My-Type

 Combine Type and Symbol to create and Illustration

I chose the word Nail and used an image of a nail to substitute the letter "l".

Combine one Letter and and Overlapping Symbol to create an Illustration

I chose the letter "R" in Comic Sans font because I liked how it looked. I used a star in the middle. It reminded me a bit of the 'Toys 'R' Us', R.

Combine type and a Photo

After looking through some source images, I chose the word "Clamp" and then used the clamp to replace the letter 'C'.

Use a RGB Photo as a verb/noun to replace a word

I created a simple sentence, "Treasure me." and found an image of treasure and placed it next to the word 'me'.

Combine two RGB Photos to communicate a phrase, cliche, or idea

I used an image of Tron and a Bone to create the word "Tron-bone" a play on the word "Trombone".

Incorporate an image relating to and interacting with text

I chose the image of of a lock and "locked" the letters 'o' and 'c' together. I also tilted those letters together and brought them a bit closer to have them appear to be interacting better with the image.

Using only type, Illustrate a word or concept

Using the word "Wide" I took the letters 'I' and 'D' and using the text tools available, widened the letters out.

InDesign as a Layout Software

InDesign is a very good layout software. It is much easier to work with type and aligning it with other sections of text. It's drawing skills aren't the best, but it's also not as necessary in this software.

iD: Type Figures

 Robotype

Going to www.robotype.net, I created this image using only letters. I considered this to be my "sketch" of the image I would do in InDesign.

 Type Figure One

Using what I had done in Robotype as a basic idea I fleshed the image out better in InDesign. It took a bit to get the letters to be the thickness I wanted within the fonts I chose. The eyes, nose, and slippers are all in Comic Sans for example. 

 Type Figure Two 

Using the ellipse tool to create a circle for the text to sit on, I wrote the sentence "What goes around comes around." It did take a bit to adjust the font to make the sentence fit all the way around the circle.

Type Figure Three

 This one was to create a shape that related to the text, and then wrap the text around the object. I selected the opening for Homestuck and placed it within the SBURB logo. This one got a bit complicated with the shapes, but after simplifying it to its outline the text was willing to fit within the house.

Type Figure Four

This was a sentence that required an emoji, so I chose the shades emoji \></. This one was rather easy once I knew what emoji to use.

Type Figure Four

In this image, the goal was to use a word and demonstrate it using the word involved. I chose the word "Gradient" and using the gradient tool, did a black to white gradient on the letters in Photoshop before placing it in InDesign.

Low Quality Raster LOGO Reconstruction in Vector Format

Preparation

In the case of a low quality image, try to scan at a higher resolution so that you have a bit more to work with.

Clean Up in Photoshop

The steps needed to prepare the low quality image for a Live Trace could be done in the following. Adjust the levels of white, black, and grey with the levels until the image has a nice high contrast. Alternatively, if your image is only in black and white you can adjust contrast and then adjust levels.

Live Trace in Illustrator

Live Trace is good for making a base layer for you to work off on. It does grab a lot of the pixelation if you are not careful. I created the best version I could by using the Three-Color option and then changing any colors I needed.

Logo Reconstruction Using the PEN Tool in Illustrator

Recreating the logo using the pen tool was a bit harder but had a overall better end result. After making sure that only the stroke was visible, I began to make the oval and then later the Bat symbol. The oval was easy to create, clicking and then getting to the radius of the oval that I wanted, I then curved the line to best fit and repeating the process to finish the oval off. The Bat was done in the same manner. I didn't need to add or subtract any anchor points as I was pretty satisfied with what I got.

File Formats

After scanning the image, it was saved as a .tiff
In photoshop, after tweaking the image a bit, it had been saved as a .psd
Once done with the logo in Illustrator, it had been saved as .ai
For delivery it had been saved as a .jpg

Advice on Vector Creation

Be patient and take your time, its very easy to get frustrated and it will make you want to throw your computer through a wall.

Selecting Text in Adobe InDesign

Functions and the result

 

Click and drag:

Selects letter at a time. 

1 click:

Places cursor in that spot.

2 clicks:

 Selects the word.

2 clicks and drag:

 Selects words at a time.

3 clicks:

 Selects a line.

3 clicks and drag:

 Selects lines at a time.

4 clicks:

Selects paragraph.

Four clicks

 

4 clicks and drag:

 Selects paragraphs at a time.

5 clicks:

 Selects everything/the whole page.

5 clicks and drag: 

 Nothing.

Personal Logo

Design Stages:

 

Audience

My audience of this piece is my class, my professor, and myself. 

Idea

The idea of this piece was to create a logo, using black, white and Gestalt's theory. The logo is to be something that can identifiable and have my personal initials within it somewhere. I am using the initials "TN" and am picking various things that I like. I will use Gestalt by creating blank gaps in between black shapes to have a "full" image.

Summary

While there were plenty of ideas I could have come up with, narrowing down my options in the end became a bit difficult. In the end, I did finally pick the logo design I did like the best, and finished it to the best of my ability.

Bottom line

At the end of it all, this was a good exercise in pushing to think outside of the box and the result was pleasing.

Layout Stages

 

Thumbnails:

Sketches 1-15

Sketches 16-21

Sketches 23-31

Rough

 

Sushi Rough

Mushroom Rough

Comprehensive

 

Final Design

Vectorized Sony Logo

Raster RGB and INDEXED increased resolution quality comparison

 

Indexed:

This version is more pixelated compared to the RGB version. In this image the .gif stayed in indexed color mode as the resolution was changed. Because of this the program could only pick between 256 colors to make up the color differences when changing.

