Monday, September 23, 2013

Second Position Logo

This past spring, I competed in the local Greater Binghamton Scholastic Challenge with my business Second Position. Though we didn't take home the overall prize, we did win "Best Idea" and were praised for our logo design.
 
I designed this logo to look like the placement of the legs in second position, which is a ballet position in which you stand with your legs about hip-width apart and your feet turned out. I wanted it to look like a whimsical drawing, something along the lines of a quick doodle, since we did plan on targeting a younger age group. I kept the logo pink because pink is the trademark color for dance.
 


Thursday, September 19, 2013

Some Previous Design Work


Here's a logo design I recently did that is being considered for the Student Dance Organization at Brockport. I chose to use modern dance poses to spell out the letters "SDO" because the Organization and the Brockport Dance Department in-and-of-itself is heavily weighted towards modern dancing, and is noted for its unique style. I kept the font beneath the figures simple, but still noticeable, because the main focus of the piece was on the Student Dance Organization, though the Brockport Dance Department had to also be recognized.

 


These are two logo designs I did for Dancescapes's 13th Annual Recital this past June. I was asked that the word "dance" had to be incorporated in a bunch of different languages, and from there I decided to use the words to develop an image of a dancer.
This is a tattoo design I did recently. The original image I got was of an infinity heart ring;
I was asked that the design of the ring be kept in the design of the tattoo. As I was sketching some ideas, I realized that there were two letters present in the design; a "C" and a "B." After noticing this, I emphasized the letters in the design, since the initials of the first names of the ladies I was doing the design for were "C" and "B." They plan on getting their tattoo done sometime within the next couple of months.
 
 
This is another tattoo sketch I recently did. For this one, I was asked to draw a realistic heart and make it appear as though light was breaking through it, then accompany the drawing with the words "Heart on Fire, Brain on Ice," which is a theater phrase.
 
 

 
 
 

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Intro to Computer Graphics Metaphorical Self-Portrait Process

Thumbnails:


 
 
Playing around with proportions:


 
 
Playing around with the arrangement of the words:

 
 
 



Final composition:

I tried to incorporate the design concepts through either the size, shade, or placement of the words individually and as a whole. I emphasized the word "selfless" by increasing its size in comparison to the surrounding words. Emphasis is also incorporated in the aspect of contrast. I wanted to emphasize the word "selfless," "optimistic," and "spontaneous," because those are my top three, in order, so I kept those black and lightened the "forgetful" and "procrastinator," which were lower on the hierarchy. I balanced the image by lightening the words "forgetful" and "procrastinator," which are on opposite sides of the image. I tried to align the image so that the viewer’s eye would travel, or so that the flow of the entirety of the image would direct, downward, starting from the word “selfless” and ending with the repetition of “procrastinator.”
 
 
On top of trying to incorporate the design concepts in my final composition, I also tried to arrange the words individually so that they communicated their meaning. Generally, shy people don't like to be the focal point of much of anything, so I tried to keep the word as unnoticeable as possible without making it completely disappear. I kept it very small and off-center, sitting on top of the word "selfless" which is the focal point of the image and immediately draws the eye to it, hoping that by placing the word in that spot, the viewer will at first overlook it, then eventually notice it once they've seen the other words. A selfless person essentially doesn't think of his/herself. To communicate this, I struck out the word "self" in "selfless." I also took the word "less" and brought it down underneath "self” to communicate how selfless people always think less of themselves. When I think of the word "optimistic," I think of happy, whimsical, beautiful things, and personally I believe the most whimsical and beautiful kind of writing is cursive, so I wrote optimistic in cursive. Spontaneous people are usually fun, crazy, and very unpredictable. I chose the font for “spontaneous” because it looks very random and it was unpredictable; as I was typing the word, I wasn't sure how the next letter was going to look, and I definitely wasn't expecting the "O" to loop around in that interesting shape. I dropped the "t" in "forgetful" to imply that it was forgotten. I didn't want to completely rid of it, because I had already planned to cut the word "procrastinator" short. Procrastinators are the kind of people who "finish everything later." So, I chose to cut the word short and add an ellipsis at the end to imply that time was passing and essentially that the word would be "finished later."