Tag: illustrator

Color

oh__the_hue_manatee__d__by_atrainbow_wolf-d5x6hbpThe colors you choose for your badges (and for every design!) should never be arbitrary in the final version.

Make your color palette communicate with purpose. (White Space pg. 131)

Consider not only what colors create harmony and impact, but also what colors might evoke particular feelings and associations in the minds of your audience members.

color symbolism

In marketing, there is endless research on how color affects consumer choices. One study found that “85% of consumers base buying decisions on color.” Needless to say, color is a crucial concept for visual communicators. However, it is also our responsibility to consider the ways that color is socially constructed to mean different things to different cultures. For example, White Space mentions that white is the color of mourning in some Asian countries. We could also think critically about the ethics of black’s association with evil and mystery, particularly in contrast to white’s connotation of purity and innocence. Recall that Darren Wilson testified that Michael Brown looked like a “demon.”  And what about pink’s association with weakness and femininity? Sometimes your designs might reflect cultural norms, but make sure it is a conscious choice and not a caustic stereotype guiding you.

Color medium

You are designing images for the web and not for print. Which color profile do you use?

RGB or CMYK?

Remember that print is best with CMYK while computer screens are best with RGB. Although RGB has many more color variants than CMYK (approximately 15 million more), there are only 216 web-safe RGB colors currently. 

Image credit: DesignTAXI
Image credit: DesignTAXI
color harmony

What color profile did this designer choose? In other words, what is the relationship between the colors in her design?

Help with harmony:

  • Design Seeds (color schemes mostly from nature)
  • Paletton (click Preview > Default with Text to show what text would look like on top of a background color)
  • Adobe Color CC !!!

Color can provide unity and coherence in the design of your badges. Whether you choose an earthy palette, a high-contrast high-saturation scheme, or more subdued and simple tones, you should have a plan and a purpose in your color choices.

Today in class:

Use Adobe Color CC to create a few color themes that you might want to use for your badges mini project. Make sure you are signed in using the Adobe ID that you created when you purchased Creative Cloud. If you don’t have an Adobe ID, you can create one and use Adobe Color for free.

  • Try uploading a picture to Adobe Color. Hopefully you have been adding design ideas to Pinterest or Tumblr, so you could find color inspiration there.
  • In Adobe Color, observe the differences between the color rules. The color rules represent different principles of color theory that you read about in White Space.
  • You can change the value of a base color, but all the other colors will darken or lighten with it.
  • Once you have a color palette you like, save it as a theme. It will sync with your Illustrator (if you bought Creative Cloud) and be automagically available for use from the Color Themes panel in Illustrator CC. If you did not purchase Adobe CC, you can download the color theme as an .ase file (or swatch) and then import it into Illustrator later.

Typography


Things like fonts and kerning might not seem very relevant to the digital badges mini project, but typography is an important tool in your “visual rhetoric” toolbox and it will be crucial for your visual resume.  One way to think of rhetoric is “directing the audience’s attention.”  As Wysocki and Lynch write in Compose Design Advocate, “Because we see where we focus our eyes, seeing is very much about attention” (256).  (But if we focus too hard on one thing, we stop paying attention.). When you make something visual, whether it’s a digital badge or a page layout, “you work to draw your audience’s eyes – and hence their attention and thinking – through your presentation in a certain order” (Wysocki and Lynch 256).  You work to get them to do something or feel something or have a particular experience.

Given what we’ve done and read in class so far, these guidelines from Wysocki and Lynch make sense as a simple way for thinking about effective design:

  • Your designs generally should have a limited number of elements so that your audience is not overwhelmed by detail and can see the point of your composition.
    • Ask yourself… What elements do you need to include in your design?
  • Your designs should have a visual hierarchy – a visual path – that indicates to your audience what to look at first, second, third, etc.
    • Ask yourself… What visual hierarchy supports your purpose?
  • Your design must look like a set of unified pieces so that your audience understands that the pieces are meant to work together.
    • Ask yourself… What visual unity can you create? (Wysocki and Lynch 256)

Remember to consider your audience. Some fonts are better for people who are older or for people who have dyslexia (e.g. comic sans).

How can you create hierarchy and unity through typefaces?

Today in class:

  1. Create a simple visual composition that uses type rhetorically. Your composition should demonstrate hierarchy and unity.
  2. Start a document in Illustrator that is 5×5 inches.
  3. Use openin.gs (or anything) to find a compelling bit of text to arrange in your composition.
  4. Practice with the Adobe Illustrator Type Tool, where you’ll see you can select kerning, leading (pronounced “ledding”), and tracking.
  5. Practice setting the type in different fonts, weights, spacing, or along a nonlinear path. Practice using different fonts.
  6. Keep it simple by leaving your text in black (grayscale). You can add a background color to the artboard if you like.
  7. Save your final composition as a .png file at 300ppi and upload it to your Pinterest or Tumblr.

Throughout this week, start pinning or tumbling examples of type and color that inspire you. This Pinterest board is an awesome place to start.

 

Homework deadlines extended

Let’s take a little more time to get through Chapters 1 – 3 in Foundations of Digital Art. Final exercises from all three chapters are due on Blackboard by Wednesday 1/28 at the beginning of class.  Chapters 2 and 3 are more time-consuming than 1, though I would say Chapter 2 is the trickiest of all.

The tutorial videos at adobe.com are a quick way to learn the basics of Illustrator.
The tutorial videos at adobe.com are a quick way to learn the basics of Illustrator.

I recommend spending a little time with the Illustrator CC tutorial videos created by Adobe. The videos are very short and might help fill in any gaps left by the textbook.  I especially like this 8-minute video that explains how to create a basic illustration using the Pencil tool. I’ve never made a digital badge before, but after working through Chapter 3 in Foundations and spending about 30 minutes watching tutorial videos about Anchor point and Pencil, I created this simple badge from scratch. Don’t judge! I’m still working on it. 🙂

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