Font Poem

When I found out that we were to choose a lyric or quote that we liked and express it in type face I was very excited. I took introduction to graphic design my sophomore year and thought, this should be easy. I was familiar with Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, but after not using these programs for over a year I realized I had forgotten a lot.

For this assignment we were only allowed to use Photoshop. We were given a short tutorial in class about fonts, excuse me "type face," a term new to me! Examples were shown in class so we had a good idea of what was expected from us. This was a great building-block assignment since there were not a lot of components and requirements. It gave me a great chance to experiment in Photoshop and learn the basics of the program, there is so much more to learn though!

I started this assignment with a simple google search. I began with one of my favorite poets, Robert Frost, but found that none of his stanza's were jumping out at me. Instead, I went in the total opposite direction and typed in Andy Warhol. I've always been a fan of his work and was feeling inspired by the Marilyn Monroe pop art poster I have hanging in my bedroom. I came across several of his famous quotes, but decided to choose one I had never heard before, "Don't pay attention to what they write about you. Jut measure it in inches." I thought, hmmm, I could do something neat with the inches, not only by making it HUGE, but selecting a completely unique font that truly embodied what Warhol meant.

I used five fonts in this project. I wanted to have a clear connection between the fonts and the words themselves.

I wanted the margin to be consistent on each line, like a tabloid or newspaper. I put "Don't" and "What" in bold capitals since they made the biggest statement to me. Then the words "pay attention to" and "they...about you," in outlined letters. For "Just Measure it in inches," I personally capitalized each letter at the beginning of the word because I thought it looked better when each word had a larger first letter. The word "write" is a script font. Originally I had a newspaper type font, but it didn't flow was nicely as the script font.As for "inches," I made the font HUGE and choose a really interesting font, Toolbox, STD. Each letter looks like something that is found in a toolbox.

I'm very happy with how my font poem turned out. I really enjoyed playing around with all the different fonts and matching particular words to the right typeface. I encountered very few problems with this project. The only initial problem I had was not knowing how to reselect the words after deselecting them. I was shown that writing each word individually was best versus using one giant text box. That way I had control over each word. I had plenty of time for this project. The only thing I would have changed is making the background black, and the words white, but it would not have worked with one of the fonts I chose. I really enjoyed this project as an introduction to Photoshop!

Contact Sheet

The contact sheet was the first assignment in Electronic Communications. There are six rows in total, each row has a different purpose in order to get you familiar with Photoshop. At first, I did not understand the purpose of the assignment, but now that I'm doing more complicated projects as the semester continues I realize how important it is to know how to do the things taught in this assignment.

I chose to use pictures from my semester in Itlay. It reminds of how beautiful and special everything in Europe is! I also miss it terribly. Each row is from a different place in Europe, with the exception of Orientation.

Row 1: Resolution
Each Row has four columns. The first row being resolution. This is image is from Sorrento, Italy in the Amalfi Coast. Every picture from this area of Italy is beautiful and memorizing. Choosing an image was very difficult. This displays how much influence DPI has on an image. The four different columns are 72 dpi, 300 dpi, 600 dpi, and 1200 dpi. The 1200 dpi image is significantly clearer than the 72 dpi image. It's important to have images with high resolution.

Row 2: Format/Mode
The second row displays the variety of color options available and the significance of color on an image. This photo is from the Guinness Factory in Dublin, Ireland! Near the exit was an oddly beautiful display of colorful Guinness bottles. The first image is black and white. The second is duotone, the use of two colors in one image. The third image is Color RGB, typically used for web images. The final image is Color CMYK, most commonly used for print images. Color CMYK really makes the image pop and is my favorite from the row.

Row 3: Orientation
This is the only row that has three images. The first is portrait. The original image was a 4 by 6 photo. In order to get the portrait frame you crop and constrain the image. The second image is a square. The third, is the original 4 by 6 photo, landscape.

Row 4: Framing
I had the most trouble with this row. The first image is a close-up of a photograph from Lucca, Italy. This is one of my favorite photos I took while abroad. I though it would interesting to use this photo for this row. The first column is a close-up on the bicycle wheel. As the row continues, more and more of the picture is revealed until the final column is the original image.

Row 5: Content
This row focused on taking an image, preferably one that contains one large object. This image is a ferris wheel in Munich, Germany during Oktoberfest! I love this photo because of the fun angle. The first column is abstract. The image is unidentifiable. Similar to framing, the next two images reveal more and more of the image.

Row 6: Purpose
For this row I took the same image and used different effects on the same image to show how the same picture can look so different. This photo was taken in Ireland at a beautiful park right outside of the city!

At first I thought this project was going to be easy, I was wrong. It wasn't easy since I had no clue what I was doing. After messing up a few times I finally figured out how to complete each row, the right way. This project turned out to be really fun!

I'm so happy that I know how to do all of these things in Photoshop now. I learned how an image can be completely unrecognizable when cropped and how different techniques alter an image. Prior to this project I had no clue what dpi meant and now I know how important dpi is.

I encountered a few problems during this project. When I imported the images originally they were HUGE. I realized that I wasn't changing the size of the image after saving it. The project was tedious, but taught me valuable lessons for future projects. If one step is skipped then everything gets thrown off. It's very important to always focus on what you are doing while working in any of these programs.

Here is a close up of my favorite image. This image is the 1200 dpi from the first row. I love the picture and with a 1200 dpi it makes the image much clearer.