Final Major Project - Final Magazine Covers

 

These are my final designs for my final major project I think the outcomes are quite good and I'm really happy with the result. I wanted to try and create a professional looking cover which could actually be used in a shop and I think some of these designs have that look. My favourite one has to be the first cover because I feel that the typography and the image work really well together and everything flows around the whole image nothing is out of place. Overall I'm really pleased with these images and can't wait to display them in my exhibition. 

Aquarium Logo Design - Graphics

This is the logo which I created for my aquarium company, I wanted to try and create something which was quite jolly and child friendly, in the sense that the logo is quite simplistic and if I created a more detailed design they might have not been as interested. The part which I like most in this design is the name of the company in the splash marks around the fish I just thought it was a unique idea and added the finishing touch to the piece.  

My Shopping Bag Design - Graphics

 

This is my shopping bag design for my aquarium project; I wanted to create something which was visually attractive and which grabbed peoples attention, so I thought the best way in doing that was to create a vibrant and interesting design which captured that and instead of creating a boring shopping bag create something which reminded the customers of their experience and hopefully to remind them to come back and visit again, plus to make other people that see the bag interested in where it came from and what it represents etc.

 

Aquarium Flyer Design - Graphics

 

This is my final flyer design which I have created for my aquarium based project. Throughout this project I have decided to stick with using tissue paper in my designs as I think it gives a different style to my work instead of using mediums such as drawing, painting etc. 

Experimenting With Photoshop Tools - Text

The Type Tool

Whenever we want to add any sort of text to a document, we use Photoshop’s Type Tool which is found in the Tools panel along the left side of the screen. It’s the icon that looks like a capital letter T. You can also select the Type Tool by pressing the letter T on your keyboard:

 

 

 With the Type Tool selected, your mouse cursor will change into what’s commonly referred to as an "I-beam". I’ve enlarged it a bit here to make it easier to see:

Choosing A Font

As soon as we select the Type Tool, the Options Bar along the top of the screen updates to show us options related to the Type Tool, including options for choosing a font, a font style and the font size:

 

 

To view the complete list of fonts that are available to you, click on the small down-pointing triangle to the right of the font selection box:

 

Choosing The Text Color

The Options Bar is also where we choose a color for our text. A color swatch appears near the far right of the options. By default, the color is set to black. To change the color, click on the swatch:

 

Photoshop will pop open the Color Picker where we can choose a different color for the text. For now, I’m going to leave mine set to black so I’ll simply click the Cancel button to cancel out of the Color Picker. If you do select a new text color, click OK when you’re done to close out of the Color Picker:

Use the Color Picker to choose a new color for the text.

Final Major Project - Statement Of Intent

My final major project is going to be around the theme of how men’s fashion and appearance have changed overtime; looking at a range of fashion photographers and men’s magazine covers to see how they are presented as well as the standard they are set at. I will also be researching into brands that promote both clothing and products since I’m doing a project around appearance as well I think it would be good to look at different products men use.

By the end of this project I would have liked to achieve a  really strong portfolio that shows my journey throughout this project as well as a  final design in the form of a magazine that will hopefully be the best one I have produced over the past two years, by applying some of the techniques I have learned from different specialisms throughout this course. I wanted to pick this particular theme for my final major project because for one of my projects in photography I already created a magazine cover and I really enjoyed the experience of creating a cover and felt that in the process my final design was one of my strongest I have produced.

My target audience for this project is from the age of 16 and onwards; I wanted to pick this age because I want people to understand the theme of the project and to appreciate the work and I feel that at that age people start to take things more seriously and appreciate things more. 

 

 

 

File Types - PSD/JPG/Tiff/PNG/Gif/

PSD File

Photoshop files have a default file extension as .PSD, which stands for "Photoshop Document". A PSD file stores an image with support for most imaging options available in Photoshop. These include layers with masks, transparency, text, alpha channels etc. The difference between similar files such as JPG and GIF is that PSD it isn't restricted. A PSD file has a maximum height and width of 30,000 pixels and a length limit of 3 Gigabytes.

 

Because of Photoshop's popularity, PSD files are widely used and supported to some level by most competing software. The PSD file can also be exported to and from Adobe's other apps like Adobe Illustrator etc to create professional standard DVD's and special effects such as backgrounds, textures etc for television, film and the web.

JPEG File

JPG files, also known as JPEG files, are a common file format that is used for digital photos and other digital graphics. When JPG files are saved, they use "lossy" compression, which means the image quality is lost as file size decreases. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the group that created the file type.

 

JPG files have the file extension .jpg or .jpeg. They are the most used file type for images taken with digital cameras, and widely used for photos and other graphics used on websites. Unlike GIF files, which show a huge a loss in photo image quality, JPGs allow for some degree of file size reduction without losing too much image quality.

Tiff File

A Tiff file, or TIF file, stands for Tagged Image File Format. TIF files are a common file format used for images espcially those used on graphic design. The file extension for a TIFF file is either .tiff or .tif. TIFF files can be saved without being changed, or they can be compressed to a lower file size, similar to JPG files. TIFF files are commonly used in print design and desktop publishing because they can store large, high quality images such as photos. Often printers will prefer or require TIFF files over JPG images or other formats.

 

Tiff files are raster images and platform independent, in other words meaning that they will work on various operating systems such as Mac and Windows.

PNG File

A PNG file known as a Portable Network Graphics is a raster graphics file format that supports lossless date compression. PNG was created as an improved non-patented replacement for Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) and is the most lossles image compression format on the Internet.

 

PNG supports palette-based images, grayscale images and full colour non palette based images. PNG was designed for transferring images on the Internet, not for professional quality print graphics, and therefore does not support non RGB colour spaces such as CMYK. PNG files nearly always use file extension PNG or png and are assigned MIME media type image/png.

 

GIF File

GIF files are a format mostly used for graphics presented on websites. GIFs can contain a maximum of 256 colours, and are therefore best for images that contain simple shapes, a limited colour palette, text and other elements as opposed to photos. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. GIF files have the file extension .gif. GIF files are compressed using "Lossless" compression, in other words the image quality is not sacrificed as the file size reduces. However, if you save images with many colours as GIF files with a limited colour palette, you will notice a reduction in the quality. This is most noticeable in photos.

 

Unlike JPG files, GIF files support transparent backgrounds. This allows GIF files to blend with website background colours. However, since pixels can only be 100% transparent or 100% opaque, you cannot use them for partial transparency, drop shadows, and similar effects. To achieve that, PNG files are the best.

 

GIF files can also contain animation, creating files known as animated GIFs. These are commonly seen on websites, though they are not as widely used as they used to be.