Today’s post is all about my draft for the Graphic Design Project!
For this assignment I was asked to create a Graphic Design involving my topic, animal rescue, while using Photoshop and its many tools we learned about in the tutorials. I was not sure what I wanted to do until I looked to my side and saw the little guy that’s always there for me, my dog Morgan.
Morgan came into my life a little over 10 years ago. My older sister was in high school at the time and was in a different city as she chose to go to a dorm school, so I was left home alone with my parents always complaining of not having someone to play with. Until one night my stepdad came home and up the stairs where I was watching TV holding a tiny puppy and said to me, “You wanted someone to play with right? Well here you go.” Morgan rescued me.
In my Graphic Design Project, I wanted to pay homage to the joy many animals, like Morgan, bring to their owners. Having a pet, fostering animals, adopting or rescuing them, is something that fills both the animal and the people involved with love and compassion. Whether they rescue you or you rescue them, you both now have a bond of unconditional love.
For my design I used 8 photos of Morgan and created a collage sized 1000 x 800 pixels. I started with a blank background and created a gird of 6 different rectangles. I then created a new layer, used the rectangle tool to mark where my first photo would go, and used the paint bucket tool to turn it black. I then went to File > Place Embedded and chose my first image to include in the collage. I made sure the image covered the space well, then went over to the layer to right click and hit Create Clipping Mask, which just means making the photo only appear on that specific space. I repeated the process with the remaining 5 photos, creating 6 groups total that contained the information for each rectangle in which Morgan appears.
I then created a new layer, hid all the other layers that contained the groups with the other photos, and placed the photo of Morgan sticking his tongue out, and created a cutout of it using the Magnetic Lasso Tool. I repeated this process with the other cutout of Morgan that appears on the collage. Once I had the backgrounds of these two photos hidden, I made all the other layers visible and worked on my placing and sizing.
After having all the images placed, I went on to play with the Hue and Saturation tool to change the color of each of them. I decided to make all the images on the rectangles the same blueish color and made the two cutout photos black and white. I believe these two colors make a good contrast and unite all the images together.
To finalize my collage I added text, “To the friend that loves you unconditionally.” I picked a font and color I thought went well and used the Warp Text option to create a small curve to it. I made sure the placing of the words and the words themselves where cohesive with the images and theme.
Overall, I wanted this design to be about my love for Morgan and showcase the importance he has played in my life, because a lot of pet owners can relate to this. I am looking forward to hearing back from fellow classmates that will give me some perspective on how to better my design.
5 Comments
Victoria Onwanma Uka
Sinais I believe you did a very good job with your draft graphic design project. Since your blog is about animal rescue, you rightly used the photos of a dog to create your poster. The caption “To the friend that loves you unconditionally” suits your poster perfectly well because dogs are man’s best friend. I like the size of the poster because it’s neither too big nor too small, just the right size for easy viewing. I only have a few recommendations for your poster though. The first recommendation I would like to make is to add colors to your poster, instead of leaving the entire poster in black and white. I believe that adding colors to the it will not only make the poster more attractive but will also make it more eye-catching so that people can easily notice it and want to take a closer look the moment they see it. You could also use photos of different dogs, or even photos of different types of pets so that anyone looking at the poster will have different pictures to view. Nice poster.
Jessica Strozewski
Great Photoshop skills! It seems like you retained a lot from our tutorials last week. I love your topic (Mainly, I just love dogs.), and it definitely tugs at the heart strings. I think your message is very clear because you chose the perfect simple phrase to go along with your pictures. The pictures are all very good, as well. I, of course, have a few small critiques. I believe that your design could be stronger if you made just a couple small tweaks. In between the two middle pictures horizontally, there is a thick black line that doesn’t seem to be present as a border between any other photos. I think the design would look more unified if every picture had the black lines between them or if that one gets removed. I also think that placing photos with the most difference in doggy facial expression near each other might improve your design, because there would be more of a sense of contrast in all areas, rather than contrast in one area and too much similarity in others. My main example of this are the two photos of your furry friend looking very alert, next to each other in the bottom right corner. Overall, your design is great, and I cannot wait to see how you decide to improve it!
eatingtodae
Hey Sinais,
I love the fact the topic was difficult for you until you saw your best friend, it goes to show that your passionate about your dog and what you’re passionate about comes easy to you. Your creative choice to make everything black and white was interesting because it creates drama and evokes emotion in the viewer rather than a poster in color would. So I was immediately drawn to your project. Black and white for me, like in movies, lets me know that I’m watching a memory of some kind and that’s how I felt looking at the post, I felt as though I was looking at memories of yours with Morgan that meant most to you. I love how you incorporate a cut out of him overlapping the photos in the background. The only thing I would think to do differently is, maybe jumble the photos a little more to create a less linear line of viewing, it to me would make it more interesting.
cyclesafe409136694
Great use and nice command of photoshop. I very much appreciate your descriptions of your building process and telling us how you created your desired effects. I love your Chihuahua Morgan. I love stories about pets, especially spoiled pets. I like how you kept close to your topic, great job on that and Nice topic. I see your Gestalt theory influence for continuation, unity, similarity, rules for color, shape and size. I also see you were influenced by The Five Basic Rules of Shot Composition by the use of Frame. I get that you might like to use the black and white aspect to show use of mask and create power in all of your photos, but I think a splash of color could help make your element pop and become more dramatic, but I do still respect your choice to make it black and white and it works. I also might add that the one black line under the top center picture feels out of sorts to me. Thank you for sharing darling Morgan.
sinaisalvarado
As I sit back and reevaluate my graphic design draft after receiving some feedback from fellow classmates I am ready to make some changes and increase the strength and unity of my work. I received four comments, from Jessica, Victoria, Dae, and Barbara. I really appreciate their feedback and constructive criticism in regards to my draft. Jessica and Barbara suggested I fix the black line in the middle of my design, by the photo of Morgan and his favorite toy, and I agree with them. I’m glad they pointed that out because that was not meant to be a part of my design. Jessica also suggested I move the cutout photo of Morgan in the bottom corner since it looks very alike to the photo next to it. I will be playing around with my placing and/or maybe finding a new photo to use. This brings me to what Victoria suggested, to use photos of other dogs and animals, which I did think about when I first started the project, but because I want this to be an homage to Morgan and my relationship with him I kept it (and will keep it) with only photos of him. She also suggested I use some color, Barbara too, and I will play around with that idea, but I do prefer the black and white so we will see. I could make the cutouts be in color or have the images have some color but dimmed since they all have different colors and I wouldn’t want too many color to be distracting. Dae was right when he said black and white creates a sense of it being a memory, which these images are. His comment reinforced why I chose “colorless” in the first place. I will also consider Dae’s suggestion regarding the lines between the images. My challenges ahead are taking in this feedback and playing around with what I can use from it to make my design better.