Initials Project

The Initials project was fun. I wish I would have planned it out just a little bit more. I had a couple ideas in my head but was not too sure. Improving a bit and just experimenting just to get used to Design. I have never used it before so it was really new to me. The gradient feather tool was my favorite to use in this project. Just the way the color flowed from one side to the other. I placed my initials at the corners to draw attention to them instead of placing them in the middle. I don't think they would have made sense in the middle anyway if I had done so. Next project I will take my time and try to do things neater and focus more on positioning and colors.

//TroLLing

Just the thought of internet trolling bothers me, barf. Why? What is the satisfaction behind it? I don't understand and would never want to get to that level to understand. They post hateful questions and answers just for the sake of pissing people off to making up lies about other people just to hurt their reputations. Trolls are fixated on the idea that people who disagree with them or use common sense that is incompatible with what they say about something in particular, are trying to force their ways on them. 

In the online article "Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web", by Adrian Chen goes into detail about the troll Michael Brustch (Violentacrez). Brutsch is a 49 year old military father and a lover of cats. He currently resides with his wife in Arlington, Texas.

Violentacrez is known for distributing images of scantily-clad underage girls, racism posts, porn, gore, misogyny, incest, and exotic abominations. In my opinion this is absolutely unacceptable. It is funny because further in the reading, Brustch is unapologetic about what he has done. He has received coverage about what he has done via CNN (Anderson Cooper). 

"My wife is disabled. I got a home and a mortgage, and if this hits the fan, I believe this will affect negatively on my employment," he said. "I do my job, go home watch TV, and go on the internet. I just like riling people up in my spare time." -Brustch

It is sick to even think people would do such a thing. The best thing we can do is just to ignore it, or as forum moderators, make sure to stay on your "toes" in case a situation pops up on a forum.  

//American Airlines Logo

As we observed in class, American Airlines has merged with United. With that they created a new logo.

The new logo has a more futuristic look to it. Now we are all used to the original America Airlines logo. When you see it, you definitely know which airline it is. I do, but I don't like it at the same time if that makes sense. The symbol looks like the tail of a plane, which is pretty interesting. Another thing is the colors and how they fade it from light to a darker shade.

Now I am not the kind of person to stay with the past, but the past logo was enough for me. It was simple and appealing. The eagle in the middle, with initials and the colors. Yes the colors are pretty dull, but you remembered. When you seen AA, you knew what it stood for. Nice and simple. Not too much, because, well in my opinion that too much can lose attention.

to

But who really judges an airline by its logo to fly?

//Michael Bierut

I was not as busy as I expected today, so I decided to do some research on graphics designers over the time. One that stood out to me was Michael Bierut. I have no clue why, but I decided to do some light research.  Bierut was born in Cleveland, Ohio (1957). He moved on to study at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. Michael Bierut's actual career as a designer for Massimo Vignelli started in the 1980s. 

For 10 years from there he ended up becoming a partner at Pentagram in 1990.

Bierut is also an advocate for writing books on design, and as a co-founder of Design Observer as well as a teacher and lecturer all over the world. 

According to his Pentagram online biography: Bierut "is responsible for leading a team of graphic designers who create identity design, environmental graphic design and editorial design solutions".

He prides himself not on being creative, but on being a problem solver and suggests to other designers to remember who and what they are creating their artwork for. The works of Bierut are in permanent collections of museums all over the world in several countries including: the United States, Germany and Switzerland. Some of his clients consists of: Walt Disney, United Airlines, Motorola, the New York Jets, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

//1st Post

I believe that it is very important for communication majors to study design. In order to communicate efficiently with others we should be able to try and discover the meaning behind an image. For me, I would love to go into social media and possibly advertising. Dealing with that, there will be plenty of images that are designed a certain way or a reason. Either for it to be simple, or just to wow a certain target crowd. Good design matters as well. Nobody (well, at least I don't) like something that doesn't grab your attention...better yet know as boring. A good design not only reflects on the artist, but the company the design is for. Gives the public a better understanding of the company itself. Nothing over the top, nothing too dull. 

One of my favorite designs has to be the album cover for electronic music artist Kaskade. The album is called Strobelite Seduction.

Sometimes I purposely play music from the album just to view the album cover. It is just something about the music, when you're listening and viewing it (the album cover) at the same time, you are put in a trance. Guess you can say you are "seduced" by the colors and details (regardless if Kaskade is in the middle or not) as the music plays and puts you in a small trance. There is nothing too over the top, though there could possibly be a little more than can be added. Such as maybe a sun or moon as a strobelite showing where the light is coming from. None the less, this album cover is one of my favorites. 

I am pretty interested in seeing how this class plays out.  I have used photoshop and other tools prior, but that was awhile ago, back when Photoshop was on CS3. From the blogging to the projects, ready to learn new skills that will hopefully benefit  in the future.