My name is

Heather Ryder. This book is my

work as a DART student for the spring of 2014. I’ll take you on a

journey of my first semester as a design student. You’ll see what I learned, and the progress I’ve

made along the way.

CS Illustrator “Vector self portrait”, 2014

For our very forst project we learned about how to use shapes to create dynamic and static compos-itons. dynamic being an object that has move-ment and flow, and static which is a still and direct composition.

Taking Egon Schiele’s painting, “The Poet” (1911) which has both static and dynamic traits, we simplified his work to its most basic shapes. Then seperated both static and dynamic traits into two seperate peices.

The Poet, 1911, Egon Schiele, oil on canvas

Static

Dynamic

Symmetry and Gestalt

Gestalt is known as the “law of simplicity”, stating that every stimulus is seen in it’s most simpliest of forms. This psychological theory is heavily connected to design because of how our minds have a way of seperat-ing a figure from their sourroundings. This is know as the “figure-ground relationship”. In practice this means we are able to lead the veiwers eye how we please.

Symmetry and Gestalt Practice

Learning the principles of Gestalt and Symmetry was more of a practice and observation

work than a personal project. We took what we learned about symmetry in composition

by finding work online that best matched each category.

CS6 Illustrator “Symmetry and Gestalt practice”, 2014

Typography has been apart of the world of design for hundreds of years. Today it’s almost what defines Graphic Design. Typography is an artform among itself which invovles arranging type in a visually appealing manner.

Typography was out largest section of spring course-work. We did several projects that involed this artform. The first was an anatomy of my own name. I identified all the ascenders, descenders, counters, ligatures, serifs, san-serifs, spurs, stems, and crossbars my name possed (image below). the second project was expressive let-tering. This was a fun yet challenging experiment with typography using letter forms to aesthetically manipu-late their form. t

CS6 Illustrator “Anatomy of Typography”, 2014

CS6 Illustrator “Expressive Lettering”, 2014

CS6 Illustrator “Typograph Quote”, 2014

The third project we chose a quote and manipulated typ-face so it reperesent-ed the quote itself. The finale project was a self por-trait or i.e. ‘type face’. we used type to create an image of ourselves. In my case I used Myriad pro.

The third project we chose a quote and manipulated typ-face so it reperesent-ed the quote itself. The finale project was a self por-trait or i.e. ‘type face’. we used type to create an image of ourselves. In my case I used Myriad pro.

CS6 Illustrator, “Type Face”, 2014

CS6 Illustrator, “Vector Mandala”, 2014

an eastern ritual and spiritual prac-tice performed by Hinduism and Bud-dhism. the manda-la is normally in the form of a circle with four divided sec-tions that give gui-dence to the cos-mic process. After a mandala is pain stakingly build it is then destroyed.

There is great meaning put into a madala which man-ifest strong sym-bolic geastures.

Mandala

To get even more practice and dive deeper into Illus-trator we created a mandala. I used ba-sic vector shapes and slowly formed a much more com-plex design. sub-tle gradience was used in the building process so that the final work could give off a calm feel-ing.

Project

Color Theory Learning the art of color theory is a designer’s must! Color the-ory incorporates sight, sense, and structure. When talking about color theory we must remember the four main categories; Pri-mary, Secondary, Intermediate , and Tertiary. Pri- mary colors are the first learned in elementary schools. Red, yellow, and blue. These three colors cannot be created by mixing but create all other colors in the spec-trum. Primary colors are created by evenly mixing two pri-mary colors i.e., orange, purple, green etc...

Intermediate colors come about by mixing a nearby sec-ondary color. Tertiary colors can be an infinite combination of the three categories above. For a greater understanding of color theory. We created a vector based character that involves all aspects of color theory. The left image of “jun-gle cat” shows a combination of six color harmonies using primary, secondary, interme-diate, and Tertiary categories.

