Graphic Design and Animation Senior Show

There's a pretty good chance this will be the last time (or one of the last times) that I bring up my Senior Show. Cause it's done! It's done! The show itself will be up for a little while longer though. I must say it was a long process, but totally worth it.

We started off branding ourselves as graphic designers. (Shameless plug: If you're looking for a graphic designer to work with, you can check out my portfolio here and contact me here.)

My logo up on the wall!

We then worked on our Senior Projects. Mine was recreating these three book covers. I'm in the middle of reading Wild and can't wait to see the movie once I'm done with the book.

Left: series of bookcovers (Wild, Tiny Beautiful Things, Torch)
Right: digital college book created through Blurb.com and stamp brochure

Throughout the past few months, we've been working on new projects and reworking our old ones and ultimately this is what it came to... my wall. I must've rearranged my wall several times. It was to the point where my professor basically said, "Melissa, you're rearranging your wall again."

My family and friends came to the opening of my show and I don't think it could've gone any better! So a million and one thanks to you guys for listening to me go on and on about the show and a million and one thanks to everyone who has supported me and continues to support me throughout my career. You guys rock!

Creating An Art Journal

**DISCLAIMER: For a class assignment, we were to create a journal using print-outs from different sources and analyzing the type on those print-outs. I found most, if not all, of these images on Pinterest, but I do not have individual links for these images. I created this post to show a class assignment. If you are the owner of the original images I used in my journal, please contact me so I can properly link to your page. Thanks for reading!**

I pretty much said in the disclaimer that this was a project for school –  for my typography class. I didn't just want to use a plain journal, so I dressed it up a bit.

I bought the original journal at A.C. Moore and made a book cover out of kraft paper. The original cover was bright green. The color didn't bother me. I just wanted a neutral color.

For the inside pages, I found some free digital scrapbook paper and printed that out on oversize tabloid paper. I cut it to size and glued the scrapbook paper on each page. As I kept doing this, the journal was becoming overstuffed. I realized I wasn't going to need every page in the journal, so I took some of the pages out. If you aren't able to print out over sized paper, you can buy some larger scrapbook paper at a craft store.

My professor suggested that each week have a theme. One week I chose hand lettered envelopes. Another week I picked out candle packaging. I used a BIC Mark It pen to write on the pages. It didn't bleed or smear on the scrapbook paper.

I really enjoyed making this journal. Do you guys have any journal tips or tricks?

Art Class: Digital Collage (and portfolio update!)

Happy Monday!

I haven't shared what I've been doing in class in a while, so I thought I'd post an update on that.

I just finished up these digital collages for one class. We were to decide on a topic and create two digital collages. I focused on women stereotypes in the 1950s and displayed that through different textures and objects in my collages. But I wanted to show the progression women have made since they and included type that reflected some current feminist/women power movements (Ban Bossy and Lean In).

 

Check out my portfolio for some of my other work!

Art Class: Collage

As a graphic design major, I spend a lot of time on the computer, so it's nice to have an art class where I get to use more traditional art materials. Our assignment was to create a collage self portrait and we spend a majority of the class creating collages using whatever we wanted: paints, markers, magazine cut-outs...

I chose to use mostly paint and created different textures using things like tissue paper, packing peanuts, plastic wrap. It was so much!

 

My professor showed us artwork by J.T. Burke. He makes collages using old jewelry. I think he scans the jewelry pieces and then uses those scans to create collage compositions. While the class was working on our collages, I thought of Alisa Burke's work, more specifically this post about what materials she uses when she paints.

I'm really looking forward to this class and creating more collages!