Tag: event planning

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Final Graphic Design Project

Week two on the Photoshop bandwagon! I’m back at it to revise my initial draft. To recap, for the draft, I wanted to do something to advertise Collect. It was critical for me to showcase that Collect is a guide to hosting outdoor events in the San Diego area. If it were to be all fleshed out, it would be a local guide to the best parks, fun ways to share a meal, and ideas for hosting a great outdoor events. In the initial and final draft, the San Diego skyline establishes location, the flowers establish that it is outdoors focused, and the table setting implies the event hosting aspect. The design tells a micro story of what Collect is about.

If you remember, when I first started I pulled a lot of inspiration from the general aesthetic of Darling Magazine. Check it out here: https://www.instagram.com/darling/ Working with that, I started with a photo of San Diego bay and used the magic wand tool to edit out everything except for the skyline. I then adjusted the brightness/contrast. Next, I embedded a photo of some flowers that I had used a saturation/hue mask to edit earlier in Photoshop. Then I placed this photo in the lower quadrant of the design.

Next, I added a new fill layer and placed it under the San Diego skyline and under the flowers to fill in the area that was previously the sky. Finally, I added a photo from an event I planned and decorated for a few months back to the very bottom. I added overlay masks here to change it to black and white and to alter the brightness and contrast so that it was bluer and more in line with the rest of the color scheme. To finish the draft, I added text.

After I completed the draft, I received feedback from my professor and peers. I received several suggestions and then got a chance to review it myself. First, I’d like to share the feedback I did incorporate.

  • The first thing that stuck out to me as a flaw on the draft was that the skyline was crooked. I did some sleuthing and figured out how to use the ruler tool to adjust this. I also adjusted the background fill layer to a more true white and toned down the saturation of the green in the trees.
  • Next, I aligned the text to the right-hand side. This was something that was not even on my radar until after the feedback.
  • I then moved the entire design up so I could incorporate a blue rectangular marquee at the bottom to add contact info.
  • The contact info at the bottom is probably what I am the proudest of. I created the Instagram and Facebook logos from scratch using the rounded rectangle tool and the ellipse tool. I merged these layers. I have linked the tutorial below.
  • Next, I saved the picture of the table setting as a separate photo so that I could crop it to use the lighter clearer portion of the photo to help better show what it is a photo of.
  • I then added the “Join the party!” at the bottom to get the reader to take action.
  • Finally, I saved and grouped the layers to have a cleaner working product.

There were a few feedback items I didn’t incorporate that I received during feedback. Check them out below:

  • I kept the color scheme monochromatic to keep it less busy and enhance the visual unity.
  • I did not change the font. I would love to have a different font, but after literally clicking through every available option, I still believed this was the best fit.
  • Finally, I couldn’t come up with a solution to merge the skyline with the flowers better. I appreciate the clean lines and hopefully straightening the skyline helps make it look less chopped off.

Overall this was a fantastic project to do and I feel 100 percent inspired to create a million more products. It was great to incorporate the lessons learned on visual unity, storytelling and the Gestalt Theory into this. I am super proud of the design and cannot wait to hone my Photoshop skills further. I hope you enjoyed tagging along on the journey!

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Draft Graphic Design Project

This week was my first-time using Photoshop, so it has been quite the journey. One of the reasons I was super excited about this class was to become familiar with Photoshop. I have attempted to use other more advanced editing programs before with little to no lasting success, but the tutorials I did earlier this week and posted about were very helpful to get started.

For this first Photoshop project, I wanted to do something to advertise Collect, although I think with some text changes this could also be a great flier for an event. To start with, I did some research and originally came up with a different design inspired by the opening credits of 101 Dalmatians. I loved the first idea, but I wound up tossing it out because although I thought it had more story elements, I believed it was too busy and wanted to go for a simpler cleaner design. I worried it would be overwhelming for the audience.

I really love the general aesthetic of Darling Magazine when it comes to advertising and blogging, so I decided to check out their Instagram for inspiration next. Check it out here: https://www.instagram.com/darling/ I finally settled on something that I think has minimalistic aspects, but isn’t as minimalistic as their general aesthetic. I like more color and in general just MORE. Plus, I needed to incorporate at least three photos and show a bit of what Collect is about at the same time. 

It was critical for me to showcase that Collect is San Diego based, involves the outdoors, and was about food/togetherness/event planning. The San Diego skyline establishes location, the flowers establish that it is outside focused, and the table setting I hope implies the other elements. Hopefully this tells a micro story of what Collect is about.

To start off the technical aspects of my design, I started with a photo of San Diego bay and used the magic wand tool to edit out everything except for the sky line. I then adjusted the brightness/contrast. Next, I embedded a photo of some flowers that I had used a saturation/hue mask to edit earlier in Photoshop. Then I placed this photo in the lower quadrant of the design. They used to look like this:

Next, I added a new fill layer and placed it under the San Diego skyline and under the flowers to fill in the area that was previously the sky. Finally, I added a photo from an event I planned and decorated for a few months back to the very bottom. I added overlay masks here to change it to black and white and to alter the brightness and contrast so that it was bluer and more in line with the rest of the color scheme. To finish, I added text.

 I was originally going to make this an event flier and it certainly could be modified into one later, but I wanted to stick with a clean design just simply advertising Collect. I could potentially add in more contact info later like; Instagram, WordPress, or Facebook. Hope you like my design, I welcome your feedback. 🙂

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Welcome to Collect

A guide to creatively gather in your area

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I’ve always been equal parts of my mom and my dad. Growing up I got my love of space, the outdoors, and history from my dad and I got my love of beauty, hosting, and people from my mom. As I’ve grown up I began to see ways to combine the things I love best into one activity—event hosting. In event hosting I find all the things I value highly; the outdoors, creativity, food, and bringing people together. The more people are brought together I believe the more they are able to view themselves as a collective.

When I started thinking about a topic to focus this blog on, a natural fit seemed to be event hosting with a specific focus on intimate outdoor events in local and free areas. It doesn’t focus specifically on what I professionally do now, but event hosting is a large part of what I do in my spare time. I thought it would be fascinating to explore small scale event planing further through this assignment. 

I create events for people to come to and enjoy nature, enjoy each other, and enjoy being creative. San Diego has so many incredible free public parks that offer the means to come up with some really creative outdoor events. My hope is that Collect would be viewed as something that could be started in every community as a tool to make people aware of the places they have to linger collectively and use creatively together.  I want it to bring people together in fun creative ways in their local areas.

This Collect will focus specifically on event hosting and planning outdoor events in San Diego. I will be taking a look at the resources and spaces locally available for hosting truly unique events. I want this to be a space to inspire people to plan events here in my city and bring people together. I look forward to sharing ways to host your own incredible events.