Reflection Blog Post

I cannot believe that I am writing a reflection blog post for this class. I made it to the finish line! These 16 weeks have FLOWN by and I have truly enjoyed this class. My favorite project during the semester is by far the logo project. I had a clear vision of what I wanted to create the entire time when working on this project and I believe that’s why I did so well on it. I also really liked Illustrator as a program itself. I felt like Illustrator took the skills that I learned in the Photoshop tutorials but took it to the next level. I could see my self using all of the skills that I learned in this course in the future. I learned how to be patient and forgiving with myself as I learned new concepts. I learned that procrastinating is extremely unhelpful, and I can apply myself more efficiently when I give myself time to learn. I also learned to not doubt myself. Before this class I did not see myself as an artistic person; I knew that I was creative, but I struggled to execute my ideas in an artistic way. This class taught me that I could make beautiful projects that weren’t limited to drawings on a piece of paper or paintings on a canvas. Since I’ve been in this class, I have decided that I would like to become a teacher. I can see myself using these skills in my future career path if I were to teach a graphic design class at a high school, or just using the Adobe programs to make unique posters or logos for my classroom. There is not a skill that I wish I would’ve learned from this class, that I didn’t already learn. I believe the lessons that were taught were so valuable and I will take this with me in my future endeavors. The tutorials given in this class were extremely helpful, but at times, I needed to be shown how to do things in a different way to fully comprehend the skill. Here is a YouTube video that helped me understand how to use Illustrator.

I want to thank my professor, Chelsea Newman, her TA, Wenqing Zhao, and all of my peers who took the time to view my blog and give me honest feedback. Creating this blog is something that I am so incredibly proud of and I am so happy that I took this class. Happy Holiday’s Everyone!

Final Video Story

Out of all of the units we’ve had thus far, this one is by far the hardest for me. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s the end of the semester or if this program is just extremely difficult to navigate, but I am struggling a lot. I’ve struggled not only to come up with an idea, but also on how to execute the vision I had in my head. My goal was to create a slideshow video, with images that coincided with what I was speaking about (mostly because I really loved the audition project and I wanted to build on those skills but use images). I originally thought that I was going to start from scratch for my final draft, but after receiving positive feedback from my group members, I decided to make some edits and polish up my Draft Video Story. Instead of screen recording the images on my phone like I did for the draft, I put the images in a PowerPoint. I then played my audio narration and recorded the timings for each slide so that it fit perfectly to go along with what I was saying. This alone took the longest amount of time, because I tried different methods, only to google a solution and find that there is a “Rehearse Timing’s” feature in PowerPoint. Once I got the timings down I went to File>Export>Create Video in PowerPoint to turn my slideshow into a video. This made it possible for me to use my slideshow in premiere with the timings that I had already created. I then deleted the original video out of Premiere and add the new video to it. Once the audio and visuals were lined up I added music, a title page and credits. These three things alone took my presentation from a boring slide show to a captivating video in my opinion. The significance of the elements in my design were to provide a visual aid throughout as I spoke about different influential women, and I feel as though I have finally accomplished that.  

IMAGES OBTAINED UNDER A COMMON CREATIVE LICENSE
 https://images.app.goo.gl/W7Dcmpbrj4zpyjER9

https://images.app.goo.gl/8fPYRyogHXJ47Bcq5

https://images.app.goo.gl/e7iJPr248ZZcXmZW8

https://images.app.goo.gl/ZtKmQ18YF4ZRctW19

https://images.app.goo.gl/UUY4iLa4Kv9HMwnB7

MUSIC OBTAIN AT https://files.freemusicarchive.org/storage-freemusicarchive-org/music/Creative_Commons/The_Lights_Galaxia/Global_EP/The_Lights_Galaxia_-_02_-_While_She_Sleeps_Morning_Edit.mp3

Draft Video Story

Out of all of the units we’ve had thus far, this one is by far the hardest for me. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s the end of the semester or if this program is just extremely difficult to navigate, but I am struggling a lot. I’ve struggled not only to come up with an idea, but also on how to execute the vision I had in my head. My goal was to create a slideshow video, with images that coincided with what I was speaking about (mostly because I really loved the audition project and I wanted to build on those skills but use images) I ended up screen recording the images on my phone and I feel as though the entire product looks sloppy that I might completely start over for the final draft. My influence came from my theme; I really wanted to speak about black women and how empowered we have become through the work of our ancestors, though I feel my project does not adequately display their excellence. The significance of the elements in my design were to provide a visual aid throughout as I spoke about different influential women. As I mentioned, I have struggled a lot with using Adobe Premiere so if anyone has any suggestion for me please let me know how I can improve. I specifically had trouble with the editing and adding effects. I watched the Premiere tutorials multiple times and for some reason I am having a hard time editing my film. I plan on watching some additional tutorials between now and when the final draft is due, so that I can hopefully add some effects that make my presentation look rad. I also plan to add some audio, but as I mentioned before, I may completely scratch this piece and start fresh for the final draft.

