Project 6 – Logo, pt 1

This project was to create a logo for the new Computer Tech Skills Center on the Wake Tech main campus. The client didn’t have a lot of preconceived ideas about the direction the logo should take, aside from using the school colors blue and gold, but they did want it to convey that the center exists to help computer tech students, with a particular focus on programming and networking students. This is what sets them apart from other learning and success centers on campus.

With that as the starting point, I began with some thumbnails.

While I wasn’t shutting anything out at this point, I was trying to at least circle the idea of a centralized location of assistance (literally the word “center” is used in a few of these) and the partner idea of availability and openness. But I also tried to incorporate some imagery that connected things to networking and programming. Then I took four that seemed like they had something to maybe develop, and roughed them out a bit.

The finale of this assignment in the next post.

Legos + Orthographic Views

This little assignment involves orthographic drawing, which I hadn’t done before but find kind of fun. The idea was to build a simple shape out of Legos and produce six orthographic sketches of that shape, one for each side. Here’s the shape I built. The front view is a little off since my camera was slightly above the shape, but it gives the right idea.

And here are the original hand-drawn sketches, presented based on the Glass Box theory. It was more difficult than I’d anticipated to draw without paying attention to perspective, especially since my shape involves a piece with a slope in the front and things stacked on other things.

I’m still not sure if some of the views are quite right, because I keep getting tripped up on the perspective. But as the next step, we were to refine the sketches in Illustrator. I made sure to add the dashed lines to indicate invisible shapes.

::UPDATE::

The third part of this assignment was to translate the orthographic designs to isometric. Illustrator’s neat 3D Isometric settings did most of the work for me on the main body shape. But the 3D conversion didn’t handle the round bit stuck on the top of the thing or the little connective Lego nubs, so I just had to draw those out myself on the isometric grid, using a tutorial I found on Tuts+ that explained how to do circles and cylinders. Here’s the result!

Project 3 – Empty Book, pt 1

For this project, we’re creating an empty or blank book built around the concept of something that doesn’t exist. You know the kind, you’ve probably seen them in the novelty racks in Target or in friends’ bathrooms. Something like “Ugly Bunnies” or “Dragons on Public Transport.” (Heck, that last one is pretty good–almost wish I’d gone with that.) And sometime before the end of the term, we’re to get it printed via Lulu.com.

Anyway, here are the thumbnails I came up with for the book cover. Very many silly ideas. The last four are specific to certain fandoms, Game of Thrones and Supernatural. In a perfect world, I would have done one of those because they were my very favorite ideas. But I didn’t feel comfortable creating (and printing!) something derived from copyrighted work. And the cat and dinosaur concepts were both in close second, so it wasn’t hard to make a decision.

What idea did I ultimately choose to develop? Find out next time…

Project 1 – Real Problems, Real Solutions, pt 1

This project is about creating a campaign for an issue we feel strongly about that needs to get out there on folks’ radar. Out of three of my top issues, I chose planting native plants/trees. At the risk of getting soapboxy (I’m always at risk of getting soapboxy), I’ll just mention that I feel it is super-duper important to kick the exotic plant habit and plant your garden/lawn/5+ acres with wildflowers and trees that support the wildlife and the ecosystems native to your area.

When I found out that NCSU has a program just to encourage this, called “Go Native,” I thought, “Gee, I know a lot of people who have the same understanding about this, but none of them have ever heard of this program. Why the heck not?!”

Here is a page of thumbnails for potential campaign pieces. At this point, I’m pretty solid on going with a print ad, a brochure, and a mailer packet with a few neat things in, and the sketches reflect attempts at capturing all of those pieces.

Then I took one idea for each piece that I was at least 80% good with, and roughed it out.

As I said in my last post, I often to throw in lots of little detaily things that probably will have no place in the final layout, since my tendency there is to streamline and simplify–as much as I love detail in my illustrations, I tend equally to pull toward minimalism in design.

Colored pencil sketches – sketchbook assignment 7

This assignment was to put our knowledge of form, shape, & value into working with color, specifically colored pencils. I did this on an earlier assignment, the soda can, but it was nice to just do a sketchy assignment with them and choose objects with great colors to draw. Six sketches are below.

If I’d been a little more ambitious, and if my white ink pen hadn’t died on me just the day before, I would have added the lettering to the book covers and the pen canister. Alas.

Landscapes – sketchbook assignment 6

This assignment was simply to find four different landscapes and sketch them, one of which will be developed into a final landscape drawing. I’m leaning toward the last one, which is of a beach in Newport, OR (I lived in Oregon for two years before moving to NC), and that in my photo of it has some cool shadows on the sand that I kind of really want to draw.

Anyway, here are the four: the Traunsee in Austria, a bridge in Newport, a view of the Great Salt Lake from Antelope Island, and the Newport beach.

And just for fun, the photo of the beach that I will ultimately be working from is at the top.

1-, 2-, & 3-point perspectives – sketchbook assignment 5

This sketchbook assignment was about practicing 1-, 2-, and 3-point linear perspective, with choice of media and subject up to us. I had a cold that week, so these turned out fairly simple, and graphite-only.

Contour, mass, & volume – sketchbook assignment 4

These sketchbook pages explore three different ways of creating the illusion of volume and mass with 2D media. Four sketches demonstrate creating volume and depth by using cross-contour lines to reveal not just outlines of a form, but the various shapes that make up its surface. Another four sketches show volume with dramatic light and dark contrasts, gotten by first toning the paper to a medium gray with charcoal, then pulling out lights with an eraser, and finishing by developing the shadows. The last four show form and suggest volume by developing only the negative space around an object, in my case a dining chair positioned at different angles.

You can see in the third set of sketches where I messed up pretty dramatically on one chair area and had to erase the best I could. Result: ghost chair!

Texture panels – sketchbook assignment 3

This assignment was about exploring a wide variety of textures and practicing rendering them. I chose both graphite and colored pencil for this, for a couple reasons, namely that I wanted to make sure I remembered how to use colored pencils at all. And a sketchbook is a lower-stakes proving ground. Though there is something to be said for working only in a medium like graphite or charcoal, because you don’t have to think about color so much.

The captions got cut off on the bottom two, but what you’re seeing there are the bristles of a watercolor wash brush and a segment of a linen curtain panel.