Category: Comm 130 – Rob Wagner’s Blog

DESCRIPTION
Design a brochure to advertise your company’s offerings.

PROCESS (Programs, Tools, Skills, FOCUS principles)
1. I love basketball, and also enjoy financial counseling and real-estate investing, so these were

my to category contenders, but I eventually decided on Basketball.
2. The trick was that we have been having some rainy weather, and I needed some outdoor shots, so for the first time in this course I sought some images from online sources that offered them royalty free. I prefer to do my own pictures, but in this case it made more sense to expand my image resources.
3. This one is an interesting combo because it plays off an actual business, one of my favorite NBA players is Luke Ridnour who has now retired and runs a basketball camp. I first discovered him while playing for the former Seattle Supersonics, so my color scheme is a mixture of green and yellow (former Supersonics’ colors), as well as blue (camping) and red (common NBA color, or basketball), so it wasn’t easy getting all of these to come together, literally took hours just getting the colors to get along. One thing that helped was to separate each panel instead of having multiple colors on the same one, and then drawing repetition principles in the font styles across each panel.
4. Breakthrough: As I looked at several other brochures that seemed WAY more professional than mine, I finally discovered that one thing they did was incorporate a full image across the most or all of the front or back of the brochure, so I did that with a close up of a basketball, and it worked!
5. Before I printed, I found that some of the panels in the JPG form were slightly off balance from each other, so I went back into Adobe InDesign, and noted the actual size and positions of each panel to get them each to line up. I also employed a tiny white line in between each panel to guide the folding process and keep it clean and neat.

CRITIQUE PROCESS
Facebook Critique: Jacob Casal Always has good advice in design. He suggested that I loosen up the paragraphs a bit because they seemed crowded, so I made some adjustments to that.
Instructor Critique: Brother Stucki suggested that I enhance the constrast on the white font against the yellow background, as well as the same suggestion above to increase padding within the text boxes. He also recommended that I do more with the back-side wording, “Take…The…Shot”, so I’ve addressed each of those, and hope it comes out looking better.
Family Critique: Both my wife, and neice who viewed my work commented that the basketball (in the logo) on the front of the brochure did a good job of standing out by sticking up, so I went ahead and kept that.

MESSAGE
You can be more than you now are, if you give yourself a chance, and take the shot.

AUDIENCE
Youth and parents.

TOP THING LEARNED
Earlier in this course, it was suggested that a lot of art is borrowed from other art, and I have found that some of my best ideas on this piece were inspired by other brochure designs I discovered online during my research. While being careful not to copy their idea, I took the concept and applied it to my own piece in my own way.

COLOR SCHEME & COLOR NAMES
Split Complementary // Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Black and White.

TITLE FONT NAME & CATEGORY
Arial Black // Sans Serif

COPY FONT NAME & CATEGORY
Verdana // Sans Serif??? (Yes, they’re both Sans serif, but the size and styling makes it work, I couldn’t find a Serif that communicated as I wanted it to with the primary audience: youth).

WORD COUNT
348

THUMBNAILS OF ANY ORIGINAL, UNEDITED IMAGE(S) USED IN THE PROJECT
Besides what is referenced below, the images are my own.

Man in Yellow shorts dunking, panel 2, upper left: https://pixabay.com/en/basketball-sport-game-jump-male-1470525/

Black and White Shot of Basketball, fourth panel, bottom-left: https://pixabay.com/en/ball-basketball-sport-game-1270395/

DESCRIPTION
Design a website homepage using a grid.

PROCESS (Programs, Tools, Skills, FOCUS principles)
1. I chose to continue with a fictional character that I created one day when my then 3-year old daughter and I were on a car ride, and I needed something to occupy her mind to rescue her from car-boredom, so I made up a story about a tiny pumpkin named Jacky-Jack.
2. I have published a few of these stories here. Jacky-Jack started as a handful of amusing stories for me to share with my daughter, but then her friends and cousins got into it, and asked for more, so I started putting some of it down on paper. Eventually, I would like to create Jacky-Jack games and cartoons to go with the stories, and offer special downloads and merchandise to purchase, so that’s what this site is based on.
3. I knew that this being a kids’ site, it had to be simple by design, but that is so much easier said than done. Adobe Photoshop has proven to have such a steep learning curve that I spend hours only making a few adjustments, and I end up running out of time to get it looking quite like I really want it to, but it is getting closer now.
4. Going off the principle of “less is more”, I provided a graphic illustration at the top that tells exactly who Jacky-Jack is, and below that are five simple buttons to navigate to different services offered by the site. That’s it, simple, so when a visitor views the site, they will know exactly what it’s for, and what they can do there.
5. I spent hours creating the Jacky-Jack character, and although he’s still not quite looking like I want him to yet, he’s WAY closer than a week ago. It’s simply going to take more practice with PS to get it looking like I want it to. I also spent a little over an hour with the logos or icons that go over each link. While I generated the base for some of them from the custom shape builder, I also made some adjustments to make them more custom to what I want to communicate (kid-friendly, fun, and simple).

