Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Longhorn Gum (Silent film infomercial from 1892)


             I started making fun short films with my family members about seven years ago. My first scripted film was with a video cassette camcorder and my two little brothers acted out a little scene and we played with different angels and such. And it has caught on from there. This year for Christmas Eve my visiting family and I put together a christmas music video to bring in the festive cheer, and it was one of our favorite memories from that Christmas. So of course you can imagine when my video editing instructor gave us the assignment to put together a three minute infomercial that we had to script, film and edit ourselves, I was up for the challenge.
          This was such a fun project. And my brother, as always, was such a good sport about it, and made it made it fun to film him. I came up with the idea to make a infomercial that was a silent film set back in the late 1800's and was stuck on what I should make be the product. It just goes to show, you can do a lot with just a simple idea even a stick of gum. I designed all the titles and words including the gum packaging. I enjoyed doing the research for the time period. Even the house that we filmed at was an old hotel built in 1892. I hope you enjoy the Infomercial and remember to chew Longhorn gum or die.

Monday, August 6, 2012

Clear Day By The Bay -Poster Art


      This is one of my favorite graphic design pieces yet! In fact I have this framed and hanging in my living room. This was an assignment for my design fundamentals class and we were allowed to use any medium. Since I am a graphic designer I chose to use illustrator. The assignment was to create a piece of artwork that has the effect of opaque layers, like tissues overlaying each other. This was a challenge to do. First I had to build all these tiny shapes and make sure they were in the right order than I had to add a specific type of layer effect to each shape. There is also a texture added to this to help it look more vintage. I was trying to go for an old travel poster.
       I chose San Francisco because my family and I went there a year ago on vacation and we absolutely loved it. Its such an artistic city, full of fascinating sites and a rich history. We were completely charmed by it all, by the end of the first day there.
      I just love how this project turned out and am thinking about making this a common style of mine. I can't wait to see what I do with other cities I visit, using this technique and style.



The Lemon Project

I thought it would be fun to show you guys some of my school projects I've been working on in my college photoshop classes. This assignment was called lemons. We were to add lemons to as many photos as we could my the end of the semester. The more creative the better. Here are some of my favorites that I made.







Event Poster and Coordinating Invitation Design


One of my favorite things to do with graphic design has to be making invitations/cards. When Christmas comes around I really get into designing our Christmas card, in fact its one of my favorite new traditions. Now I have a church calling where I get to do one of the things I love most. Just about every other month I get to design an event poster and the invitations for church activities and it has been so much fun trying to come up with different designs each time. I also get to fulfill my creative needs as well. Here are some of the designs I've done so far. 

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Mad Max Movie Poster Fan Art (Photoshop Project)


This was one of my favorite photoshop projects this year! And I have to say thank goodness for digital scrapbooking. What does digi scrap have to do with this? Well, this is pretty much fancy digi scrapbooking. Working with layers, and fun effects... Its like all my years of being a scrapbooker has groomed me to one day be a graphic designer. Sweet!

The man on the road is actually my husband who is such a good sport when it come to all my crazy projects. And why did I go with dystopian? Well, its because Im obsessed. It all started with Stephenie Meyer's "The Host" and I was hooked. From there it went to the Hungers Games and now its like Im on a personal mission to read all teen dystopian novels. I love reading about another angle or take on a post apocalyptic world and its socieaty. I am thoroughly fasinated with how creative these authors are. Right now I'm in the middle of reading the birthmark trilogy and the Pretties series. 

So I thought I would try my hand at making a dystopian world of my own.

Friday, August 3, 2012

New Profile Pic Photoshop Project


One of the first things I made when designing my portfolio website project was create a fun profile picture. One thing I have learned is that designing for yourself is so much harder than designing anything for a client. Oi! I second guess myself more than anything and its more difficult to be decisive. I keep asking myself "Does this really represent my business and style?", "What is my style?", "Is this what I really want?"
I don't think I have done more research on any of my design projects than the time and energy it took just to get a general idea of what I wanted the look and feel of Pixel Dust Graphic Designs to be. And I always do a lot of research. 

You would think that with all my experience I would be able to put together a great concept in no time, but It must be true we really can be our worst critics.