Personal Essay (Final)

Though this was the only final I've ever been able to enjoy, it caused me lots trouble. The biggest obstacle I encountered was with the images and a spacing issues, at first anyways. My flash drive and private space were both full of things that I couldn't really delete. I then tried to e-mail them to myself but the file was too big (I still have yet to receive it.) I then tried to upload them onto facebook, but that was taking too long. I eventually transfered the pictures in groups using different flash drives. This turned out to be a problem later with Filezilla. But once I picked out my pictures and made the mp3 of my voice and song, it was pretty easy from there. All of the technical things were out of the way (or so I thought) and the only thing left was the artistic part. I just had to arrange the pictures to match the sound, which of course took longer than anticipated because I wanted it to be perfect. Overall, I am pretty satisfied with the final product. I put a lot of time and thought into the pictures and even the sound. It is something that I am proud of and I feel it demonstrates my progression of skills. I would not have been able to put this together at the beginning of the semester because all of the skills that I acquired built up on each other. I had to edit a lot of photos in Photoshop and I even pulled a few things into QuarkXpress. I then pulled my song file and voice file into iTunes and did the necessary conversions and edited the sound using Garage Band because I am more familiar with that program. I am also able to apply so many of these skills in other classes and even outside of the classroom. However, if I had more time, I would probably do the voice over again. I thought it sounded fine on tape and I had recorded it numerous times and tried to cut out the parts that I messed up a lot but I only had a short period of time with the Edirol and it is hard to find a quiet place with not too much echo. Once I heard it in paired up with the song, you can unfortunately, hear my breathing in some parts and I sound a little hesitant in other parts and I only had so much time to edit. Also I had a hard time trying to sound natural and not as if I was reading a script. Once I thought I was done, I wasn't. It turned out that my Sound Slide file was too big. I had too many pictures and it took too long to load, so long that it didn't even show a play button and what viewer would wait? So I had to go back in and delete some pictures. This may sound easy but I had to rearrange everything! Now that the file was much smaller it was supposed to work. But it of course didn't. This time Filezilla didn't have enough space for me. Luckily I had some duplicate websites from earlier in the year that I was able to delete and create space. Finally, it fit but this time, it wouldn't fully load in Safari. It turned out some of the files didn't transfer over from my publish to web folder. I had to go in and individually move each file into Filezilla which showed me that computers aren't going to always do what you tell them to. So hours later and with the help of Professor O'Connell, it worked and I was very relieved and excited. Not even ten minutes later, my friend was having a similar problem and I was able to help her. So even though it was a bit of a pain, I'm better off for it because I had to fix this problem and now I know what to do. This was probably my biggest learning experience of the year and I am proud of myself for not giving up or going insane. Overall, I believe this course is so valuable because even though these programs change all the time, I feel as though I can figure out new programs with this basic understanding that I now have and even when I was frustrated with a project, it was very rewarding once I accomplished it.

BiBi Card

(Above is QuarkXpress)

This assignment was very frustrating and very fun at the same time. The point of this assignment was to exactly recreate a BiBi card that we chose. I didn't have very high hopes for myself at the beginning of this assignment because last time I used QuarkXpress, I didn't really like it and I have never used Indesign so I knew that was going to be a challenge. Probably the biggest challenge for me was finding similar fonts and matching background color. Actually placing and sizing areas of the BiBi card wasn't much of a challenge at all thanks to the rulers and guides. I eventually settled on a font that I think looks almost exactly like the real one and I had to settle for a color. I knew the color was going to be a challenge because the BiBi card is neon and our printers aren't good for that kind of thing. Because Indesign was so new to me, when I first started the BiBi card in Indesign, I just kind of stared at the screen for a while before deciding what to do but because I have used photoshop, I just tried to utilize those skills, so I was able to figure out more than I thought. I enjoyed anything that I did that made my BiBi card look more like the one that was already made. It was really cool when it started coming together and I wanted to continue working on it and then I was actually looking forward to attempting it in Indesign once I successfully executed the one in QuarkXpress. I am proud of myself for finishing them on time and as accurately as I possibly could. Once I printed it out, I was able to see just how accurate I was. However, if I had more time, I would fix the recycling symbol. It was the last thing I did in both programs because it was giving me the most trouble, especially in Indesign. So I just shrunk it down to the correct size and I know I'll get docked points for that but if I had more time and patients, I was only able to fix it kind of in QuarkXpress, which is the one I posted, but Indesign didn't work as well so if I had more time, I'd definitely like to fix it.