Sketch

CRITIQUE PROCESS
Facebook Critique:
I received some great advice via Facebook from Ralph Borcherds, who shared some ideas for how to improve my knowledge of Photoshop. I also received some valuable advice from Sarah Pence Sharp, and Brooke Ericson who suggested that I change it to Fall colors to match the theme better, great idea! Done.

Instructor Critique:
critique from our instructor, brother Stucki, who despite my discontent with my initial project, said that I actually wasn’t that far off, just needed to finish it up a bit, by adding more pumpkin like details such as a stem, some lines/ridges, and adding icons to the circle links, so I did that.

MESSAGE
It’s okay to be the smallest one out there, you can have a great life no matter who you are.

AUDIENCE
Children and parents of young children.

TOP THING LEARNED
Youtube is your friend. There are many people on Youtube who know how to use Photoshop, and can help give you ideas on how to improve your work. I think that considering this is a college course, we’re not expected to be given every little detail from the course to succeed, indeed I now feel that a large part of our success is going to come from thinking outside the box, and seeing how we can improve on the basic knowledge we’ve been given to start each project.

COLOR SCHEME & COLOR NAMES
Split Complementary // Orange, Light Browns and yellows, and blues.

TITLE FONT NAME & CATEGORY
Cooper Black // Decorative/Serif

COPY FONT NAME & CATEGORY
Arial // Sans Serif

THUMBNAILS OF ANY ORIGINAL, UNEDITED IMAGE(S) USED IN THE PROJECT
Images are my own.

Description
Design a spiritual poster montage using the blend of images and type.

Process
As I considered my options, and the message that I wanted to share, I was going back and forth between the innocence of children, and the sanctity of marriage. I finally decided that I’ve already done a lot of photos with my children, so I’d go with the marriage option.

The first part was to choose a photo, I found this one from our October family pictures, and then found another one of the Salt Lake City Temple, and the Christus, so putting the three together, I came up with my message: “Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:11)

The Temple would be the background with the couple in the foreground, while in the upper-right corner would be the Savior. I wanted the text “In the Lord” to appear separate from the rest of the quote, and on the same side as the Savior.

I went to OfficeMax to print out a copy for the video. What video? Oh yeah, this one doesn’t call for a video……. oh. Well now I feel silly.

Critique Process
I received a PM from the instructor because my montage was last in line, and his video recording stopped before mine could be opened, so he offered the suggestion to change the font “In the Lord” and to make the Christus a little smaller. He also suggested blending the edges around the couple better. I also received feedback from Jacob Casal on Facebook that shared a lot of the same advice, as well as opening it up a bit, and blending more because the message felt blunt, and the images were a little crowded, so I added the red, made more gradual shadows, and softened edges to blend them better.

Message
Man and woman belong together as husband and wife, and that is best achieved when focusing on principles centered on Jesus Christ.

I believe that success in marriage is not measured in years, that is only one of the products of a successful marriage. I believe it is more like a fun competition of seeing who can make the other the happiest. We don’t stay together just to stay together, we stay together because we make each other happy, and we are devoted to each other. Of course compared to eternity, 11 years is just a drop in the bucket.

Audience
Married, and soon-to-be married couples who believe in Christ. Especially those who believe in eternal marriages.

Top Thing Learned
The black and white in the bottom left corner that affects the blending (bringing the subject image forward or sending it behind the other) is only available when the subject photo’s mask is created and selected on the bottom right. Took me a long time to finally figure this out, once I did, the rest went much easier.

Color Scheme and Color Names
Complementary | Red, white, and blue

Copy Font Name and Category
Quote and reference: Lucinda Bright (Italic)
Emphasis text: Berlin Sans FB

Thumbnails of any originals

Source of Each Image
Couple by Rachel Little; Temple and Christus by Chandra Wagner.