CS6 Illustrator “Jungle Cat”, 2014

Illustration Project

The one-inch boy(Issun-bōshi)

A character in a Japanese fairy tale.The story begins with an old, childless couple who live alone. The old woman wishes for a child, even though she’s old. Eventually, a son was born to them, but their son was only an inch tall. They named the miniature child Issun-bōshi. The old couple takes good care of him even though he is small. One day, Issun finds out he will never grow, so he goes on a trip to seek his place in the world. He thinks he might become a good warrior, so Issun-bōshi is given a sewing needle for a sword, a soup bowl for a boat, and chopsticks for oars.He sails down river to the city, where he asks for a job with the government and goes to the home of a rich daimyo (lord), whose daughter is an attractive princess. They say no because he is so tiny, but give him a job entertaining the princess. While they travel together, they are attacked by a big monster that swallows Issun-boshi. The boy defeats the monster by pricking him from with-in with his needle/sword. The monster spits out Issun-boshi and drops a mag-ical Uchide’s Mallet as he runs away. As a reward for his bravery, the princess uses the power of the mallet to make him grow. Issun-bōshi and the princess

stay friends and get married later.

This project we chose a fairytale of our liking. I picked a Japanese tale called “Issun-boshi” or “The one-inch samurai”. I chose a scene from the fable to tell a story. Using Photoshop I built a scene from the ground up. Much of this piece involves layer masks and textures, a new challenge for me this term. Textures can easily be over-used which can distract form the image itself. For this work I was careful to balance this work with its surroundings textures, color, and lighting.

This is the scene in which the samurai has defeated the monster and the pricess uses the amulet dropped by the monster to wish the samurai to normal size.

Adobe CS6 Photoshop “Amulet”, 2014

vtBelow is the original black and white photo taken in 1951. Where exactly this photo was taken is unclear, but what is clear are the stories these images tell. I’d like to think they where on an adventure in a timewhen traveling and exploring was a coming of age right.

Colorizing a BLACK and WHITE photo

CS6 Photoshop “Train Venture”, (edited)2014 (original) 1951

vtThe image in color makes it a more real and “now” feeling as if this was just taken yester-day. Since we often see in color adding color to black and white images gives viewers a closer experience with the past.

Colorizing a BLACK and WHITE photo

GoogleMaps Street capture project Napa

This was an interesting project for the simple fact that I never took a photo. It was inspired by the self-proclaimed Google street artist, Michael Wolf. Just as Wolf had I used Google map’s street view to find interesting locals. Wolf finds street views from all over the world, but my fo-cus was Napa. Most know Napa for its rolling vineyards and downtown restaurant scene. My mission was to find areas of Napa that are not known yet still represent Napa.

In search of these places, I I scrolled through so many 360 degree street shots it made my head spin, screen captur-ing each images as I went. I finally decided on three core images and cropped them using the rule of thirds. Each image I chose shows visitors how Napa looks from a local’s point of view. Not so glitzy but definitely real.

GoogleMaps Street capture project Napa

courtesy of Google, 2014 (edited with) CS6 Photoshop

Paper Robot

CS6 Photoshop Flat pattern “Robo Beat Master Bulb”

Paper Robot was a fun project that utilized our knowledge of Photoshops texture and maping ability. I used several textures to acheive a metallic robot surface. I found it challenging and fun creating a flat pattern (above image) of my robot creation. After all the details and textures are com-pleted a final print out is done and the robots assembled. Flip the switch and “Its alive, ALIVE!”

Paper Robot

CS6 Photoshop “Robo beat master bulb”, 2014

GIF Project

I’m a bit of a fish nut. I love the

ocean and the fish I raise. So I found it import-ant with this project to cre-ate a gif that embodies the fishy side of my life. I used Photoshop’s timeline tool to create this looping gif. Using

layers, color, and an-imated effects my gif

gives the illusion that a school of fish are swimming

through my body and out my head. This project was a time consuming yet fun experi-ment to work on.

This project was our final project of spring. It encompassed all the skills we learned, composition, color, layout, story etc... Into one collaged image. Taking a single image of a poodle we created a world around that poodle.

I found it most poignant to create a cute Garmin ad about a little lost posh poodle looking for directions back to the city. She is needless to say out of her element and as the ad states, could use a Garmin to help her current predicament.

Pink Poodle Project

CS6 Photoshop “Pink Poodle”, 2014

This is the end of my Spring journey, but not the end of my adventure! I hope this peek at my first se-mester as a DART student tought you a bit about the design world. Maybe you even learned a little bit about me.