Alicia Afonso's Digital Media Blog

Here's my final poster project, the first picture is the image I finalized.  The poster project was done in Adobe Illustrator. I brainstormed an issue I’m passionate about and came up with this. I took a selfie with a plant pot and used image tracing in black and white to create the design below. I had to draw in with paint some details that didn’t transfer such as the rest of my mouth, parts of the pot, and details on my body. I also added in a plant stem to reinforce the message of my poster. I chose a green color theme and had black, and a lighter green theme to keep it all coherent. Lastly, I added text saying my message.  

I really enjoyed the mesh project because it felt like I was designing a video game object. I first searched for an object in my room that would best show reflections, and have a change in colors to depict depth. I came across this water bottle and knew it was perfect. I used Adobe Illustrator and used the mesh tool to create the outlines of the water bottle to depict depth and shape, and placed them on top of the image following lines and highlights of the image. I then used the eyedropper tool to transfer the exact colors from the image of the bottle to my project. This part was the most time consuming, but also fun because attention to detail was key, so I had to really pay attention to the exact placement of the colors I was taking and where I was putting them to make it look as identical as I could to the actual bottle. I then separately created the lid using the same technique. I’m proud of my results and how realistic is looks.  

Here are my *updated* and completed 5 business cards depicting: -Animal Lover -Compassionate -Curious -Creative -Adventurous I enjoyed created all of these but probably like animal lover best because it was fun to create the dog and cat. I t took me a while to finalize what I wanted to choose for my final logos. I played with them a lot, and decided I wanted them to be coherent with each other through their design and style. I really loved how they came out, simple but matching. I was able to use faces and eyes mutiple times which was nice. Making them colorful and pretty also took a long time but it was work it. I used Adobe Illustartor for this project.

The 5 words I chose to describe myself are Animal Lover, Compassionate, Curious, Adventurous, and Creative. I decided to draw my logos with a more cartoon simple design because I feel the simplicity is straight to the point and effective. As I went, it was hard to come up with multiple different designs so I had common themes throughout.

This is my calligram final featuring a portrait of Stevie Nicks. I spent a lot of time on this project and included a lot of detail, mainly on the eyes. I started with mapping out her face with text lines, and filed them in. I’d eyedrop from the original picture, and make the text that same color. I sectioned out parts of the face in order to create depth and make her face have different colors and shadows. I also used different colored text to highlight, for example, her lip to also achieve this depth and add detail. Within each eye is a font as small as .05, as well as a large quantity of text. I made the hat and background a larger text because I felt the face deserved the most detail and I wanted it to be focused on the most. I had fun creating the outline of her face, as well as adding the shading to make her look realistic. I could’ve improved on the hair as well as her skin tone, but overall I feel proud of my work.

When researching different calligram's, designs that featured portraits of famous icons most inspired me. I was drawn to the complicated 'shading', and how the dimension of space and shadow was achieved through the bolding and shaping of the words featured. When exploring these pieces, I was inspired to choose Stevie Nicks to be used in my project in a style similar to these examples. I have loved Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac for as long as I can remember, so choosing her and her lyrics from one of my favorite songs "Gypsy" just made sense. These 5 examples will be my inspiration when completing my project due to their differing styles and unique use execution of a project that will be difficult to tackle.