Flash Final

to see my flash final visit http://myweb.stedwards.edu/amcdoug/flashprojects

These were a series of flash project that we completed to help us learn all aspects of the program. The first piece is a bouncing ball. The second is of my head bouncing instead of a ball, the third is a flash ad taken from the internet that I re did, the fourth is a sideshow of popular Austin land marks and the fifth is a music player.

Website Redesign

To see my craigslist redesign visit http://myweb.stedwards.edu/amcdoug

For this project we were asked to redesign the popular site craigslist.org. I wanted to see if I could keep the simple nature of the website and bring the design into a more current look. I went with a theme and light blue, black and white to give the site a brighter feel. Also my design encourages people to create craigslist.org accounts which will help keep the site safe and manageable.

Field Guide

To see the rest of my book please visit http://gallery.me.com/amcdoug

This project was about creating a field guide for a subject. I picked to cover the different genres and sub-genres of American rap and hip hop music. It was difficult to try and create imagery for sounds but I ended up coming up with a set of icons to help distinguish each kind of rap music by theme, tone and identifying sounds.

Sandys Order Kiosk

The Sandy's Ordering Kiosk was a group project where I worked with Roel Macias, and Jean Viera. The project was to create a touch screen odering interface for the burger joint Sandy's which is located in Austin TX. Sandy's has a very retro feel and we wanted to create a feeling of nostalgia for the 1950s and take you back to when times were simple.

To see the entire interface visit: http://gallery.me.com/amcdoug

Concept Map

For my concept map topic I picked water usage. I tried to convey how scarce of a commodity water is and how much water people are wasting.

Diagram

This project was for History of Graphic Design. We were told to find an image created within the last year and find what movements in the history of graphic design it referenced. I picked this piece which is a magazine cover from Spain. The piece references the new york school, the industrial revolution, information design, the invention of photography and Dada.

History of Graphic Design Presentation

The 1940s were a very pivotal time in the history of graphic design. European artists were fleeing from the war in Europe and moving into the states, bringing the ideals of European modernism and the cultural focus to New York.

One of the early pioneers of the New York School was Paul Rand. Rand was an editorial designer for Apparel Arts, Esquire, Ken and Coronet. Rand had a strong knowledge of graphic design and his designs were simple and still were able to convey his point while at the same time keeping the eye interested. His methods often included collage and montage techniques much like those seen during the DaDa era. Rand was able to bring together concepts, images, textures and objects into a cohesive whole. Later in his career he stepped into advertising where he changed the ads of the time with creative wordplay and a mix of photography, drawing, and logos. Rand also defined design as "...integration of form and function for effective communication".

Another important designer greatly inspired by Paul Rand's designs was Saul Bass. Saul Bass, known as the "Master of the Film title", created logos, posters, ads and animated titles for movies starting in 1933. His designs were reduced to a single dominant image usually centered in the middle of the page much like the designs of plakastil and sachplakat. When designing he would experiment with type by cutting letters out of paper, painting letters with a brush and often freely drawing them.

In the 1940s editorial designs saw a creative revolution. Three magazines were designed well at the time, Fortune, Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar. Alexey Brodovitch, art director of Harper's Bazaar, changed layouts by allowing pages to bleed, cropping photos in new ways, and using type as images themselves. He would often direct his employees to astonish him, and when he went on to teach later in life would "...dump photostats, type proofs, colored pieces of paper, and someone's shoelace, if it happened to become untied on a long table together with rubber cement. He would fold his arms and with a sad expression he would challenge us to do something brilliant."

Brodovitch's unique deisgn philosophy went on through the work of his student Otto Storch. Storch who was an art director for Better Living and McCalls unified type and photography in both magazines. He explored scale and would plan out his spreads and shoot the photographs around the type. His philosophy was that idea, copy art, and typography should all be one.

The advertising world was turned upside down when the firm of Doyle Dane and Bernbach opened at 350 Madison Avenue. The legendary firm responsible for Volkswagon's "Think Small" ad combined the forces of their art director and copywriter to create a fluis energy between text and image. For each campaign they would develop a strategy surrounding something different, interesting, or superior in the product.

