Final Reflection - Post Up Book

I chose to do an avant garde book with the theme being fashion trends of Fall 2010.  I wanted this book to be a high fashion lookbook of trends.  Each page would be a different trend.  I had originally planned on using mainly a collage of images but Professor Arellano pointed out that I should probably include some sort of description about what the book was for those less fashionable readers who would not understand immediately.  So I decided to make each spread into a trend with the image on one side and description the other side.  I used to same border, colors, and heading on both sides to help the two pages flow together.  I think using the same border was very effective.  I used the same font for small text throughout the entire book which also made the book more cohesive as a whole.  I also stuck with a similar layout for each page.  The layout was 1 image of a celebrity, 1 image of a runway model, about 4 images from the Urban Minx website (my current place of work) and 2 images of accessories from the Urban Minx website.  The accessories are all completely cut out with a black shadowed edge.  I believe this similar layout kept the book from looking too messy.

The production schedule for this assignment was everything this term.  I have learned a lot about time management in general this term because I have been so busy.  I am just grateful I have Photoshop on my computer at home or this term would have been a disaster for me.  It took me a long time to complete this assignment because I kept realizing I had more to do and I actually had to redo two different trend pages for different reasons.  I felt like I was on schedule all term with this assignment and our other assignments because of my time management skills.  I ended up getting the book all pulled together and put into Indesign and printed during the last week of class and it came out really nice.  I am definitely satisfied with my book although I wish it was bigger.  I had to use a 6x9 inch template in order to keep my pages going the direction I wanted.  I had originally planned to print my book on 8.5x11 inch pages but it still came out nice.

I plan on keeping my book in my living room on an end table for guests to check out.  I am also going to take it to work with me to show the owner and my manager.  I know they will love the book since I used all Urban Minx images.  I wish I had more than one copy to give to my parents and the Owner of Urban Minx but they were so expensive to print I will probably just keep the one for myself.

Book Assignment-rough draft

I started out wanting to do this book assignment as an avant garde fashion lookbook of 2010 trends but I have modified it a bit.  I am now doing this as a part of my job and being paid for it so I incorporated clothing from my work Urban Minx in order to make a lookbook for our website urbanminx.com.  So each page will be a different trend of fall 2010 which will be featured on our website either as a look book or as home screen ads or as blogs on our website.  Each page will have photos our Urban Minx merchandise along with a couple photos of celebrities and runway models sporting the latest trends.  I am having a lot of fun with it already but only have 3 of my lookbook pages so far but I have planned out what the other pages will be.  The cover is not finished and neither is the back cover or 3 of the trend pages.

Page 1 Cover:

Page 2 Military trend:

Page 3 Glam Rock trend:

Page 4 Black/White trend:

Page 5 Animal/fur trend:

Page 6 Sweater trends:

Page 7 70's inspired trend:

Page 8 Back Cover:

Book Proposal

My book proposal is to create an avante garde book depicting 2010’s hottest fashion trends.  It will be a large book about 12 inches by 16 inches tall so it could be displayed as décor in a home or boutique.  My book would be mostly pictures but also a few designers’ names and styles randomly placed about the pages to create interest.  There will be pictures from runway fashion shows from 2010 as well as single pictures of clothing items and also pictures of celebrities wearing this year’s hottest trends.  I will use Photoshop to enhance each photo and make them look interesting and edgy to go with the high fashion theme.

Poster Assignment

I chose to depict a musician and propaganda in my poster.  I love music and have a strong connection to music so I knew I wanted to do some sort of music related poster rather than a movie because I am not as much of a movie buff.  I also chose to do propaganda because I have always been very intrigued by government conspiracy theories and have recently been doing a lot of research involving the Illuminati conspiracy.  Apparently the wealthiest leaders and musicians in the world are part of this Illuminati cult that is taking over the world and worships the devil.  It is a very involved conspiracy theory and there is an astonishing amount of evidence showing that many presidents and musicians are in on it.  I have my own theories about this whole conspiracy and the music industries and government’s involvement which is what I depicted.

I tried to use quite a bit of eye catching techniques in my posters.  In the “Illuminati” poster I tilted everything and dulled down the background in order to make the bright red letters pop and look somewhat intense.  The green colour is to represent money and the government.  I depicted my friend Titus (“Tightass”) as a musician in the other poster where I used a bright purple to catch attention.  I also used a giant flat shape of a pair of headphones to fill the background and make some interesting negative space.

I chose to left align the words in the “Illuminati” poster because I felt it was more stern and serious looking like the government than if I were to center the text.  In the “Tightass Ashby” poster I made the letters falling into his hand the main object which I felt was visually intriguing as well.  I also made an extra musician poster depicting Slash as “The Clash” to make him an unreal artist.  In this poster I used a long letter Slash wrote to his fans as the background pattern along with his “band name” at a 90 degree angle.

Photograph Assignment

I actually think I learned more from the alphabet soup portion of the assignment because when I first learned of the assignment I really was not looking forward to the letter portion.  I thought it would be difficult to find letters and if I did I would have no connection to the pictures.  I thought they would just be fulfilling the assignment requirements.  But when I realized the letters I kept finding were spelling a word I started to have fun putting them together.  I have always loved incorporating words into my art so I did enjoy editing the 4 letters to flow together and spell “love”.  I wasn’t intending on spelling any specific word but these letters were the letters I kept finding.  I did have fun photographing the person I don’t know.  She was all dressed up for a local play which is why I called her “the actress”.  The man in the photograph is a good friend of mine who was being crazy in my laundry room which is why I called him “the comedian”.

