Tick-tock-tick-tock...

The days are counting down. Yesterday in my Design I class we were given an assignment that is due on Thursday morning: create three unique logos for three different companies.
One is a shoe company. Easy as pie! Already done.
The second, a pharmaceutical company. Took me some doodling, but I came up with an idea. Pretty much done with this one, too.
Last but not least, anything we want. Uh... ok. What? Anything? Well, I've wanted a 'logo' for my site, for Tattered Too, for quite a while... but when it comes to coming up with something for myself, I'm totally stumped! This sick desire to appease myself (and not being able to do so) is given me a creative block for coming up with a different company and a different logo. Hmm... any ideas? Anything? Please, I beg of you! Throw something out for me, I'll bite! Anything!

Ok, I'm not *really* that desperate, but I DO love feedback from other people. I love incorporating ideas from minds other than my own... because admitedly, sometimes my creative juices flow down repetitive paths. No one likes that, so if you have any little thoughts on a company or logo (which must be 'made up'), please, leave me a comment! :)
Thanks!

Sophisticated Flop (Feedback Appreciated!)

This month has been incredibly trying for me in a thousand different ways. My confidence with my schoolwork has suffered because of it, too. I finally finished my brochure assignment and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. I was going for a sophisticated look with a tropical, dutch colonial feel to really represent the island of Curacao. I added the finishing touches last night and finally got a good night of sleep - the first one in weeks - and I could breathe easy because this huge assignment was DONE. No more! Wuhwho!
Wrong.
I still had my presentation to do in class today. I thought I did alright, but I wasn't too proud of the feedback I received. Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic and just looking back at it from a bad perspective, but I really did not feel great about it. *sigh* The best comments I got were about the colors and that if one of my peers saw this in a gas station, they'd pick it up. Ok. That made me laugh, really. I was going more for a nice hotel pick-up or something. Flop! I tried to get a lot of opinions as I created my brochure and tried hard to implement a lot of what I heard into my final design. I honestly thought it turned out better than I had expected, but now I'm thinking it really wasn't good enough.

What do you think? This, remember, is a trifold brochure for the island of Curacao. The front cover is on the right, the back of the brochure is in the center and the left hand side is the inner flap. The second page is the inside of the brochure. I'd love any feedback you have, positive or negative. If I could have improved something, where do you think that would be? Hmm... Any thoughts?






Tomorrow we're going over our next big assignment, which is to be a 4 page newsletter for any organization of our choice. I have some ideas for what I want to do for that, but already knowing it's 4 pages (twice as much work!) and due in less time than this brochure, I am feeling pretty overwhelmed at just the thought of it.

The kids have been driving me nuts - seriously, nuts.

I am ready for a nice trip to a spa. Or better yet... how about a vacation to Curacao! Anyone want to pay my way? Anyone? No? Well screw you, then! *sobs* Haha, just kiddin. :")

Schoolwork

Oh, how fun it is to apply my creativity to my schoolwork. This week, before Thanksgiving, we were issued our first big 'creative' assignment for my InDesign class. I had never used InDesign before this class that started on the 15th, so I think I'm doing alright considering. We were asked to make a brochure for any location of our choice. It has to be a trifold brochure, meaning it has two folds, a flap for the cover, a flap for the inside. Well, I'm sure you've all seen them before and know what they are. If not, just take a regular letter sized paper and fold it into thirds. I've been working on this assignment all weekend, and chose to do mine on Curacao, so I wanted to give it a really tropical feel, a relaxing but adventerous taste to it. I really hope to go here someday!
Anyway, I thought I would share with you what I have done so far, so you can see what I've accomplished. I'll try to share the finished product when I'm done with it, but since I'm not quite there yet, you get the sample version. (The two white stripes aren't really there, I just added them for this snapshot to show where the folds would be in the paper. This is the inner flap on the left, the back of the brochure is in the middle, and the cover of it is on the right. I haven't added the text for the back, yet.)


This class has been really fun so far. I've enjoyed learning about the printing process, and how to package things to be printed. I am not so sure that the printing side of graphic design is where I want to go when I'm done with school, though. I am really interested in the web design side of it. I'm looking forward to the Flash class, and things like that, but who knows how that might go and where this might lead me. :) In the meantime, I'll just try to soak it all up and learn as much as I can so that I can be prepared for a good career come graduation!

Educational Explanation

The first photo here was given to us to color correct, and this is my finished attempt. It had a red overtone to it originally. The second photo is my first attempt at Photo restoration. The third photo was the original photo that I restored. I had a lot of fun doing that one! The fourth and final picture is an assignment I had finished. We were told to take the bug out of a photograph (it was in a woody scene on a gravel road behind a home) and put it on a white background. It was originally green and we were told to change the color, cut out the windows so that they were also white, and add text to the side of the car, making it look as realistic as possible. The text wasn't so easy to do because it was hard to make it look real, which is why I chose to place it as I did, with a curve.






