Graphic Design Resources

Websites


Tutorials

This website was quite helpful, it offers a list of tutorials about how to create and design certain lighting effects- http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/photoshop-lighting-effects/ 

Just one of the many tutorials on how to create Abstract Line designs using illustrator- http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/how-to-create-an-abstract-vector-design-in-illustrator


i found this site really helpful for a lot of things. On this website there are tutorials for many things that you may need to do in photoshop and illustrator- http://abduzeedo.com/tutorials

the following blog site i found had a various amount of illustrator tutorials. they are quite easy and simple to understand i recommend looking at this site- http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/articles/50-illustrator-tutorials-every-designer-should-see

another really good website that was really resourceful to both illustrator and photoshop was http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/tutorials/ this website has numerous tutorials and demonstrations on different things that you can create and design.

Portfolios


the following websites are ones that i use to help start getting ideas when creating and designing different projects.

http://www.deviantart.com/
http://www.redbubble.com/
http://lyndonwade.com/
http://www.theloop.com.au/portfolios/Design-Creative-/
http://www.joliuphotography.com/book1.html


Blogs


http://www.graphicdesignblog.org/ This website was a really good reference. it is a host blog site for graphic designers to diplay their work.

http://blogs.agda.com.au/blog/view/post/the-value-of-agda The Australian Graphic Design Association (AGDA) is the national organisation for professional graphic designers.


There are millions of blogs to do with graphic design. some that appealed to me are;


http://www.graphic-design-blog.com/2011/06/jakob-wagner-new-york-photography.html


Videos/Youtube


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eneyl4KS99A- this youtube video i found useful. it is a quick photoshop tutorial on how to add a dramatic colour effect to your images.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsiQptl_Y9E- this video i found really interesting, it is a really easy to understand guide on how to give a virtual weight loss appearance to a figure in an image using photoshop tools.

Another good resource website to use is the adobe website. they have a 'video tutorial' option which gives you a list of easy to understand video tutorials.
(Illustrator video tutorials) http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Illustrator/14.0/WSA062795C-1C55-4549-8F48-CA796D1800C4.html

http://www.lynda.com/newreleases.aspx One of the greatest video tutorial websites on the web. This website will give you answers on various computer related subjects. Defiantly would highly recommend checking this site out.


Search Engines


If you have an question that you need answering, search engines are a great way to get that question answered.

http://www.google.com.au/
http://www.bing.com/
http://www.ask.com/
http://search.yahoo.com/web?fr=alltheweb
http://www.gigablast.com/
http://www.altavista.com/

Print/Other


Magazines


Go fish: comes out once a year. it is a design magazine where you can design an image according to a theme that they set to you and you can upload your images to see if they get into the magazine. great to look at, really interesting designs.

IDN (international designers network): a really interesting magazine displaying different designers work.

Books


Photoshop for dummies: Personally this book was really helpful to me starting out. It was a great reference book, anything you need to know about photoshop is in this book.

Graphic Design Essentials: This book is about the beginning principles with design skills and software instruction.

Childrens Farm Safety Magazine Page

After the first magazine page we created in photoshop, Luke then gave us a task to design another magazine page using only his content that he supplied. This page was to be about Children's farm safety. The following is what i came up with.

Magazine Page

In photoshop we were asked to choose our own musical group and create a full A4 spread about the group for a magazine page. the type content had to be our own by the images were allowed to be copied.
For my design i chose to do the "Hilltop Hoods" i chose this group because i knew the majority of the information that i have written already. The following is my final product..

CD Cover (Photoshop Assessment)

For the last term in photoshop we have been working on an assessment, to create and design our own dual case CD covers.

This in my final product..

Front Cover/ Back cover of booklet

Inside Pages

Back Cover and Spines

Inside Sleeve (Behind CD)

CD Face

Information:

Genre: Pop/Country

Reasoning: For the marjority of this assesment i have based it around things that have happend to me during my lifetime. The reasons i have chosen to do this genre is because 'country' reflects my past. i personally don't like country music but i have grown up in the country so it that is the reason i have chose to do this genre. I also have based the tracks around things that are important to me in my life. 