(Below is Indesign)

Website

Bare Essentials to my Website

I found this assignment to be very interesting. I have never even thought about what goes into making a website before this. I wish that we had more time to play with Dreamweaver and really develop the website into a fully fuctioning site. Because this coincided with my PR class, the website is about my client for that class. It is a great starter for me and I can hopefully expand on the site so my client can actually use it. I was very interesting to see the back bone of a website. It is obviously not very aesthetically pleasing but it is usable and I am proud of it. I never thought in a million years that I'd be creating my own websites. I feel as though learning these skills will help me navigate websites better, appreciate websites more and I have a very very basic understanding of "geek speak" and html's. I feel as though I will be able to make my own websites in the future and it was actually all very easy. Though this was not the most exciting assignment, I am glad that I had to do it because it definitely taught me things besides graphic design type things like we've done before.

Brochure

For this assignment, I was able to accomplish a lot actually. I had to make a brochure for whatever I wanted and it just so happened that I needed to have a visual tactic for my public relations class, which is why it is about the south coast of Massachusetts—my client. The biggest challenge I came across was with the margins. It took a few tries of trial and error with printing before I was able to get everything centered and not chopped off within it's panel. I eventually learned how to print in properly and once I had set the correct margins using picture boxes, I was able to get everything squared away. Doing a brochure was new for me in general. I had to do one in high school and I had to glue the back and front to each other and it didn't look very clean. I really enjoyed finding the perfect picture for the backgrounds. It took some playing with because some of the pictures were too dark and it threw off my whole idea. So I am most proud of the inside because I really like how it is a legitimate brochure for these places with an actual picture from one of the locations. I think it lays nicely and peaks interest. However, if I had more time, I probably would have played around with more colors and themes. All of the writing is black and I really liked the outside background at first, but now that I look at it, I would have liked to do something else. It doesn't necessarily look like it's a brochure for a vacation.

Sound Slide

I was much more excited for this assignment than I was about the poster because I was really happy with the way my powerpoint came out. The point was to get my powerpoint up on the internet. I was trying really hard to make the music fit together just right when it was looped so that it would be hard to tell where it was cut but I don't know if I succeeded. It was really challenging to do because I tried so many cuts and what I ended with was as close as I could come. It was probably due to the fact that I have never played around with editing a piece of music like that before and I have never used audacity. This of course, gave me much frustration. The program is fairly easy to use but, similar to quarkxpress, it would do exactly as I told it to, so you need a pretty steady hand to line up clips of music to fit, I couldn't get it on an exact tenth of a second that I wanted it to be a lot of the time. Overall though, I am proud that I was able to complete it. I think that it sounds as good as I could get it in this short period of time. Playing around with the soundslide program was a lot of fun because I got to be in control of the music coinciding with my powerpoint. If I had more time, I would have focused a lot more on the cutting of the music. It took me about and hour and a half to familiarize myself with audacity before I could start doing legitimate work on the sound and I kept messing up. I would also probably add more elements of the song and really cut it up. I would also work longer on making the clips loop better so it sounded more realistic.

Poster

I had a lot of frustration with this assignment. I'm not sure if it's because I wasn't as into it as I was with earlier projects or if it was because I was using a new program, Quarkxpress, but I'm not fond of the final product for the first time. I was just trying to create an eye-catching poster that would give you basic information if you passed by it quickly. I was hoping it would be interesting to look at but I'm not sure now that it is done. The biggest challenge that I encountered was using this new program. I was used to photoshop and layers are different in the two programs so that was annoying for me. Also because your options are endless, I was almost overwhelmed with the things that I could do, so I would play around and just kind of leave it at the last setting I had it on. But I eventually figured out the basics with lots of playing. So the fact that I could literally do whatever I wanted, as long as I told it too was very new for me. Photoshop has a setting and you are limited within the setting. Though this hasn't been my favorite assignment, I really enjoyed working on such a large scale. It was cool to have all that space to fill with only a few requirements. It was fun to make the lettering and starbursts large. I am most proud of finally getting "Atmosphere" to go vertically and the fading backgrounds of the starbursts. Overall, I don't really like my poster but I'm not really sure why. I like elements of it and some of my ideas but I don't like the way it really came together as a whole. So if I had more time, I probably would have tried to put "Atmosphere" in different ways on the page and played around with a different background, maybe I would have even left it white. Though I was overall frustrated, using Quarkxpress was a good learning experience and I'm hoping to get better at it!

Power Point Slides

For the assignment, I wanted to accomplish something that was aesthetically pleasing. My first thought was what pictures could I use for the backgrounds and then I worried about what was actually going on the slides. Overall, this assignment wasn't very challenging for me since I have used powerpoint before, it was just figuring out how to do little details like animations that was a bit of a challenge but even then it was pretty easy to find. Plus it took a lot of time to play around with which animations I liked best for specific pictures and phrases. The newest thing for me was putting a table in powerpoint. I have never really thought about doing that before so it never occurred to me that you could do that. But once I found it, it was very easy and was just like using a table in another program. The thing I enjoyed doing most was putting together the pictures and backgrounds on slides. I got to play with photoshop to get the images how I wanted them and I enjoy using photoshop so that was my favorite part. I think I am most proud of the assignment overall. I really like the first slide how there is half of his face and the record company logo on the side. I also really liked that I was able to execute all of my ideas for the backgrounds. The second slide was just some cool graffiti that I found and the third slide was lemons because of the name of their latest album. The fourth slide is actually a picture of Minneapolis and I altered using one of my favorite filters. The fifth was actually kind of difficult to make but I really wanted to put all of the album covers together as a background. However, if I had more time, I probably would have made the final slide more interesting. I don't know what it is but I feel like it's kind of boring even though it actually took me forever to do the background images as well as the foreground image.

Flickr

There are many different programs, applications and websites that can be used to manage your photographs. But one of the most popular online tools is "Flickr." Flickr was founded by Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake and there are 50 team members. This program allows you to publicly or privately publish your photos and videos from just about any outlet you can think of to share with as many or as little people as you'd like! Not only does Flickr want you to be able to send and access your pictures with ease but they give you a fool-proof way to organize and search within your photos and videos. You can organize them yourself or you can give family and friends access to organizing them as well. Flickr is kind of like a whole community because you can look at your favorite friends pictures on a sort of feed and they update their blog often for the latest developments. Flickr is a part of "Yahoo," so if you already have an account with Yahoo, then you're all set!

Not only is Flickr a place to upload and organize your photos, but its serves to be multi-functional. You can upload photos from your computer, including e-mail and desktop, and even from your camera phone. There are tons of edits that you can play around with as well to make your pictures fun with different fonts and effects using "Picnik" or you can simply crop and fix red eye. This is also an outlet where you can make things like photo books, DVDs, cards and much more. Another really interesting feature is the maps. This allows you to share where your pictures were taken and then you can search for other pictures from similar areas. A key feature of the "Organizr" is that it allows you to change the privacy on them. You can make one "collection" or "set" private so only you can see them, only selected people can see them or so everyone can see them. Some of the features are also similar to Facebook in that you can tag pictures and get updates on pictures, albums and videos from friends and family!

Animation

For this assignment, I was just trying to execute it properly. I wanted my image to go after my animated word poem and I was successful. I came across a few challenges when doing this leg of the project. I sat in the mac lab for a while not really knowing what to do. I didn't really take notes on the subject and relied heavily on the book. I was frustrated a lot but when I figured it out on my own it made it that much better and I even helped a few other people. The idea of putting an animation on the internet was definitely new for me. I just figured you could copy and paste the link or just drag in in there. I had no idea you had to go through firezilla which also caused me a little frustration because I had to keep resizing my image in order for it to fit in the blog because the right half kept getting cut off. So I'm pretty much a pro with firezilla now. I enjoyed getting it right though. I was glad when I put my animation together and figured it out on my own. I learned new things just by playing around. I also thought that I had lost my entire animation when I saved it as a GIF and tried to open it in photoshop but sure enough realized it's because you can't play a GIF in photoshop. So I was glad when I put everything together and I was excited once it was actually on the internet. I was most proud of myself when I was figuring things out on my own and was then able to reiterate it to others because this shows me that if I ever had to do it again, I could! But if I had had more time, I would have liked to animate my image as well. I didn't realize that I'd have to make my image in the same file as my poem in order to do so and by the time I realized that, it was too late. But for all I know I wouldn't have liked it like that anyways, so overall I am pleased with the way it came out!

