This project, as I’ve said for every project in succession, was the most difficult for me because of the tight time constraints.  I was only able to make 4 pages for my website design, because I didn’t want to have more pages  with less interesting and less creative layouts.

I chose VH1′s Save The Music Foundation for this project.  Save The Music is a nonprofit that is dedicated to providing proper equipment and musical services to children in underprivileged schools.  Unlike the organization’s real website, which features a very light, kid-friendly layout, I decided to target my site towards those who are interested in donating and being a part of helping music programs stay afloat in public schools.  I found the background for the site on Google, and I thought it was modern, elegant, and conveyed a strong point.  I like to think of the middle of the background, which has several overly-bright bands of light, as the “light” that music brings to children, so I thought it was an appropriate complement to the content on each page.

It was important for me to include a sidebar on each page, since Save The Music has a surprisingly large lack of media on their current site.  I struggled, therefore, to fill space on the site with engaging content , so the sidebar is a nice way to break up the page.  Again, I chose to stick with softer shades of blue and green to give the site a professional yet enhanced look.

Due to my past experiences with gradients (I know Professor Harper hates them), I used various opacities in my type boxes to give the website some depth.  However, I will admit that I ran out of time with this assignment, so I did not have a chance to polish up some of the pages as much as I’d have liked.

Overall, I think that this site is a well-represented, more mature version of the current Save the Music site.  It obviously lacks the same amount of content as the real site, but I know that the purpose of this final assignment was to think about layout, readability, and user flow, and I definitely took all those into consideration as I built these pages, and I think the constant nave. bar on the top of the screen, in addition to the social media buttons and CTA to donate on every page, makes the site much more accessible and easy to navigate.

http://www.clippingimages.com/blog/brushed-metal-icon/

This is a tutorial that teach how to create an icon in Photoshop. It’s not only useful for the webdesign project if you cannot find icons with transparent background that can be insert into your project directly, but also quite important for the logo project.

The icon looks great but only takes 5 minutes or so to create in Photoshop as the tutorial indicates~

I love this movie and just think this poster is so cool.  If you look closely it is made up of cards to put together the Joker.  A lot of cool things one can do with graphics!

If you click the picture, it takes you to the “Downloads” section of the Adobe site. Since the weather doesn’t really make me want to march down to Newhouse to work on our my website project, I downloaded the free trial of Photoshop from here. Just scroll over the Photoshop logo and click “Try.” You have to sign up for an Adobe account, but it’s free and you have the program for 30 days. This is a lot more affordable than buying the programs and works better than a cracked version. And you can download more than one program if you want to redo any of our previous projects at your own leisure.

I found myself using the Refine Edge tool a lot, so I figured that many other students would be as well.  Here’s a quick run-through on how the tool works, it was pretty helpful.

For my poster project, I’m trying to create a portrait of a person using numbers/binary code, and I came across this great tutorial for doing just that.  These types of portraits were used in the 2009 Grammy Awards, but I think that they are pretty neat and eye-catching for a passerby.  The whole process is surprisingly not that complicated in Photoshop; you just need to follow each step carefully!

I decided the main graphic of my poster is going to be a stick figure.  For pretty much anyone who has even the slightest bit of skill when it comes to graphics, that wouldn’t be difficult.  For someone like me, however, even a stick figure is a bit daunting.  So I decided to look up help for making one – and to my surprise, there actually was a tutorial for it.  The link to the forum can be accessed through the picture.

I am the most lame photoshop user, ever, in life. I rely on tutorials as much as I rely on air for life. However, because I am so lame, I still don’t understand how to use many features on all Adobe suite applications (i.e. Photoshop, etc.) I came across this tutorial online. I never knew that an “Extract Filter” existed, and I do not know what it means. I’ve tried following 2 tutorials (not videos) posted from another site using extract tool, but still can’t master it. This is my latest attempt at photoshopping my dog’s fur…

P.S. I can’t wait until I meet with my GRA218 instructor.

This is a step-by-step tutorial on how to make watercolor text for Photoshop. I think this is a really cool effect. It’s different and fun and can add some liveliness to the text. If you look at the site you will find tutorials for retro text, glow in the dark text and so on. It is very helpful and clear.

Thought this was a sick picture. Useful to learn how to do this to add some “oomph” to your projects!