Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Redesigns: DNA dog illustration & resume
Resume redesign
First I had to add all the fun stuff we're doing this semester, then I had to cut everything down to one page. Last semester I had tried to create a very 'designer' resume, and it was a good start. I fixed a few problems from the old design, got rid of some boxes and reduced the line stroke of the categories to bring out the white space more on the page. Kate and Victoria were fantastic and suggested I switch to a san-serif font...that was the best advice I got...it completely went with my clean look, and helped a lot of my font issues go away. I also added a drop shadow to my initials, its subtle, but designers notice things like that. It helped bring my name off the page, and that's the whole point of a resume, right?
I have a theme for my resume, that I am continuing on my website. It involves orchids, which I love. The orchid picture on my resume I found last semester, and love the length of the picture. Unfortunately, the picture was too small, and was distorted and pixilated on my resume. It's not too noticeable, but it needs to change. I was unable to fix it in time for the Southern Progress application, but will work on finding a larger, better picture that works with my resume. Just curious, what do you think of the flower, is it too girlie or artsy? Does it take away from the purpose of the resume? Please give me your input.
Here's the resume:
Redesigning DNA
I am also in the process of redesigning my illustration from last semester. I had originally sketched a dog morphing into a DNA strand, and then splitting into two dogs. The sketch looked fantastic, but I am having trouble polishing it up for the story. I'm almost contemplating NOT doing it on illustrator and opting to just draw out the sketch and paint it with watercolors or something. But for the sake of learning how to use Illustrator, I am attempting to play around with it. The first drawing is just using a brush with the pen tool, the second I was playing around with colors. No I don't intend the dogs to be blue and green, any input on how real I should make it? Should it look cartoony or serious? I'll also post the original illustration spread so you can see what I am working with.
Here's the spread:
Here's the pen tool/simplified one:
Here's the color one:
First I had to add all the fun stuff we're doing this semester, then I had to cut everything down to one page. Last semester I had tried to create a very 'designer' resume, and it was a good start. I fixed a few problems from the old design, got rid of some boxes and reduced the line stroke of the categories to bring out the white space more on the page. Kate and Victoria were fantastic and suggested I switch to a san-serif font...that was the best advice I got...it completely went with my clean look, and helped a lot of my font issues go away. I also added a drop shadow to my initials, its subtle, but designers notice things like that. It helped bring my name off the page, and that's the whole point of a resume, right?
I have a theme for my resume, that I am continuing on my website. It involves orchids, which I love. The orchid picture on my resume I found last semester, and love the length of the picture. Unfortunately, the picture was too small, and was distorted and pixilated on my resume. It's not too noticeable, but it needs to change. I was unable to fix it in time for the Southern Progress application, but will work on finding a larger, better picture that works with my resume. Just curious, what do you think of the flower, is it too girlie or artsy? Does it take away from the purpose of the resume? Please give me your input.
Here's the resume:
Redesigning DNA
I am also in the process of redesigning my illustration from last semester. I had originally sketched a dog morphing into a DNA strand, and then splitting into two dogs. The sketch looked fantastic, but I am having trouble polishing it up for the story. I'm almost contemplating NOT doing it on illustrator and opting to just draw out the sketch and paint it with watercolors or something. But for the sake of learning how to use Illustrator, I am attempting to play around with it. The first drawing is just using a brush with the pen tool, the second I was playing around with colors. No I don't intend the dogs to be blue and green, any input on how real I should make it? Should it look cartoony or serious? I'll also post the original illustration spread so you can see what I am working with.
Here's the spread:
Here's the pen tool/simplified one:
Here's the color one:
Random Design Fun: Maxim's Spine and Japanese Fonts
You Can't Miss: Maxim (groan here)
I may be the only one who never knew this, but over the weekend I discovered something new about Maxim magazine. The spines of each issue in one year, when placed together form a picture of a girl. I don't necessarily like the pictures, but that is one of the most creative ways to get readers to read every issue of the magazine--and possibly could increase subscription numbers because people want to see what the picture becomes. Did everyone else know about this?
YCM: Media Bistro
I wandered around Media Bistro this afternoon and found the Designers Corner forum. The site has a TON of forums, but this specific one has a lot of sub topics. One interesting thread I found was some girl in Laredo with an associates degree who 'wants to be a art director' and there were a ton of replies, from people saying 'you'll never make art director EVER' to 'go for it' Someone did bring up the difference between a BFA from a design school and an advertising or journalism degree. Mizzou was mentioned somewhere in the middle, apparently our program trains people proficiently in the technical aspects, but our 'designs skills are lacking' Obviously these mizzou grads were not in our class--because our class has fantastic design skills :-p This is still something that continues to worry me, but I won't go into it again. Here is the link
AIGA blog
This week, Nick Currie and Hisae Mizutani talk about typography applied to the Japanese alphabet. Nick was visiting in Japan and took pictures of different signs around town (this reminds me of our graffiti exercise in two weeks) and the two talked about what type styles were being used. It was pretty funny, there was a sign using an art deco style, with contrast between thick and thin lines in the letters, but everything was written in Japanese symbols. As I looked through them, I could actually follow what the two were saying about different type styles, so I know I'm already interpreting what we read last month in Graphic Style and Typology.
I may be the only one who never knew this, but over the weekend I discovered something new about Maxim magazine. The spines of each issue in one year, when placed together form a picture of a girl. I don't necessarily like the pictures, but that is one of the most creative ways to get readers to read every issue of the magazine--and possibly could increase subscription numbers because people want to see what the picture becomes. Did everyone else know about this?
YCM: Media Bistro
I wandered around Media Bistro this afternoon and found the Designers Corner forum. The site has a TON of forums, but this specific one has a lot of sub topics. One interesting thread I found was some girl in Laredo with an associates degree who 'wants to be a art director' and there were a ton of replies, from people saying 'you'll never make art director EVER' to 'go for it' Someone did bring up the difference between a BFA from a design school and an advertising or journalism degree. Mizzou was mentioned somewhere in the middle, apparently our program trains people proficiently in the technical aspects, but our 'designs skills are lacking' Obviously these mizzou grads were not in our class--because our class has fantastic design skills :-p This is still something that continues to worry me, but I won't go into it again. Here is the link
AIGA blog
This week, Nick Currie and Hisae Mizutani talk about typography applied to the Japanese alphabet. Nick was visiting in Japan and took pictures of different signs around town (this reminds me of our graffiti exercise in two weeks) and the two talked about what type styles were being used. It was pretty funny, there was a sign using an art deco style, with contrast between thick and thin lines in the letters, but everything was written in Japanese symbols. As I looked through them, I could actually follow what the two were saying about different type styles, so I know I'm already interpreting what we read last month in Graphic Style and Typology.
