In this design, I was hoping to explain how beneficial it is to take up a musical instrument and share my personal story of how much I loved my cello. I wanted to express the fact that music is more than just notes on a sheet of paper or taking up space on an iPod; each song, note or instrument carries an emotional tone with it and can be used to express emotions.
Some decisions I made when creating this project was the type of pictures I used. Because my project was completely geared towards personal experiences and emotions, I wanted 1-2 pictures at most per slide, so viewers could emotionally understand my message and connect to the picture on the screen. I also chose to use pictures that had hearts, teardrops or other emotional objects with music notes to further explain that the cello, or a musical instrument in general, can be used to demonstrate or release emotions. Some other decisions I made were which quotes I wanted to use, because I wanted to begin and end my power point with quotes and what color I wanted the background. I knew black would work because many of my images were black and white or sepia toned, and the black would pair with the tones nicely.
This project was very interesting and fun to do because it was about something I loved and was passionate about, but it was extremely challenging. I found that the audio was especially challenging because I could not figure out the correct way to upload my tape-recorded speech about the cello. Posting the finished project was also extremely difficult, and took much time and trial-and-error before I posted using our traditional application, SlideShare.
I overcame my challenges by much trial and error, but eventually, it all came together. My sound slides did give me the most challenge, however. At first, I used a traditional tape recorder and attempted to upload the content to audacity; however, the file only uploaded the second half of my speech, so it was unable to be used. Next, I attempted to use final cut pro, but that application would not work for me as well. Finally, I used Garage band and learned how to cut and create my own speech, adding in my music clips, to create a full speech. It took a very long time, but it eventually was able to allow me to save it as an mp3 and import it into iTunes, which made it accessible in my PowerPoint.
After all of the challenges, I am most proud of the timings in my project. The audio clips took forever to create, but it worked out because the music and voice clips would enter at the same time as the pictures would change, making the Power Point have great timing. I really liked that the slides and audio were matched up because the viewer can emotionally connect with the speech and have the visuals to support what the speech is saying.
If I had more time, I would have definitely tried to figure out a different way to post the project, and would have re-recorded my audio one more time. I finally got the hang of garage band, so creating more clips may have been fun now that I am able to create, cut and formulate songs.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Bind-In Cards
Quark Bind-In
InDesign Front and Back
In this design, I was hoping to make both of the designs in InDesign and Quark look identical to the actual bin-in Cosmo card. I liked that the design had images, text and shapes that I had to create, which made the project somewhat challenging; however, I realized that I find it easier to use InDesign, and Quark is somewhat harder to use for me.
Some decisions I made were which card I wanted to create first, and which card I liked the best so I could create the back cover. I chose InDesign as my favorite program, so decided to make the back of the bind-in card on InDesign. Other decisions I made during the creation of these cards were which fonts to use that looked the most similar to the card, which colors to use that looked the most similar to the card, and how to create the arrow in the bottom left corner of the card.
What I found most challenging throughout this project was finding the right fonts. There were many different fonts used in the bind-in card, and finding the fonts on InDesign and Quark that looked identical to the card was somewhat of a challenge. It required a lot of trial-and-error when finding the correct fonts, but in the end I found fonts that worked well with the project. Another challenge I encountered was creating the various shapes that were on the bind-in card, such as the "plus sign", arrow and check mark with check-mark boxes.
The way that I overcame the challenge involving certain shapes that were not easily accessed through InDesign were drawing them myself with the pen tool. It took multiple trials, but I eventually got the lines to go the way I wanted. Once I correctly connected all of the anchors using the pen tool, I was able to add a background color to the shapes as well, like the arrow in the bottom left corner. A challenge I had also included shading behind the boxes. To overcome this challenge, I simply made a black box that was slightly larger than the colored box and put it behind the other box, which added a shading technique.
I am most proud of my InDesign bind-in card, both back and front. I really like how the pictures of Cosmo Magazine Covers are in the card and positioned. Im also extremely proud of the pink background, because it was difficult to find a background that looked identical to the one in the actual bind-in card.
If I had more time, I would have worked to perfect the little things on the bind-in cards, such as the arrows, fonts and positioning of each image. I am extremely proud of my bind-in card, but if I had more time to perfect it, I would have.
Digg Design Rationale
When creating this powerpoint, I was hoping to create a powerpoint that would help someone with no prior knowledge of Digg and all of its uses, understand more about the social media website. I also wanted to associate the powerpoint with the website by using similar colors, such as the white, green and blue hues that appear on the website in my project. This project helped me learn a lot about Digg, and I used information that would help other people understand more about it as well.
Some decisions I made were which information to post in my powerpoint that I found important, the use of the icons in the bottom of the page to decipher that it was indeed a Digg powerpoint and how I wanted each group of information to be animated. I wanted each group of information to seem important, so I had each slide's bullet points enter in a different way. The "personalized Digg" slide is the one that I made each bullet point inside the slide different to further emphasize the use of customization.
What I found most challenging, to be completely honest, was posting the powerpoint via slideshare. It was unable to work in the beginning, so, in an attempt to post my slideshow in time for grading, I simply took screen shots of the blog. I then asked my peers and my professor what I could possibly be doing wrong to prohibit my powerpoint from being submitted and after a few tries, my powerpoint was successfully uploaded onto slideshare. One other challenge I found was the ability to post the "Digg" and digg critter in my powerpoint succcessfully without the white space.
The way I solved the problem about the "Digg" logo and the "Digg" critter was by putting their images into photoshop and erasing the background. By erasing the background, saving it onto the desktop and placing the images into the powerpoint, they were able to be added into the presentation without any white background.
I am most proud of how uniform the project looks and how fluid the slides are. Collectively, all slides together look like a large continuation of a project, and everything is uniform. My main goal was to take the ideas Professor taught us and apply them to the project: uniformity, do not put everything in capital letters, and make sure there aren't too many bullet points per slide.
If I did things differently or had more time, I would have added different animations to the bulleted slides. I like the way that they are, but experimenting and adding different animations might make the project more upbeat and fun, like Digg really is.
Some decisions I made were which information to post in my powerpoint that I found important, the use of the icons in the bottom of the page to decipher that it was indeed a Digg powerpoint and how I wanted each group of information to be animated. I wanted each group of information to seem important, so I had each slide's bullet points enter in a different way. The "personalized Digg" slide is the one that I made each bullet point inside the slide different to further emphasize the use of customization.
What I found most challenging, to be completely honest, was posting the powerpoint via slideshare. It was unable to work in the beginning, so, in an attempt to post my slideshow in time for grading, I simply took screen shots of the blog. I then asked my peers and my professor what I could possibly be doing wrong to prohibit my powerpoint from being submitted and after a few tries, my powerpoint was successfully uploaded onto slideshare. One other challenge I found was the ability to post the "Digg" and digg critter in my powerpoint succcessfully without the white space.
The way I solved the problem about the "Digg" logo and the "Digg" critter was by putting their images into photoshop and erasing the background. By erasing the background, saving it onto the desktop and placing the images into the powerpoint, they were able to be added into the presentation without any white background.
I am most proud of how uniform the project looks and how fluid the slides are. Collectively, all slides together look like a large continuation of a project, and everything is uniform. My main goal was to take the ideas Professor taught us and apply them to the project: uniformity, do not put everything in capital letters, and make sure there aren't too many bullet points per slide.
If I did things differently or had more time, I would have added different animations to the bulleted slides. I like the way that they are, but experimenting and adding different animations might make the project more upbeat and fun, like Digg really is.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
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