oh my precious design.

Design.. Oh! how much I love and hate thou! My relationship with design is definitely love/hate relationship. It contains 99% of love and 1% of hate and hate part comes when I struggle with ideas. I absolutely hate the frustration during design process but it turns in to love soon when I find the hidden golden nugget.

So now let’s talk about what I love about design. I wish I can list 99 reasons but I have great logo to create for now. I will post up the list when I get a chance. For now, I am going to express my love for design less than 300 words. Here we go.

I really love that fact that design actually improve our lives. We pass traffic sign, signals, store signs and everything in between every single day. Have you ever thought about how your life would change if we don’t have those signs? CHAOS. Because of the signs that were DESIGNED by someone at some point, we are living less chaotic world. Thank you design and designers.

As a designer, I enjoy little things that entertain my eyes: logos on semi-trucks on the road, concert posters for local bands, beautiful patterns on wallpaper, and the list goes on and on. Just little things like that can stop me from what I was doing. Well designed (I often refer them as “pretty things”) objects scream for my attention and I think they deserve 30 seconds of my life. Often times, I end up literally petting the objects and tell them how awesome they are. It’s silly but I can’t help it. Pretty things do make me a happy camper.

I’m excited to be a maker of ‘pretty things.’ Graphic design taught me how to appreciate little things around me. I cannot wait to jump in to the world and create awesome designs that help others. I hope they appreciate it like I do appreciate them.

Web banners

[- I forgot to save the URL for first two banners. I apologize. If you know the URL of these banners or know the designers, please let me know. Thank you.
- Banner on the right is from Notcot.com]

There are a lot of web banners on Internet. I wish all of them were great but unfortunately only few are well made. I surfed web to find good examples of clever web banners and came across three banners which are displayed on top of this page.

What stand out throughout the banners is simplicity and good usage of negative space. Banners do not necessarily need a lot of text since they are linked to other website that contain more information. The examples use few texts to deliver the message yet draw attention. Also, interesting images on banner catch the viewers’ eyes. Image definitely make first quick impression of banner and it is important to keep their attention. Second and third banner used unusual images and it catches eyes immediately.

CSS Zen Garden

CSS Zen Garden is an online CSS practice site for web designer. As a student who just started to learn about web design, I approached the problem with simple solution. I wanted to focus on wire-frame and composition of the piece. I got an idea from one of CSS Zen Garden submission piece, Under the Sea by Eric Stoltz. I like the idea of placing fixed images on the bottom and that is how I got an envelope idea.
I started to search interesting envelopes. Airmail envelope definitely captured my eyes. The red and blue pattern reminded me of the time when I sent mail to my friends in oversea.
When I  worked on wireframe, the main thing that I concerned was hierarchy. I gave difference among the text with size and color of the text.

example

 

Day 2 with Medium// Allegra

The second time with Medium was helpful just like first time. Josiah Roe and Becca Reese had a presentation about web design process with their own examples. They pointed out the importance of sketching and grid system for wireframe process. Also, they talked about user path and how important it is for the designers to think on the users’ side. The examples were helpful and it was great to hear from them. Thank you for coming to teach us! :]

After Web Media class, the class headed to local printing company Allegra. Allegra is a small commercial shop that target medium to large businesses. They are the first printer in Chattanooga who adopted digital printing and sheet fed style printing. I was fascinated by all the things they can do in the shop. They offer design service as well as printing with various options. After the tour was finished, they gave us awesome water bottle, stickers (die cut!), and personalized memo pad. It was unexpected yet nice surprise. All the employees greeted us with smile and we learned a lot from them.  Thank you!

Photos by T.J. Bowman.

Paradisum – Vivid Place

Poster – Front

Poster – Back

Post Card – Front

e-Blast

Web mock up

Day 1 with Tubatomic and Medium guys.

Since Leslie had to leave for the WE Rock tour (yes. My teacher is a rock start. :] ), we got a chance to learn from local professionals. Today, we had George Bairaktaris,  Alex Ogle, and Mat Turner. George and Alex are from Tubatomic [http://www.tubatomic.com/] and Mat is from Medium [http://thisismedium.com/].

