Color

This is a color study for picking colors from a photo.

note:  the color swatches didn't scan correctly.  The yellow and orange are much brighter and more yellow than they appear in this scan

First, The colors are chosen from the image.

Then, the neutral colors are subdivided into their parent colors.  In this case, the brown is broken down to red and green and the violet is broken down into blue and red.

From the original palette, it is determined that the photo uses a split complimentary color scheme.

The photo is then placed on different colored backgrounds to experiment with the message the different colors communicate.

timeless, elegant

modern, clean

playful, stylish

What Makes Us Look

This article is very relevant to what we are doing in class.  The author suggests that designers take advantage of man's ability to comprehend and interpret the visual information we perceive.  A good design should allow the viewer to interpret it based on their cultural and personal understanding.  Bloomer talks about different ways to grab a person's visual attention and keep it for long enough to deliver your message.  These strategies are relevant to the photo project because we are trying to create series of photos that tell a story.  We must, therefore, create a series that keeps a viewer's attention long enough for them to understand the story.  Bloomer goes on to discuss how we can use different design principles to engage the viewer.  She suggests that we use figure ground ambiguity, closure, continuity, color, movement and new perspectives on familiar things to interest the viewer.  All of these ideas can be used to make our seasons photos more interesting and engaging.  This will help make our story more clear to the viewer because they will pay attention to it long enough to figure it out.

Week 6

I see graphic design as the organization of information that is semantically correct, syntactically consistent, and pragmatically understandable.  

Massimo Vignelli

He is saying that graphic design organizes information in a way that truthfully presents it to the viewer.  The design must also be consistent in the way it is organized so that nothing seems out of place.  It must also be practical and easy to digest.  This is relevant to what we are doing in class because our series of photos need to express the seasons with images that make sense or are "correct."  The system should be consistent so that all of the photos belong together even though they have contrast between them.  The story needs to be "pragmatically understandable" so that it doesn't just seem like a series of random photos.

If someone from outside the university read my blog, they should be able to understand it.  I think I made it clear what the goal of the project was and how I solved it.

I learned that the best way to make edits is to identify what art elements are being used strongly in the design and which ones are weak.  That allows one to make edits thoughtfully instead of randomly pushing things around and hoping that something good appears.