Water for Africa

You've probably noticed by now I have a thing for minimalism and Harabara.  I got inspired by the Good 50x70 project, with special attention to their gallery for water scarcity.  The sketch started with a really badly drawn Africa, but you get the idea.  And the proportions are completely off, but you can see for yourself.  The "water" was created in Illustrator and then cross platformed to PS.  I did some Ctrl+Ting for adjustments, though.  Anyway, I originally wanted to just do a solid color "water" but then I realized I needed MOAR PHOTOSHOP, so I pulled a giant picture of a drought in Senegal and did that text overlay thing we did in the beginning of the water.

Next came the Africa shape.  Illustrator's Live Trace was immensely useful and resulted, with the right parameters, a shape that walked the line between vague and exact.  I knew that if the shape was exactly like the map, realism would like 0, so I loosened up blur and played around with it.  Afterwards though, came the hardest part - making the drop seem like a drop.  I scoured designbump and the internet for some tutorials, but the majority of them relied on have a background (i.e. a leaf).  Since I planned for a stark white and I didn't plan to deviate, I had to look at a few and stitch together some sort of Franken-tutorial.  The main information I used came from Lunacore, though.  At one point, I stumbled upon a tutorial for Adobe Fireworks, but I couldn't quite adapt it to the abstract Africa shape.   All of them made heavy use of blending modes, so I took it as a cue and took the paramaters given and played with it from there.  I adapted the tutorials to the immense size of the shape and the fact that it didn't have a background to rely on.  To add some more realism, I ended up adding a black to white gradient and adjusted opacity.  I also went over it a few times with a soft round brush to add hints of depth here and there.  Lastly, to give it a sort of blue color, I added another layer, took a giant brush and went over it, and set the layer to overlay and toned down the opacity.

Below is a simpler version of the final product, instead of drought text, it has clean lines and solid color.

Credits
[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]

Color Theory Presentation

This version is Blogger-approved, but laggy like no other.  Try using the mirror and hit fullscreen.

Mirror:

Behold the power of Adobe Flash. This one is more high res and you can click through it at your own pace.







Some Terminology:



COLOR: general term for the qualities of hue, intensity, and value observed in pigment or light.
HUE: the name of a color, such as red, blue, green....

CHROMA: intensity, strength, or saturation of color, distinguishing the chromatic colors from black and white.
SATURATION: degree of vividness of a hue from its concentration; used synonymously with chroma.

More Saturation---------Less Saturation 

VALUE: range from light to dark, including white, grays, and black; colors can be evaluated on this scale. Values are often numbered on scales of 0 to 10. In one system 0 - black and 10 - white; another system reverses the designations and has 0 for white and 10 for black. Generally, high values are considered to be light, and low values dark.

COLOR WHEEL: divided or sectioned circle with colors in a spectrum effect.

COLOR TRIAD: three colors spaced an equal distance apart on the color wheel, such as red, yellow & blue or orange, green & purple.

COMPLEMENTARY COLORS: colors directly opposite each other on the color wheel such as blue & orange, red & green, yellow & purple.

SPLIT COMPLEMENT COLORS: use of the colors on each side of a complementary color.

PRIMARY COLORS: (artists) red, yellow, blue (printing inks) magenta, cyan, yellow

SECONDARY COLORS: orange, green and purple, made from mixing the primaries: red and yellow make orange, blue and yellow make green, and red and blue make purple.

TETRADS: color harmonies based on four colors; using every fourth color; the tetrads on the Prang color wheel; yellow-orange, red, blue-purple, and green; orange, red-purple, blue, and yellow-green; red-orange, purple, blue-green, and yellow.

TERTIARY COLORS: in contemporary usage, the intermediate colors are considered tertiaries: yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green, and yellow-green; in early color theory, the mixture of the secondary colors created a tertiary, as green mixed with orange, orange mixed with purple, and purple mixed with green

 Direct link here.


Sources used: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]


Resources Used: [Prezi] [Screencast-o-Matic] [Jaycut]  Props to free, web based applications.

Logo Design

This logo conceptually arose from my desire for a logo that employed three dimensions.  However, while good as a sketch and as an idea, I had neither to Illustrator skill or the conviction to execute such a complex logo.  Thus, it underwent very little development because it was so exhausting just to do one.  I was faced with new challenges - perspective, especially - and I was tasked with moving the logo from some sort of dimensional surrealism to the traditional sense of perspective.  I was planning to take this logo further, modifying it with rounded corners and then shifting perspective into an equivalent x,y,z plane as one sees in mathematics (example and inspiration here), but due to time constraints and lack of general skill in Illustrator, such plans proved too ambitious.

This logo is one that, in my opinion, is simple and minimalist, which is what I was going for.  I appreciate the bold, striking contrast of the lettering.  Also, as you ma have noticed, I'm an avid fan of Harabara because of its clean lines and textual/typographic flow.  For this one, I experimented with lots of Helveticaesque fonts before deciding on this specific path; Museo 900 was another serious consideration.  Another thought was given to the placement of the first name, (a) whether it should be vertical or horizontal (b) if vertical, in the L, I or which part of N and (c) if horizontal, in the botton of the L or perhaps use negative space or (d) angle it down the slope of the N.   After looking over the options, I finally decided on this.  I was also considering using a Gapesque logo, with just my name and a square filled with blue gradient, just because.

This last one is probably my favorite as it lacked the agonizing effort of the first and employs even more Harabara, if possible. The arrowlike quality of the shape my name is in is actually composed of a lowercase Harabara V and L.  Again, the striking boldness and simplicity of the lines is something I appreciate.  Also, for both this logo, I decided not to match it with the black background because brown and black clash (alas, color choices) so just click on the image to get a clearer view.

*The brown backgrounds were originally supposed to white/invisible but were changed to light brown to match.

Not quite a square.

Project Description: Do Ligatures, Stacked Text, Figureground Reversal, Symbol Replacement to practice Illustrator skills for the logo project.

New Skills: 

• Ligatures
• Stacked Text
• Figureground Reversal
• Symbol Replacement
• Move Anchor Point
• Outline View
• Live Trace
• Place JPEG
• Divide
• Group

Self Reflection:

It's irritating how my final products don't fit together like a compact minimalist shape... if only, if only.  Also, I finished it before I was shown the ampersand reversal artbook, but I'll try my hand at that some other time.  It was remarkably difficult to to do entire words of symbol replacement.  In case you can't tell, it's coexist, Pokemon, cookie and Asian.  I'm a giant geek, I know.  

Participation/Project: 10/10?

Insert Enthusiasm Here

Project Description: Do VectorDiary 8-12.

New Skills: 

• Crayon, of which I draw crappy pears with
• Creating Brushes
• Shapes + Brushes
• Blend Setting
• Grouping Layers
• Compound Paths
• Stroke
• Brushes
• Gradient
• Fill with Pattern
• An Unwavering Enthusiasm for Adobe Illustrator.  Yay.

Self Reflection:

W-w-w-wrath on the pear.  YES TO THE SHAPES; NO TO PEN TOOL.  It's 8:23 and I haven't had coffee.  Can't self reflect.  Can't function.  Ahhh.  Edit: Now I have a cold but Tylenol has made me surprisingly lucid.  I can't quite remember doing this one, but I remember being extremely frustrated with the pear and button overlay.  Everything else was easy enough, like creating brushed, pattern fills, blending modes, compound paths and "spa" daisies (really?).   Fun times, fun times.

Participation/Project: 10/10?