Back to school, back to school, to show dad I'm no fool.... Mini Art School begins!!!

Howdy!

Tonight’s blog is going to be a fun exercise, as it will be the first entry in Mini Art School: Introduction to Rules of Design.  While the bulk of you reading this blog will already know the gist of why I’m doing this, for the outside reader who happened to stumble across this blog (i.e. Googling for Senator Steve Tolman, and not dashingly handsome and witty Ed.D. student Steve Tolman), in short this will be a series of critiques centered around design of multimedia. 

The Goog, the Bad, and the Ugly

Visual Agreement (Krause, 2004, p.21)

Good example– www.apple.com

The design of the Apple website is very intentional and the graphics/text are connected and placed in an intentional manner that is eye catching but yet simple and elegant. 

Commentary Hierarchy (Krause, 2004, pp. 60-61)

Good example- http://www.msuspartans.com/sportscamps.html

This selected page from the Michigan State University website illustrates this concept of hierarchy well.  First off, the reader can quickly find the sport that they are looking for.  Once they’ve found it, they can then look below it to find the next level of that hierarchy, which are camps for that respective sport.  I find this page prevents me from becoming frustrated and having my attention pulled in different directions, which is a common frustration with failure to produce good commentary hierarchy.

Emphasis (Krause, 2004, pp. 63-66)

Good example- http://www.jcrew.com/sale.jsp

This sales logo for JCrew illustrates this principle of Emphasis well.  The bold font of SALE catches your eye immediately and draws you in.  The background (ice cream cone) has a way of focusing your eyes towards the word sale.  This ad is effective, as I now want to see what J.Crew has for sale and I want an ice cream cone (not that the ice cream cone was their desire, but, I’m a sucker for ice cream, what can I say?)

Good example- http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/patton-oswalt-poster.jpg?1369913902

This poster for an improv actor is another good example of using emphasis (bold).  The emphasis pulls the readers attention to the actor’s name, but the poster also causes them to want to look at what else is on it. 

Bad example- http://www.montclair.edu/media/montclairedu/centerforstudentinvolvement/ThingsEveryMSUStudentShouldDoupdated.pdf

While the J.Crew ad was a great example, the website for Montclair State in attempt to get their students involved comes up short in this area.  There is no clear emphasis, as all of the font is black and bold, which seems to blur into one large blob of text.  This also couples with the concept of commentary hierarchy. 

Color (Krause, 2004, pp. 74-75)

Good example- http://www.justourpictures.com/roses/4_barkarole.html

This picture of the rose is an excellent example of using color to make the desired image (or part of the image pop). 

Good example- http://cdn2.dolimg.com/en-US/blogs/wp content/uploads/2013/02/TheBlueUmbrellaPoster.jpg

This poster created by Pixar is another excellent example of how to use color to pull in the readers attention.  The red and blue umbrellas stand out from the black umbrellas, making the reader ponder what makes them special.

Alignment (Krause, 2004, pp. 79-87)

Bad example- http://www.campusmarketing.com/popup.aspx?src=images/Product/large/6660.jpg

This poster created by Campus Marketing could use the concept of alignment to produce a better product.  I believe the use of justified font here would create a better looking final result.

Flow (Krause, 2004, pp. 99-109)

Good example - http://www.campusmarketing.com/p-6234-mc08-16k.aspx

This poster created by Campus Marketing illustrates a good flow.  The image of the cat on the left side shifts the focus (flow) to the right side where the text is.

Good example - http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/ART_pouring_pounds2.jpg

This clip art of the drink being poured takes your eye and moves it towards the text.

New and improved!

I took this opportunity to implement what I learned through this week's readings and apply it to a poster I previously created.  I have to say that it made a drastic difference, even though the changes were fairly simple.  In the revised poster, I wanted to utilize color and emphasis to draw attention to the poster.  I also wanted to avoid using multiple font types and fix the layout/alignment of the text.  I still don't kow that I like the layout of my font, so I'll continue to play with it and look at other posters online for more examples of how to implement some of the changes within our readings.  Here is my before and after.  

Mini compositions (not mini amount of time to do!)

Admittedly, I had much more fun doing this activity and don't care to admit how long I spent playing with my composition of these 12 boxes.  I must have created 20 different versions of the document.  In each version, I would do something new that I really liked and replicated that piece in the next version in addition to trying something new.  It was neat to see my progress through each version.  And just for the record, my daughter (Maiya) approved of my color choices, as she smiled as she sat on my lap and looked at the final product.

Here is my before and after.

Picture of the Jelly Bean

As promised in my first posting, in an effort to get you to read all the way through each of my blogs I will be attaching a picture of my little one at the end.  In this picture, she was helping me with my homework and the drawing of my boxes.  Also, please note I apologize in advance if I missed anywhere in the blog to remove ";ahdf a falkjf ladsjf aslkdjf asdlkjf", as Maiya wanted to help type and mashed her chubby little hands on the keyboard.