I would like to give credit to the following websites.

https://images.app.goo.gl/W7Dcmpbrj4zpyjER9

https://images.app.goo.gl/8fPYRyogHXJ47Bcq5

https://images.app.goo.gl/e7iJPr248ZZcXmZW8

https://images.app.goo.gl/ZtKmQ18YF4ZRctW19

https://images.app.goo.gl/UUY4iLa4Kv9HMwnB7

Raw Video Footage & Storyboard

Storyboard: Powerful Black Women

Visual Elements Audio Elements
0:00-0:30  Photos of me when I was a child Music fades in, voiceover of me speaking starts
0:31-1:19  Photos of the women who inspired me Music still plays softly in the background, my voiceover continues
1:20-1:36  Fist with a heart in the middle showing empowerment Voiceover continues until complete, then music fades in loudly for about 10 seconds until video story ends.

Final Audio Story

For my audio story, I wanted to emulate what it would be like to have my own Podcast. My design process for this project was to interview a strong, powerful woman, to go along with my theme of Women Empowerment. For my audio story I had intentions of preparing questions about how she got to where she is today and what motivated her to become a strong influential person. I struggled to find time to not only research someone who was a non-relative that I could interview for my “podcast” but also develop a series of questions so that our conversation flowed naturally. Last minute, I decided to research a women empowerment podcast and that is how I came across LaShawnda McLaurin. She is a licensed professional counselor and host of the podcast Inspiring Women Weekly. During the episode ”Where’s Your Confidence?”, McLaurin discusses trauma and how trauma can play a role in keeping someone from reaching their fullest potential.  For my audio story, I used 4 different recordings and placed each one on a different multitrack; 3 separate recordings of myself speaking, and 1 recording of McLaurin’s podcast. I then arranged the recordings in the order that I liked and used the razor tool to shorten McLaurin’s podcast to the area that I wanted to focus on. I then adjusted the recordings using the fade in and fade out tools so that they would flow better, and I think the results turned out nicely. After receiving feedback from my peers on my Draft Audio Story, they mentioned that I should add some music to help with the awkward pauses. I found a track that I loved on opsound.org and decided that it fit perfectly with the audio that I already had recorded. The track name is Kinda Sorta by Smiling Cynic and it is licensed under a Creative Common Attribution 3.0 Unported License. I wanted the music to be the same throughout the entire piece, so I let the music play for about 00:12 seconds as an intro and then inserted the draft audio story where my previous 4 tracks were already combined. While McLaurin and I were speaking, I muted the track so the music could not be heard. I noticed a pause after McLaurin’s piece, so I allowed the audio to gradually come back on to fill the dead air. I wanted the music to play softly during my second and third segments as I felt these areas of commentary were more reflective, and I wanted the listener to feel calm as they were listening to me speak. Finally, I brought the music volume back up and faded out my voice so that the music created an outro.

https://www.inspiringwomenweekly.com/listen I obtained a portion of my audio story from LaShawnda McLaurin’s podcast, Inspiring Women Weekly and would like to give credit to her.

I obtained the sound from my Final Audio Story from http://www.opsound.org/artist/smilingcynic/ and would like to give credit to the artist Smiling Cynic.

Draft Audio Story

For my audio story, I wanted to emulate what it would be like to have my own Podcast. My design process for this project was to interview a strong, powerful woman, to go along with my theme of Women Empowerment. For my audio story I had intentions of preparing questions about how she got to where she is today and what motivated her to become a strong influential person. I struggled to find time to not only research someone who was a non-relative that I could interview for my “podcast” but also develop a series of questions so that our conversation flowed naturally. Last minute, I decided to research a women empowerment podcast and that is how I came across LaShawnda McLaurin. She is a licensed professional counselor and host of the podcast Inspiring Women Weekly. During the episode ”Where’s Your Confidence?”, McLaurin discusses trauma and how trauma can play a role in keeping someone from reaching their fullest potential.  For my audio story, I used 4 different recordings and placed each one on a different multitrack; 3 separate recordings of myself speaking, and 1 recording of McLaurin’s podcast. I then arranged the recordings in the order that I liked and used the razor tool to shorten McLaurin’s podcast to the area that I wanted to focus on. Lastly, I adjusted the recordings using the fade in and fade out tools so that they would flow better, and I think the results turned out nicely. Some challenges that I encountered were struggling to find music or create an intro and outro for my audio story. Because I wanted this to be my own podcast, I think it would be helpful to have intro and outro audio to signal to the listener that the podcast is beginning and ending; I plan to create both of these elements for my final draft.

https://www.inspiringwomenweekly.com/listen I obtained a portion of my audio story from LaShawnda McLaurin’s podcast, Inspiring Women Weekly and would like to give credit to her.

