Photoshop Timeline Workshop

During this photoshop workshop, we were made aware of an easy technique to create simple gifs using photoshop's video timeline feature, as opposed to the more conventional medium of using adobe after effects.

The process is incredibly straightforward by converting the layers into frames. In this instance, I used several layers of coloured circles in different positions across the canvas and converted them into frames to create the animation. It is highly customisable as you can change rate of frames per second. 

I developed on this further, and experimented with the use of animating typography by adjusting the tracking of the type. 

Although I doubt I will use this feature in my design practice, as well as the fact that GIFs are becoming more and more obsolete on the web, I think it is useful to know an easy way to create GIFs. 

We also used photoshop to export a movie made from different frames. This is useful because photoshop could be used to edit the frames before it is exported. In this instance we used an animation of a stick man jumping.

https://vimeo.com/127479843

Illustrator Rocket Tutorial

In another Adobe Illustrator tutorial I created a rocket. Overall I felt the tutorial was quite challenging because the Illustrator is quite intricate and complex, although I like this because it allows for more varied outcomes in your work, as well as giving you more control over your work.

Advanced Adobe InDesign Tutorial

In an advanced tutorial session in Adobe InDesign, we were asked to design a publication of our choice to illustrate our understanding of InDesign, as well as our understanding of the basics of typography.

I designed a fanzine on Manchester United. Overall, I felt the tutorial went extremely well. I believe I showed my understanding of typography my making the fanzine coherent, maintaining clear levels of legibility throughout the publication. 

Adobe InDesign Tutorial

Today I had a tutorial in Adobe InDesign. We had to create a newsletter and covered various element of Adobe InDesign. Because I have used InDesign in the past, I knew most of the things we covered. Despite this, I did learn some things.

I learnt about the use of master pages which applies things such as text and shapes to all pages within the document. I found that this would make my workflow more efficient.

I also learnt about text wrapping in InDesign which helps to arrange text around image. I feel this will come in useful when laying out my work for magazine in my Citys in Flux brief. 

Marilyn Monroe - Adobe Illustrator Tutorial

Kinfolk - Adobe InDesign Workshop Week

This was the result of today's Adobe InDesign workshop with Jeffrey Bowman.
Overall I was really happy with the outcome of the brief - the brief stated that the spread had to be engaging, display the images in an interesting way and to have beautifully set typography, leading me to believe I satisfied the brief.

2 aspects of the spread which I was really pleased with were the front cover, because I believe the text and image go really well together, and the 3rd page because of how I experimented with the framing of an image. 

Despite this, however, I initially forgot to caption the images, leading me to add them on later, which I found hard because I planned the layout without taking into account that the images had to be captioned. I think the way I implemented the captions could be improved. 

Lightbulb Tutorial

This was the outcome of the tutorial. Overall, I think the process was successful, as I feel becoming familiar with the patch tool can really help me out in the future. The patch tool is content-aware, meaning that it is really useful is seamlessly arranging your work in order to sustain continuity. I found the tool extremely flexible and easy to get to grips with.

I think if I could improve one aspect of the overall outcome, it would be to improve the reflections of the tree. I think the lighting doesn't work too well. To improve it, I could have spent more time outside of university on refining the reflections, as well as studying how the reflections would have been formed.