One of the most successful and well known art directors to come out of Doyle Dane and Bernbach was George Lois. Lois, known for his crazy tactics, took the philosophy of DDB and went on to create some of the most iconic ads of all time. Later in his career he went on to save Esquire magazine from failing with his interesting and eye catching covers. He would make jokes, play off irony, and us unique graphics to pull readers into buying the magazine.

To view my slideshow presentation visit: http://gallery.me.com/amcdoug

East Side Book

This assignment was working off of the postcard series in our study of the East Side. I wanted to try and show the different points of view that people have about the East Side. The material in the book has many different opinions of the East so I wanted to use lots of different texture pictures in the book and I wanted to juxtapose the cleanliness of the text with the messiness of the lines to somewhat recreate the tension that exists in East Austin as a result of gentrification.

To see the entire book visit: http://gallery.me.com/amcdoug

Animated Postcard

Click Here to see my animated postcard

This project was the next step in locating place. I took two of the postcards that I made and turned them into an animation. If you click on one of the squares textures will come across your screen and take you to the next card. If you click on the squares on this card it will take you back to the first post card.

East Side Postcards

This assignment asked us to create a set of postcards about the East side of Austin. My concept focused on the buildings of the East side and I tried to mix textures and vectors to 'rebuild' the buildings in a new way.

Found Type Poster

For this assignment we were asked to create a typeface out of found objects. After trying out different mediums I chose to work with eye glasses to create my font. After destroying the glasses and creating the letters I designed the poster around the five senses and tried to incorporate the other senses in the final design.

Idenity

For this project we were asked to create a poster and three admission stickers for a museum that was based on an art style from the past. I chose Bauhaus and used the simplicity of the style to create the poster. There are three stickers, one for student, one for adults, and one for a child's admission and those are identified through the red square, blue circle, and yellow triangle, the three shapes the Bauhaus ideals were based around. The poster says form follows function because that was one of the mottos of the style that helped define it.

Activity Booklet

This project called for us to design a children's activity booklet for a program called 5 minutes a week. The program teaches kids about fair trade in 5 minutes a week.

To see the entire book visit: http://gallery.me.com/amcdoug

Kitchen of Meaning

This is a poster that we were assigned to make for a gallery called The Kitchen of Meaning. Each student was assigned a word and had to design a poster that was a visual example of the meaning of the word. My word was dissonance which is a tension or clash resulting from the combination of 2 disharmonious or unsuitable elements. I used lines to mimic sound waves to highlight the musical meaning behind dissonance.

Critical Mass

In this project we got to pick an amendment from the Bill of Rights and were asked to make a series of postcards that would inform people as to what the amendment stood for without having a previous knowledge of that amendment. I picked the 5th amendment and used images that the class found in magazines and scanned in to make my images. 

Document

In this assignment we were all assigned a letter from the alphabet and asked to represent the letter in 5 different images. I was assigned the letter 'O' and tried varied the letter through repetition, layers, destroying the letter, and found the letter in everyday life. The final presentation of the project was through a class blog. 

Transformations

For this projects we were asked to transform everyday objects. My goal was to take these random things and to manipulate them into something completely different. I made a boat, a snowman, a ice cream cone and a cross out of an eyeball, a lamp, a broach, a card, a hotdog, and a necklace. This project really forced me to think outside of the normal to create the abnormal.

Scavenger Hunt

This project was a photo scavenger hunt. We had to go out and take pictures and then link them together with their photographic characteristics, shape, color, line etc. 

Type Specimen Book

This assignment was to make a book that showed off one font and all different versions of that font. I picked the font helvetica and designed a book to help highlight all its features and uses.

To see the entire book visit: http://gallery.me.com/amcdoug

Design Culture Now

This assignment was to create a poster for the event Design Culture Now. My theme was layers and I layered colors, paper, and text to get the final design.