Final Draft Logo Project

I decided to create a logo that focused solely on the theme of my blog. My design process was to design an image that symbolized Women Empowerment without just solely using the words. My favorite company logos are ones that incorporate symbols and maximize on creativity, and that was my goal for my logo. My design was influenced by my blog post “Strength in Sisterhood”. Ever since I wrote that post, the title has stuck with me. Women empowerment is a popular topic nowadays, but I also feel like it can be subject to interpretation. I feel like “Strength in Sisterhood” really stands out and has a clear meaning. Women empowerment is not just about incorporating women into positions of power and entrusting them to make good decisions. Women empowerment is about uniting women in ways where we have been taught to compete with one another. Strength in Sisterhood symbolizes that we do not have to be at war with one another, instead we can support each other in every way that makes us great women: our ambition, success, beauty, confidence, and grace. I used the female symbol to represent women, and the muscular arm to show strength. I showed a couple friends my design and they immediately thought of women empowerment or that I was trying to show that women were strong. I thought it would be helpful to add the words “Strength in Sisterhood” so I am effectively communicating my idea so I did that by using the Type On A Path tool. I started by googling these two images and I drafted a way that I could combine them both. After I decided how I wanted the image to look, I looked up women empowerment symbols to see if this design already existed, and I was excited to see that it didn’t! That confirmed for me that my design was headed in the right direction. I used a lot of the techniques that were shown in the pencil and tracing tutorials. To create the female symbol I used the rectangle tool and drew two rectangles and layered them on top of one another and then used the ellipses tool and put the smaller circle inside the larger circle. I filled the inside color of the smaller circle with white and gave it no stroke so that it would blend in with the background . I traced this image ( https://www.123rf.com/photo_68319865_stock-vector-strong-power-muscle-arms-vector-icon-muscular-hand-symbol-for-fitness-club-emblem-illustration-of-st.html ) using the pen tool to create the arm. The challenge I faced was that after the arm was traced, it lacked definition. I hand drew with the pen tool lines to create fingers, and veins so that it looked more like the image that inspired my design. Lastly, I used the gradient tool and type on a path tool to add some additional uniqueness to the design. This design took a lot of maneuvering but I think it turned out great. I received really great feedback from my peers that was very encouraging–I did not expect for other to immediately understand my vision or think that the end result looked good because I created this logo from scratch. Some feedback that I received were to add a shadow around my image to give it some depth and look more realistic, which I did, and to make the text darker, which I did as well. I also adjusted the placement of the lines that create the fingers because I felt they were a little off in my first draft.
Here are the links to the images I used for inspiration: https://www.123rf.com/photo_68319865_stock-vector-strong-power-muscle-arms-vector-icon-muscular-hand-symbol-for-fitness-club-emblem-illustration-of-st.html
https://www.123rf.com/photo_83618312_stock-illustration-raster-illustration-pink-female-symbol-gender-sign-woman-.html

Draft Logo Project

I decided to create a logo that focused solely on the theme of my blog. My design process was to design an image that symbolized Women Empowerment without just solely using the words. My favorite company logos are ones that incorporate symbols and maximize on creativity, and that was my goal for my logo. My design was influenced by my blog post “Strength in Sisterhood”. Ever since I wrote that post, the title has stuck with me. Women empowerment is a popular topic nowadays, but I also feel like it can be subject to interpretation. I feel like “Strength in Sisterhood” really stands out and has a clear meaning. Women empowerment is not just about incorporating women into positions of power and entrusting them to make good decisions. Women empowerment is about uniting women in ways where we have been taught to compete with one another. Strength in Sisterhood symbolizes that we do not have to be at war with one another, instead we can support each other in every way that makes us great women: our ambition, success, beauty, confidence, and grace. I used the female symbol to represent women, and the muscular arm to show strength. I showed a couple friends my design and they immediately thought of women empowerment or that I was trying to show that women were strong. I thought it would be helpful to add the words “Strength in Sisterhood” so I am effectively communicating my idea. I started by googling these two images and I drafted a way that I could combine them both. After I decided how I wanted the image to look, I looked up women empowerment symbols to see if this design already existed, and I was excited to see that it didn’t! That confirmed for me that my design was headed in the right direction. I used a lot of the techniques that were shown in the pencil and tracing tutorials. I created shapes to make the female symbol and I traced this image ( https://www.123rf.com/photo_68319865_stock-vector-strong-power-muscle-arms-vector-icon-muscular-hand-symbol-for-fitness-club-emblem-illustration-of-st.html ) to create the arm. The challenge I faced was that after the arm was traced, it lacked definition. I hand drew with the pen tool lines to create fingers, and veins so that it looked more like the image that inspired my design. Lastly, I used the gradient tool and type on a path tool to add some additional uniqueness to the design.
Here are the links to the images I used for inspiration: https://www.123rf.com/photo_68319865_stock-vector-strong-power-muscle-arms-vector-icon-muscular-hand-symbol-for-fitness-club-emblem-illustration-of-st.html
https://www.123rf.com/photo_83618312_stock-illustration-raster-illustration-pink-female-symbol-gender-sign-woman-.html
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