Last Page of Calendar

This is the last page of a Lana Del Rey calendar that I made for the new year, 2015. I researched many pictures of Lana Del Rey in order to choose the best ones, fully capturing every bit of her amazing persona with every pixel. It wasn’t very difficult to make this calendar, but it was very time-consuming as well as somewhat obnoxious to print and bind. I don’t really intend on making another calendar anytime in the near future. READYTOPRINTHD_KY

“Smashing Magazine” Website Review

This article is all about taking about 15-20 minutes to design something every day. Being a designer, I can personally relate to this idea of wanting to create more and finding a routine to help myself do so, which is why I  like this article. All the artwork I’ve seen come about from this project is very unique and creative-two things I also want to be. Smashing Magazine claims that after completing the task, one will be a “better and more well-rounded designer.” That sounds pretty beneficial to me (: Perhaps I’ll try it. Anyone want to join?

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/22/design-something-every-day/

Final Holiday Card

For my holiday card, I live-traced actual pictures of a kitten and tree branches, adjusting the thresholds such that they formed photo-realistic images. After this, I used the paint bucket tool in order to color them accordingly. Then, I used the “flare tool” (as hidden under the selection allocated for the creation of shapes like circles and squares) to create some interesting highlights upon the card. Next, I made a clipping mask so as to clean up the art board before finishing up my design. But I couldn’t have just images on my holiday card! That’s why I then referred to my brain for some cheesy Christmas puns to add to them, as seen below. I couldn’t decide between two of the phrases I came up with, so I decided to feature them both.

Christmas Card Research

Here we have about 24 or so examples of various holiday cards. For some reason, probably because I love cats, I wanted to use some sort of feline on my design. In the end, I methinks I shall go with the general “kitten under a tree with an ornament” type graphic, as seen below. However, I also wish for my cat on my card to be photo-realistic, so I shall probably use an actual photograph of a kitten and live trace in order to create what I have in mind. Keep yourself posted for more! c:

Final Bottle Label

For one of the two soda bottle labels that I am doing, I chose to make “Confederate Cola” featuring Confederate General Robert E. Lee in the logo as well as a couple bad Civil War puns :p Although it’s difficult to see it all,my label consists of a logo, the number of ounces theoretically inside it, Nutrition Facts, a bar code, and contact information. I hope you like it~

Sunburst

The sun, it bursts! I mean, we all knew that at some point we would lose our precious sun, but we thought it’d be in millions and millions of years-WAYYYYYY after we were all long dead, of course! But no, the almighty miasma of incandescent plasma has met its end eons before it was ever meant to. As the great Billy Joel has said, “Only the good die young.” The sun was good. Why did it have to go? Why? WHY? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY??????!!!!

(P.S. My family and I were destroyed by our once-nurturing gargantuan star. I am writing this from the afterlife. A sad afterlife with no sun.)

Cereal Box: Barcode

And here comes the barcode of the cereal box. Although it may seem rather unassuming and unimportant, it’s rather a big deal. Barcodes are to cereal boxes as mascara is to humans. It makes a difference.

Beautiful.

Cereal Box: Logo

So the makeover begins! With an adorable kitten face on a cereal box, how could one possibly resit buying it? They couldn’t. Kitten cereal box shall rule the world.

Cereal Box: Research

Think about it. You got up this morning, brushed your teeth, threw on some clothes, and had some cereal. It’s the typical Monday-morning routine. However, what would you do without your cereal, your breakfast-the most important meal of the day???  Why, you may have to revert to the breakfast of the olden days, having oatmeal or some such atrocity as though actual cereal hasn’t been invented yet. Or, even worse-you would have to get up early, overcome your laziness, and actually prepare a wholesome breakfast yourself! Eggs, bacon, biscuits, pancakes, orange juice-the whole nine yards. And although bacon is certainly wonderful, does it really make up for all the effort and lack of sleep you had to sacrifice for it, and on a Monday morning???? Seriously, why would you do that to yourself? Appreciate cereal. Cereal appreciates you.

But, cereal wishes to have a new face! Is it going through a mid-life crisis? Has it simply watched too much America’s Next Top Model or What Not to Wear? Who knows. In any case, it desires a brand-new, beautiful make-over. And to get started, we’ll start off brainstorming with a couple classic looks.

Stay tuned for more, as cereal finds itself as well as a new style!

Button Variations and Final Design

In order to choose the perfect three designs, I first had to fiddle around a little in Illustrator with the images I had found. First, I used live trace, then I made the image backgrounds the color “nothing,” and then I sized the images accordingly and colored them. On a few, I actually withheld some color so as to create more emphasis, such as leaving the octopus white with the pink background, and adding minimal color to the button with the crying anime-style eye. Sometimes, things really just aren’t the same with too much color. Usually people like to have as little white as possible in designs because they find it boring, blank, or basic; but I like to utilize white so that it is beautiful and in contrast with it’s exact opposite, black, such that it can become elegant and eye-catching rather than plain and ignored.

As you can see, I came up with several designs (I had WAYYY too many possible ideas), but I sadly only had the time and resources to bring three of them into existence. I started out by printing my three final designs and using a special button-sized hole punch to cut them out. An entire button paper should be 2.625 inches in order to run over and fold beneath the backing, but only about 2.25 inches are actually visible on the front of the button.Thankfully, I already knew this when creating my designs, so that was already taken care of, and I didn’t screw everything up last minute :p After my paper was cut out, I used a special manual button-pressing machine, putting a thin circle of plastic along with my image and the metal base on one side, and the metal backing with a pin attached to it on the other side. Then, all I had to do was press down and then switch sides and press down again. Then, violà! I had a button. Here are the finished results after each time c: