Final Adventures

This is my final creation of this year in my graphic design class. It is the cover for a brochure for the e-Communication program at my school, which includes graphic design, video entertainment and broadcasting, animation, and web design. I have enjoyed being in this program, and am excited to continue in it over the next two years, and maybe beyond. e-Communication is a program where you can learn and be creative. Story telling is the art of the human race. Today we tell stories through the things we write, create, show, and tell. e-Communication has been a great opportunity to do just that.

Adventures in Logo Design

My adventures in graphic design this school year are coming to a close. At the beginning of the year, we were challenged to create a circle and square logo for ourselves (mine displayed top right), and having come full circle we were challenged to create our logo once more (my new one top left). Learning from Lynda.com, I found that circles can be used to unify, and encompass your logo, that stars symbolize excellence, and that logos should be memorable, and simple. I tried to use those elements in my design by using circles and stars, while including signature elements of myself; the red fox, and the star I put after my name. Next came creating a mood board. Next school year most of my adventures will be in video entertainment, although I will continue exploring the vast world of graphic design, so I explored the logos of movie producers. Movie production company logos tend to be more complicated, because their audience consists of people who watch movies, and thus allows their logos to be complicated and animated, yet memorable in those senses even to those who haven't watched their movies. However, circles, and stars do appear in movie logos, and some of them are very simplistic such as Summit Entertainment's logo, which gave me hope that my logo idea could work. I went to the drawing board, and from there to the art board (seen to the left). Experimenting with the elements of my signature, love of foxes, circles, stars, and story telling, my new logo was created. It is simple, recognizable, and encompasses who I am well. It works on different colored backgrounds, in different sizes, and on black and white. It is amazing to see how far I have come since August, and it is amazing to imagine how far I can go. This is not the end; my new logo is only a beginning.

Adventures in Kerning

   To kern is to adjust the space between characters. In a world without kerning, kerning is spelled "keming." It is a world where "r" and "n" combine to make "m". It is a world where "L" and "i" combine to make "U". It is a world where graphic designers cry themselves to sleep every night.
    Kerning is necessary to make type readable, and pleasing. However, bad kerning might be used in artistic, and satirical circumstances.
   Fonts are usually auto kerned, but when you change the size,  boldness, tracking, or another aspect of the type, the computer's algorithms for kerning might not work. Characters then have to be manually kerned. Lastly, characters can be optically kerned, which is based on the shapes of the letters. Manual kerning usually provides the best resulsts.
    Kerning and tracking are actually different. Tracking adjusts the spacing between all letters. Kerning adjusts spacing between letter pairs such as "AV".
    If you would like to test your spacing capabilities click here: http://type.method.ac/. This is a game called Kerntype, that challenges your innate sense of spacing.