Conceptual Project

Conceptual Magazine
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For this project, I chose the story about smart houses. I have always been curious about smart houses and if they are really worth it, so this article stuck out to me. After reading through this article and hearing about this persons debate about the pros and cons of a smart home, I was inspired. I instantly knew I wanted to do a scale showing the traditional key and the “smart key” of a phone. I wanted to show the weight of the two. Taking the term “smart home,” I wanted to show a home with a light bulb because the image of a light bulb means smart and sparks an idea. The font choice I went with reminds me of the fonts they use on HGTV. That was the first thing I thought about because they have done shows that have dealt with smart homes. I think the big, bold font is the type of font used to describe DIYs. I wanted to put an iPhone instead of the “i” to show that this is an article about technology and houses. I went with blue because I wanted a light color to contrast with the black colors. I wanted this to look simple, so I went with simple black outlines of all the artwork. One of the biggest challenges, was just getting started, which always is a problem for me. Getting in the mindset to create an idea is always difficult. Overall, I enjoyed this project. I enjoyed taking a story and turning it into a magazine spread. I think my skills have improved since I did the magazine project in graphic design 1. I am pleased with the way this turned out. I believe I executed the simplistic magazine spread pretty well. There are some ways I can improve. I think I could’ve taken the design a little farther but I am happy with the overall design.

saul bass influence poster

Kendall Santos' Little 500 Poster
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For this project, I had difficulty finding an influence. I don’t have a favorite designer or know of any. I looked up graphic designers and came across Saul Bass. I had heard of that name and when I looked at his work, I recognized a lot of it. He designed one of my favorite movie posters, West Side Story. I really like how simple yet effective his work is and how it has some darkness to it. When finding an influence, I also wanted to find an influence that would match my level of design. I didn’t want to do one that was very intricate, so I thought Saul Bass would be a good influence.

When starting I had no idea what I wanted to do, I looked at all of Bass’ work to try and get some inspiration. I came across the posters for “Anatomy of a Human Murder” and “The Human Factor” and took inspiration from them. I liked how simple they were with just one image and the words not center. I wanted to draw a simple bike that didn’t have much detail, almost like it was cut out of paper. I chose red because most of Saul’s work uses red in the background and black and white for the pictures. The type I used was FilmotypeMaxwell, this was the most Saul Bass font I could find on Adobe. I would say most of his work is noticeable by the font he uses. I wanted to make sure I found the right font.

Overall, I think I did a good job capturing Saul Bass’s influence. I think there is still room to improve, but I do think my graphic design skills are improving. I did enjoy the final product, and I will say it was a challenge to not take one of his posters and just use that one and make it Little 500. I enjoyed this project, I thought it was fun to look at famous designers and make a poster of our own with their influence.