Colour Schemes: I chose a colour scheme that was a sepia tone. I then carried this colour scheme throughout the cover using browns and a shade of beige for the main title. I feel that the tones give the cover a warm country feel.

Imagery: All the imagery for this assessment had to be our own. I chose to put myself on the cover but i didn't just want to plain and simply put my face on the cover so i have only placed half on my face on the front. On the back i have then placed an image of myself again but this time i have used the rear of my head. This gives the illusion that it is the 'front and back' of the left side of my face.

Typeface: For this particular task i chose to use 3 different typefaces. I tried to choose fonts that were easy enough to read, but still eye catching. Throughout the album i have used a script font for my name which is close to something i got with an engraving on it when i was little. I have also used two different basic serif and san serif fonts.

Vector Future Poster Assessment

In Illustrator we were given an assessment to design a vector based poster that would describe where we would like to be in the future.

The guidelines for this assessment were quite flexible, the only requirements were that we had to have a vector image of ourselves, 3 hand drawn images using the pen tool and the text ' future' somewhere in your image. providing we had these 3 items we could design our poster however we pleased. 

The Following is my final product.

Every element within this poster stands for something important that i wish to have or do in my future.

I have carefully chosen various vector images to place into this poster such as the Eiffel tower, my Nikon camera, the city, the Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign logos that have been placed onto the shirt of the vector image of myself, the paintbrush and the swallow birds.

The 3 images that I have drawn with the pen tool are; the Nikon camera (placed on the top of the image of the city that is placed in my hand), the vector image of myself and the paintbrush (in front of the city in my hand.) The rest of the images in the poster I have used the live trace and paint options, the paintbrush and distort mesh. 

Wifi Logo Assignment

We were set a task in illustrator, where we had to separate into 3 separate groups and were asked to design individual logos for a name that we came up with for a free WI-FI networking system for Baylis street in Wagga.

As a class we came up with the name 'Freeload' and started our making our logos. We designed various logos and presented them to a teacher at TAFE who then gave us guidance to what he was aiming for in the logo. We then went back and adjusted our logos to his criticism and chose in our groups as to which 3 logos we would then present to a group of IT students that were creating the networking system. 

The following is my final logo.

Children's Book Assessment

The last few weeks in photoshop we have been working on, designing and creating our own children's story books. The requirements for this assessment were to create 5 completely original characters ad put them into 2 separate A3 spreads (so 4 pages of a 16 page book).
We then have been asked to upload the final products to our blogs.
The following is my Story.


Once there lived a starfish named Sammy, a jellyfish named Jack, and a fish named Frankie.
They were the best of friends and did everything together.
On the opposite side of town lived a small, lonely crab named Candice.
Sammy, jack and Frankie were very mean to Candice, they teased her and called her names.
One day Sammy, Jack and Frankie were swimming in the park when all of a sudden..
"WHY DO YOU THINK YOU CAN PICK ON CANDICE!" Bellowed a deep voice from within the
seaweed.
‘’Who was that?’’ asked Jack nervously.
‘’My name is Wally, Wally the whale and I have heard you three have been picking on Candice.’’
"I’m sorry, we didn’t know that we were hurting her’’ claimed Frankie.
"Well you are and I think that you all owe her an apology."
After swimming for a while they came across a sad little crab crying quietly by herself.
‘‘Candice what is wrong? We are all so sorry for being rude to you. Can you ever forgive us?’’
Asked Jack, Sammy and Frankie apologetically.
‘‘Well you did hurt me, I don’t like being called names’’ claimed Candice.
‘‘I know, we are all so sorry Candice!’’
After talking for a while, Candice finally agreed to forgive them and from that day on, they all
played happily together in the park.

Spreads