They talked about their career and web design industry in general. The talk last about two hours but I learned few important things in that short amount of time.

Mat talked about his experience as a freelance designer and it was not a quite exciting job for him. He said good organizing skill is definitely required to work by yourself. Working as freelance designer could be great if you can manage well time, money, client, and many other elements. I always had this dream of working as a freelance designer but after hearing Mat I realized I should think more deeply about it. Maybe I can be an independent designer after I establish experience but for near future I think I will hold that thought.

Another thing that I learned from these guys is that I REALLY need to develop tech skills for photoshop, illustrator, and many other applications. I do not want to be someone who get hired and then cannot do my task because I don’t know much about those applications.

Last but not least, they pointed out very important things that we should do:
1. Trust yourself
2. Don’t limit yourself
3. Pay attention to detail. Always.

I want to thank to George, Alex, and Mat who took their precious time for UTC graphic design students. Thank you!!! :]

Gotham is in danger!

It’s an inside joke for designers. Batman saves Gotham from Comic Sans. [Please look at the movie credit. You will see 'Comic Sans as The Joker.']

The purpose of this project was using typography to create a movie poster. I was not sure where I needed to start but then there it was….my favorite typeface, Gotham. I immediately started to connect Gotham (typeface) and the Gotham City in the Batman movies.

Constructing the Batman figure in the poster was the hardest thing because I have never used typeface to build an image. I definitely needed to take a look at each letter and its form. Some letters were pointy and some were boxy. Having that in my mind, I started to build the figure from wings which had pointy ends. I used ‘N’ and ‘A’ for the pointy ends. I used wings as a basic structure and started to add more letters to it. It took me a while to finish the poster but it was an interesting experiment.

[side note- the hardest part of all was stretching the letters. I was not comfortable with stretching my lovely Gothams..]

DIY Summit

My very first online conference was interesting. I, honestly, had a doubt on the format of the conference but as I listened to the speakers I realized it was just an apprehension. All the speakers did great job and I learned a lot from them.

The one who stood out most was Dan Rubin. The topic he had was most interesting to me since it was directly related to my web design class. He used example for each small subject and that kept me interested entire time during his presentation.

First few slides were something that I was already familiar with. Using grid, typeface, texture, and pattern were just same as designing prints. BUT! One additional thing that should be considered for interface design (or web design in general) is interaction with the users. I learned that I have to have the users in mind all the time even before the design process take place. Typeface should be legible for the users and grid and overall format should fit in the monitor setting so that the viewers have less trouble approaching the website. Most of all, the interface should be welcoming and user friendly. After all, web designers make website for people to use. There was a quote from one of his slides and it was like this; Invite people to touch your interface. I agree 100% with him and I am glad that I got a chance to think about my future users.

Kelly Goto was a great speaker. She had some technical difficulties but she pulled it off so well that nobody lost interest during her speech. I learned that I need to be a innovative thinker and need to have good work flow to be unstuck. When she mentioned about ‘facebook distraction’ I could not hold my face up because that how I always ended up being sidetracked. Also, I realized I need to think differently about myself and my work. Goto’s suggested a way to help me to work more efficiently; think positive even when I get stuck. After her presentation, I stopped checking facebook when I work and I also started to think positive way about my work.

I gained a lot from this conference. I deeply appreciate each speakers’ great presentation.

Matt Harris

On September 17, UT Chattanooga graphic design majors will attend online conference The DIY Summit. It will be a great chance for us to absorb more web and design related knowledges outside of class. Matt Harris is one of the nine speakers and he will talk about popular blog website WordPress. Matt Harris will talk about how to manage the content in WordPress and how to plugin into this popular blogging website which has special features such as customizing options.

He is a web developer who works on IT system and network administration of schools and companies. He works with CSS, HTML, Python, and PHP. He likes to promote web standards and shares it with the schools that he works with. He is currently with a company named Tokofu in Hampshire, UK.

-will continue soon.