I had to edit the lighting adjustments of all four letters in my “love” word.  I adjusted the levels mainly and made every picture have some areas that are bright white to make the 4 pictures flow together better.  I decided to put all 4 photos together in one image to present them as one word which I felt was more appealing than if I were to post them individually one on top of the other.

I have always been big on placement in photographs and don’t usually like centering the main object in the photo.  I always try to do something more interesting but when I started putting my four letters together as one image I realized I needed to center each letter to make them flow together and basically be the same size.  So I lost all of my off-centering and placement that I had photographed but I think it worked better this way.  So I guess I learned that sometimes it does look better to center objects in photos under the right circumstances.

I know the assignment was for 5 letters but my main image was using 4 so I also did an extra “L” below.

Type Assignment

I tried many different typefaces but I chose to use the same one throughout the entire assignment because I wanted all five of my pieces to flow together.  The “engravers” font I used has strong serifs on each letter which I felt was much more appealing with all the different ways I merged the letters together.  It seemed like the sans serif fonts just got lost and didn’t even look like letters after manipulating them a bit.  The Engravers font was classic like James Dean which was my theme of this assignment.

The five letters I chose were not random at all.  I started out with the letter “D” because that is my favorite letter.  I have always felt the letter “D” and names starting with “D” are very masculine and strong sounding.  I decided to use James Dean’s initials/name for the other letters because he is one of my favorite actors and I also have a tattoo of him on my foot.  The letters I chose are J. Dean.

I like all 5 of my compositions as a whole because they are each unique but still flow together nicely.  But I have to say my favorites are both the pieces with James Dean pictures in them.  The other more basic ones I did kind of bore me but I didn’t want to overdo it by putting photographs in every single one.  I am very big on the idea of “less is more” so it is easy for me to decide when a piece of art is done because I don’t let it become overdone.  I feel the same way about art, fashion, and home décor.  I never want to do too much.  I like to keep it classy and chic.  If you overdue it things start to look as if you are trying too hard.

Toy Assignment - Michelle Moore

My motivation for this assignment came after reading that we should make a “character or thing”.  I knew I wanted to create a real person in box form and Lenny Kravitz is such a character already, I knew he would be perfect.  I really love Lenny Kravitz.  I love his style, attitude, music and everything else about the man.  He also has many unique things about him that I thought would make a really cool cube character.  He has tattoos everywhere, pierced ears and nose and nipples, unique clothing, crazy hair, and fun sunglasses in most of his pictures.  I took time to find the perfect pictures to use for his face, body, arms and ears.  Even the tattoos on his arms are his real tattoos, as well as the ears I used.  I knew I would have a lot more fun making a real person as opposed to drawing out some random thing.  When I actually printed out the template and put the toy together I could not stop laughing at how ridiculous it was to see Lenny Kravitz as a cube person.  I think this class is way too much fun! ;)

I used the eyedropper so much in this assignment!  I actually use it quite often when creating in Photoshop.  It is a great tool to help make everything flow together and look appealing to the eye.  I use it to keep every shade within the same colour range and also to use exact colours over and over again.  Lenny Kravitz is known for his outrageous clothing so I decided to give him purple pants.  I actually sampled the purple colour from the purple in his sunglasses.  The flat colour I used for the majority of his body and sides of his head was a sample from his actual skin colour in the picture of his body.  The picture I had of his ear was in black and white so I had to change it to colour using the sample of his skin colour.  His beard flat colour was sampled from his actual beard in the picture also.

My approach to creating Lenny was to start with a game plan!  I figured everything out in my head and got all the pictures before I ever started the project.  It was tricky to figure out a way to make a picture of a round head and body look decent in cube form.  I started with his head and worked my way down.  I think my approach of figuring it all out ahead of time really worked because it is definitely a bit of a challenge to imagine how everything will look once the cube is made.  The template is so upside down and backwards it isn’t easy to envision it.  I knew after all that work I was not going to leave it in template form.  I was excited to make the actual cubed Lenny and it turned out way cooler once it was real!

*Below are the images of my actual cube, the template and the photos i used from the internet to create my cube Lenny.

Scratch Assignment - Michelle Moore

Scratch Assignment:

This project was simple but actually a lot of fun.  I have been using Photoshop for almost 8 years and have never done anything in Photoshop without using other elements aside from the basic tools.  It was almost a challenge to do something so basic.  It forced me to be very imaginative.  I do think I know Photoshop pretty well but this project really forced me to think outside of the box.  I am normally doing projects which involve manipulating photos so this scratch assignment was quite different.

I really didn’t stick to any plan while creating these three images.  I just drew whatever came to my mind.  I write songs and poetry so I love incorporating lyrics and words into my art.  I had a lot of fun hiding secret messages in each of these three images.  Each one actually has a very powerful meaning to me.  Scratch 1 has the words “is it love” and “indecisive” along with someone’s name hidden in it.  The other two drawings are more obvious with their messages.

My favorite image I made is scratch 2.  The words have a lot of straight forward meaning about a person I currently know and they also have a metaphorical meaning for how I have been feeling lately.  I also love the ivory and black background I drew because it reminds me of a pattern you would see on a designer clothing garment.  I am very into fashion and the military style is very “in” right now which was also an inspiration for this drawing.

-Michelle Moore