, you have to organize it. Otherwise, you can’t find anything.”

While chapters 3 and 4 in this book discusses multiple ways to strengthen a website’s organization (such as search engines and metadata), the one that stood out to me was navigation, or even more specifically global navigation (as mentioned in chapter 8, page 192). Navigation in general is a great way to link a lot of information for the user together without compressing too much “stuff” into one page. I think another reason why global navigation especially attracted my attention was because at the moment I am also creating image buttons (a great visual tool to create navigation) for my final Webmasters course project.

In the Webmasters course (which is also in the COPACE department), we have been taught to use GIF constructer to create animated/java buttons. However, I am not a fan of the GIF constructer software (uber sketch in my opinion). That’s why I was excited to see that in addition to this week’s reading for MSIT 3810 (Photoshop class), there was a great instructional video on making rollover graphics. I was hoping that there was a way to create rollover graphics through Photoshop (rather than through GIF constructer), but wasn’t entirely sure how.

I started to play around and follow the steps in the video. However, though her instructions are relatively clear and taught me new tricks I never knew about before, I seem to be having troube with the text reappearing in the new “style.” I am not entirely sure what I am doing wrong or how to fix this error. I am hoping that I can receive some additional help during tonights class (Professor Simmons, is this possible?).

But for now, check out one of the buttons I created for The Kevorkian Slips website layout. I’ve actually finished creating a website layout for the homepage, though am not ready to show it publicly yet. However, while it is still a little rough, I am excited about how it looks so far.

What do you think of the button thus far?