Brochure

Soooooo..... SURPRISE! I'm running behind on getting the ball rolling on this brochure but it's in the works now! I was originally going to to fishing/ hunting / conservation/ wildlife in NEMO but the Missouri Department of Conservation's website is just a mess of pdf's and didn't have all that much content on it. I was kind of excited about doing it because I was going to photography my grandparents' land and my dad in full hunting gear and his four wheeler and stuff but I didn't have the desire to essentially write 3000 words of copy about hunting :( I've not moved to the CCF, Campus Christian Fellowship organization. I looked at their website, and when completely milked dry it has around 3500 words. I'm very active in CCF, so 3500 words paired with personal experience should get me to the magic 5000 much easier. I'm not trying to be a weenie and shy away from my first idea because it's hard, I'm being realistic.

 So I got it done! Whoo hoo!!! I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. It started out as a hot mess that didn't really know what direction it wanted to go; I kink of had a lot of different things going on in it all at once, but once one idea was finally gone with, it really started to take shape. I chose colors out of CCF's current logo and then also applied a light cream to the whole background just to take the edge off the stark whiteness.
I completely hated finding all the copy for this piece, and I'm not usually much of a fan of these projects in general because I'm not very good at them, but once I finally got enough words in there, it really wasn't all that bad. I find large bodies of text to be very overwhelming so starting these kinds of newsletters or brochures takes me freaking forever!
Considering how long it took me to get the all the copy in, I went a bit over budget. I spend a great deal of my time, like I said, getting all the text in their, and then also, just figuring out what direction I wanted to take the piece. Overall I spent about 42 hours on the project from start to finish.

Lynda.com

I've been working through my Lynda tutorials and while I do find them helpful in some regards, I also find them to be giant time suckers. Some of the stuff that is covered is so elementary that it's pretty freakin excruciating to sit through . . . I know how to open a new document and make a text box! I'll keep plowing through them though!

Well now that Lynda.com is over, I suppose that means it is reflection time, I might have already typed this post once, fallen asleep on my computer and accidentally had my hand held down on the "c" key which then wrote over all of the text I already had....ooops!
There were some aspects of the Lynda.com training that I found to be quite useful, and others not so much. I worked through all of the typography unit and I thought it was pretty useful and applicable. What I found most useful was all the keyboard shortcuts that the videos shared. I use a lot of them all the time now! I took notes over some parts, but I wish I would have taken more detailed notes over the videos in general so that I could have a reference to look back on now. I tried going through some of the Photoshop and  Illustrator videos but for the most part I found them to be painfully boooorrrriiinnnggg! Yes, I already know how to open a new file, and yes, I know how to crop a picture. I feel like some of these videos could be utilized at the beginning of the semester for first year viscommies, but beyond that many of them are too basic. Most people who are wanting to get a degree in graphic design already know the basics of most adobe software.
I think it would be more useful if there was a way that we could have access to the site when we needed to look up a particular thing, like how to make lightning in Ps or how to trouble shoot in Id.
I definitely think that with some adjustments and tweaking that the Lynda site could be utilized in lower level curriculum in semesters to come.
Oh and I didn't end up finishing all of the courses. I skimmed through most of them to some extent and like I said I finished the one on typography. But when it came to prioritizing time for other homework and the not so high level of usefulness of the videos, they got put on the back burner.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz!

Total Hours 28.4

Ok, well it's a little hard to see here as a tiny little blog post pic but this is one of the first stages of my book cover design for the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I still have a lot of work to do on it but I like where it is headed so far!


This book project has been a royal pain! I have ideas for it but can't seem to execute any of them in a way that looks anything like what I had in mind, GRRRRRRRR. I've switched the bow and stripe component up a number of times and I think I've finally found one that if nothing else, is significantly better than the above pic. Also I've created an emerald city that I added to the back.

 Here's the Emerald city in its first stage.

 And here is the book cover. I applied glitter to the Emerald City graphic so that it would feel more cohesive with the glitter shoe.

The book cover is done, the CD case is almost done, and it's almost the end of the school year!

Oh ya and the CD is done too!

Hey Rusty, I actually have been doing stuff! Here are the iPad, the iPhone, and the iBook
artwork.