Postcard

For this assignment, I was trying to make my postcard based on my word poem. Because I was able to visual the word poem, I had some ideas for an actual image. This is nothing like I expected but it's probably better. The major challenge I had was how dark the bottom half of the photo is and the more I played with the contrast and lightness, the more distorted the image and colors got. So I settled in the middle of a really vivid blue and a semi-dark background. Playing around with the arrangement of the photos was really new for me. I had to keep referring to my notes but as with every project, I eventually got the hang of it and actually made it pretty quickly. I enjoyed the fact that this image was basically an accident. I was trying to put the heart where the eye was and that looked pretty cool but when I copy and pasted, it just sort of happened and I loved it. I am most proud of the image as a whole because it really came together and I feel like it illustrates my word poem well. I feel like I was able to achieve what I was trying to accomplish. But if I had more time, I would have tried to make the images fade into one another better. I really don't like that the heart looks chopped off but I guess for some it would be an artistic choice, so it could be worse. Overall I think the image is really cool!

Word Poem

This project was a lot of fun for me once I got the hang of it. I just wanted to accomplish something that was fun to look at and something that was easy to understand. I want anyone to be able to look at it and understand why I did what I did to each word. One of the major challenges that I encountered was piecing the words together. When I began this, I did the whole phrase in one text box. Once I got really frustrated by the fact that everything would move together, I realized I needed to put it together like a ransom note and made each word in it's own text box. Once I did that, the rest was fun and fairly easy. Again, this whole thing was new for me. Every time I sit down to use photoshop I learn something new but figuring out how to change the background color, though it may sound easy was definitely new. I had played around with it a lot and just couldn't figure it out. I enjoyed that I go to choose the phrase. Because it was something that I really liked, it made it easier for me to visualize it and I couldn't wait for the end product. I am most proud of the fact that I was able to figure out most of this stuff on my own. I spent some time in the mac lab by myself and was able to get a lot done and play with a bunch of different ideas, and this one was my favorite. However if I had had more time, I probably would have played around with the words "that" and "keeps". I spent the least amount of time on those two and just kind of had them left over and put them in as they were. The only thing is I'm not sure what I would have done to the two words differently except that I would have just thought about it more.

Contact Sheet

Because this was the first assignment and I have never used Photoshop before, I was very skeptical and cautious with every move I made. After first, I was very frustrated and thought I would never be able to remember everything or understand some of the concepts. I quickly learned—on my own, outside of the classroom—that I was able to have fun with it and it was no longer stressful. I was just trying to complete the assignment at first and then I became more meticulous about the images I chose so that it was aesthetically pleasing. My biggest challenge, however, was probably the first and fifth rows. The first one was difficult because I could not find a clear enough image in the first place to differentiate between 72 dpi and 1200 dpi, but I eventually settled on this image. For the fifth row, I had to play around with different images for a while because it was hard to find an image to zoom in on enough to abstract it. Because this entire program and its functions were new to me, I enjoyed the entire final project. I felt good when I was able to figure things out on my own and go at my own speed. I was able to do it all in just about and hour where as the one that was done with the class took two periods, therefore, I'd have to say that I am proud of the whole assignment. When all was said and done, I was excited to move on to the next project and learn more. However, if I had had more time, I would have tried to find a more clear image to use in the first row to demostrate a more drastic difference between 72 dpi and 1200 dpi and I probably would have been more careful in my fourth row so that the upclose goes more gradual to wide angle.

Here is a close up of my favorite image from the contact sheet.

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