In which I post another homework assignment from photoshop

I've been sliding into a dangerous mindset with my class lately. It happened the last time I took a class as well. I end up getting about halfway and suddenly it's all about having to do the work rather than wanting to. This is so toxic and ridiculous because I really really want to learn these programs--that's why I'm taking the class, obviously. A large part of it is my old neurosis popping up again: my perfectionist tendencies and my difficulty taking criticism. There is a discussion component to the class and I somehow always feel wrong when I pipe up.

Anyway, I'm glad to have gotten this done before the weekend starts. We're learning about effects and filters and manipulating the way layers interact. Also in this assignement we were supposed to use the history brush to take an element from our final design back to a previous state. In mine you can see that is the top lemon slice.

First Photoshop assignment

This week in class we shifted gears from Adobe Illustrator to Photoshop. As a beginner, I must say I find Photoshop pretty complex and slightly intimidating, but I know I'll learn. For this week's assignment we were supposed to find an old photo that needed work, scan it, and make adjustments. I was sort of limited by the photos I have on my hard drive, as most of our old family photos are at my parents' house. I ended up going with this photo of me--I'll have to ask my mom how old I am here. It's wild to think this will be Evie before long...

Here's the original photo:

And here it is after I adjusted it:

Latest from class

Here are two more assignments from my class. The still life was a further exploration I did of the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator just for my own edification and the Starbucks ad mock up is this week's project. I'm pretty pleased with my design--we had certain criteria we had to incorporate, including making our own snowflake and turning it into a brush tool. We also recreated the actual Starbucks logo piece by piece using the pen tool. Pretty neat, huh?

He's obviously never been to Baumholder...

I got the feedback from my instructor on my logo for the local hair salon, Jung. The professor had constructive criticism, but was mostly appalled at the use of Hobo as my font choice. I really see just what he means...I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking, other than I was trying to use the built in curves of the letters in my design because we hadn't yet learned the tools that I would need to create such an effect on my own. Still, that's kind of a lame-o excuse for sacrificing design for an idea. It wasn't required, but I wanted to revisit the logo to try and make improvements. What do you guys think?

The logo:

Here's the rest of the identity system. Envelope:

Letterhead:

Business card:

And last post, I didn't include these for the old logo, so here's something for comparison.

I think I've made some real improvements. Although I agree with what the instructor had to say, he also said something I found really funny...he said the font felt "dated and unrefined" and not German at all. I get the German part, but dated and unrefined? He's obviously never been to Baumholder. ;)

Jung Logo

For the third assignment in my Digital Tools class, we were tasked with creating a logo for a local business. This is what I came up with for the Jung hair salon in downtown Baumholder.

A Sampling

I'm in the second week of my online class, "Digital Tools," and so far, I'm loving it. We're exploring the Adobe creative suite and the class is approached from a graphic design perspective, which I am pretty unfamiliar with but find I'm really enjoying. I think graphic design is something I've been noticing for a while now without consciously realizing it.

In this project, we were supposed to use the tools in Adobe Illustration to create a vase and daisies. That part of the assignment was pretty straight forward. We were then given room to create a background for the rest of the design, and this is what I came up with. I think I'm most pleased with the color scheme. I sometimes have a hard time with color, but I think I'm improving. It was a little difficult approaching this assignment because of the specifications for the vase and flowers. Were I to have full creative control, I would have come up with something different. It's really fun getting to better understand the program, though!

Evelyn and the strawberry

Today at the commissary there were fresh strawberries. I don't even know when strawberries are in season...I'm guessing now? I have no idea, but these looked delicious. As part of an assignment for my online class I was asked to explore different tools in Adobe Illustrator. Needing something to draw, I though of my berry beauties and pulled one out as reference. Evelyn was captivated. It's always amusing to me what REALLY gets her attention. She loves coke cans (by coke I mean all varieties of soda, pop, or whatever everybody else calls it), and Chokydar is quickly becoming highly interesting to her. This berry caught her attention for sure. Then she went back to mouthing her block.