 

 

RGB:

This version is less jagged and a bit smoother compared to the Indexed color version. In this image the .gif was converted to RGB color mode before the resolution changed. This allowed the program access to 16.7 million colors to fill in the spaces.

 

 

 

 

High quality RGB Converted to Vector

 The process of getting a better looking vector image from a .gif has some easy steps.
     1. Try and have it the size you wan to begin with.
     1a. If that is not possible, convert color mode to RGB and change the resolution to be the size you needed
    2. In Adobe Illustrator or other Vector based software, select High Fidelity Photo on your image trace options 

Old Version

New Version

The difference?

The difference between the two images shows why either having the correct size, or converting and changing resolution, is needed. In the old version the file had been too small and as a result the vector image looks bad especially compared to the new version.

Vector File Size Comparison

Simple Trace

There is not a lot of points when compared to the high fidelity trace. Since it's a simple vectorized image it takes up only 2.3 MB

Complex Trace

This vectorized image has a lot of points and therefore is a much larger file. 7 MB.

Curved Line

This curved line only has two points in it and takes up 1.6 MB

Ai: Rasterize Vector Logos

Apple Logo:

I opened the image in Adobe Illustrator and using the process I had before with my self portraits, traced the image and expanded it. I traced this logo using the High Fidelity Photo option. Afterwords I used Save for Web and selected and saved it as a .gif with 256 colors.

Batman Logo:

As before, I opened and traced the image. This time I traced it with 3 Color trace option. I then went to Save for Web and saved as a .gif using 8 colors.

 Firefox Logo:

This time I also traced with the High Fidelity Photo option and when I saved it I saved as a .gif 256 colors.

Sony Erickson Logo:

This one was a bit harder to work with. After scaling the image to a proper size it was extremely pixelated. I traced the image with multiple settings before deciding on Low Fidelity Photo option as the High Fidelity was grabbing too much of the pixelation and using it in the image trace. I saved this image as a 128 color .gif

Vector Self Portrait

What is a Raster?

A raster image is any image made up of pixels.

What is a Vector?

A vector image is created using Adobe Illustrator, or similar program. It is based off of a mathematical formula to create images, not pixels.

Converting Raster to Vector

After opening your Raster image into Adobe Illustrator and scaling it to the proportions you like, select the image and click on Image Trace on the tool bar. Click on the drop down menu will give you alternative options on how you would like the image to be traced out. After the image has been traced, select it once more and click on expand on the tool bar. The image is now composed of vector shapes.

Process with visuals

Original PSD file

I took my self portrait and manipulated it in Photoshop until I had the desired affect. After saving it as a .psd, I opened a new document in Illustrator and placed the image inside. 

3 Colors

I selected the image and from the drop down menu selected 3 Colors. It traced the whole image and filled in in with these three colors based on the major colors it recognized.

6 Colors

While I had liked the three colors I was curious to see what it would look like with the other options as well. For this one I chose the option 6 Colors and as before, the program chose the 6 most prevalent colors of the image to trace. Later, I would work with this one more.

16 Colors

I chose the next option 16 Colors and it chose the 16 most dominate colors from the image to trace. It does provide a bit more in between colors, I liked the 6 color one for the second part of the assignment better.

Modified 6 Colors

Using the image created from the 6 Color image trace, I expanded the image which gave me the vector shapes I could freely modify. I went through and manually selected specific colors and filled them with a different color, changing the color scheme of pink-purple-green to almost all cool colors. I also modified the points on some of the paths, changing how the outline of the images were as well as moving the whole shape back or forward to create a gap between the colors.

Pen Tool

Shapes in Adobe Illustrator

Clone Tool

Defining Clone Area:

After selecting you Clone Stamp tool, use must press down on the OPTION key to select the area you wish to copy from. Once the area has been selected you can then copy, or "clone", that part of the image onto another part.

Brush Sizes:

Brush size is important when it comes to defining the clone area and application. If you brush size is very large then the area being pasted down will be large as well, which if you are working on a smaller surface would make it difficult. 

Liquify Filter

Filter Effects

 

Forward Warp Tool:

Smudges the image.  

Reconstruction Tool:

Restores image to it's previous state.

 Pucker Tool:

Drags the image into the spot clicked, like being sucked into a black hole.

Bloat Tool:

 Expands the area from point clicked, like filling it with water.

An image using all the tools

GIF Colors and Quality

Number of Colors: 6

File Size: 7,891 bytes

Number of Colors: 200

File Size: 27,357 bytes

Both of these images have smaller file sizes compared to their .jpg versions because they are both in Indexed color mode instead of RGB. Since it's in indexed color mode, the amount of colors are restricted to 256 or less colors, in the examples above it is specifically 6 colors and 200 colors.

JPG compression VS File Size

Quality: 100

File Size: 55,948 bytes

A .jpg with 100 quality has a large file size because it does it's best to preserve as much of the colors it can. There are no .jpg artifacts.

 Quality: 60

File Size: 19,467 bytes

A .jpg quality 60 is of "average" size. It doesn't work as hard to preserve colors and sharpness of line. There are some .jpg artifacts.

Quality: 0

File Size: 5,865 bytes

A .jpg quality 0 has been so compressed, that it does not try to preserve line or colors. The picture is fuzzy and has plenty of .jpg artifacts.