School has been going well still. I finished my Illustrator Basics class and came out with grades that I was pleased with. I won't know my official grade for the class overall, but from the looks of it... again, I'm just pleased. :)
Now that we've moved on to Photoshop, I was a little concerned about whether I would like this program or not because I've always used Paint Shop Pro in the past and others warned me that Photoshop can be difficult to use. So far I've found it to be fairly easy, but that's probably because so many of the tools are the same or very similar. We've moved on from cutting things out of photos and color correction to photo restoration. Oh, boy! I love playing with photos and I'm really loving the photo restoration portion of this class. It can be a bit frustrating, but when all is said and done, I like how my pictures have turned out and that makes it so worth it. This week is the last week of Photoshop Basics so I'm curious about what classes I'll get for the next Module. (Modules are like condensed Semesters, I guess).
I thought I would share some of my assignments since I have several of them up right now. Ugh. Forgive the strange organization of this post. I'm still getting used to how Blogger works with photos when being uploaded from Firefox.

Elementary, My Dear Watson

There were a few setbacks to starting school this week, but alas, I've made it through. I attended my first virtual class, Illustrator Basics, yesterday and I absolutely loved it. It seems to be pretty similar to Paint Shop Pro, which I'm much more familiar with, so I'm hoping that this first bit of school will be a breeze for me. We shall see, eh? I get my first assignment later today, and I'm really excited to get started on it.

Switching from a PC to a Mac has been full of hiccups and stumbling blocks, but it's not been impossible. Thankfully I can use both the PC and the Mac at the same time, as there are some things, such as Y! Messenger, that I much prefer on the PC still over the Mac. I do love the sleek and simple design of the Mac, though. It's not very complex and that makes it really fun and easy to use, but some things, such as setting up a network with wireless internet, have proven to be a little more difficult. I'm having to use the Mac directly connected to the Ethernet for now. It's not too terribly bad. This little thing cannot keep me from the inter-web!

Attending a virtual class while tending to the boys proved that it will have it's easy moments and it's difficult ones during yesterday's class. For the first half of the class the boys were wild and crazy. Hunter vomitted on the floor and I had to listen to the introduction of Illustrator while cleaning it up. Getting up every two minutes to get someone a drink, zip-up someone's backpack, take someone to the bathroom and wash someone's hands was overwhelming at first, but since I was able to still see the screen and have the volume up, I was still able to do all that and more. About a half hour before the class was to end, the boys started taking an interest in the instructor (who is great, btw) speaking from the computer, and climbed up on my lap. Troy was really enjoying it, saying, "Awesthome! Wow, coooooool!" as the instructor showed us about spray symbols and different brushes. Hunter, on the other hand, showed his interest by following the instructor's mouse all over the computer screen. It was really bitter-sweet to be able to share my first virtual class with my baby boys. :")

It seems that I can't comment on Y!360 blogs from the Mac, even while using Firefox over Safari, and the look of my blog is all junkified on the Mac as well, so I'll try to connect to the net from the PC later and leave some comments I've wanted to post a bit later today. See you around. :)

Orientation Elation and Irritation

For some time now I had expected college to be far more complicated and hold much higher standards than I could ever meet. That facade in my mind has been squashed and conquered. Orientation was this evening and it was much like the last one that I attended, only this time I was considered a new student. Me! A new student! It was an empowering feeling to sit there in the conference room thinking that I would be attending college for the first time.

Empowering and exciting, I just knew that this was right for me. I absolutely cannot wait to begin my classes and learn so many new things about things that I already enjoy. Art. Photography. Restoration. Creation. Web design. I'm so thrilled!

There is a minor setback for me, though. I was originally told that I would eventually have to attend classes at the college rather than taking all of the classes online (so that I could still be a stay at home mom while being a student), but it seems that eventually really means the very first class. I had not planned to have the boys attending daycare or preschool so soon, being that eventually I would have to take classes at the physical location, not the first period of my first semester. This causes quite a dilemma, having only one business day to find an adequate and affordable daycare for the boys, but I'm sure it's not impossible.

I do have an alternative option. I could request to have my classes changed to evening classes instead of being a day student. This would provide Bruce more one on one time with the boys and no day care costs. However, it also means that I could not get an evening job if we want to add another income to our pockets, and my graduation date would be pushed back another 5 months. We have both options to explore, so we'll do just that, and hopefully we won't make the decision in so much haste that we make the wrong one. Is there a wrong one in a situation like this?

Troy was heartbroken when I left for Orientation without him this evening. He knew I was going to "Scthool" and that being a big boy now, he should be allowed to attend school, too. If I decide not to stay a day student and have the boys in daycare, Bruce and I have both decided that Troy will still get to go to preschool (and Hunter when he turns 2). I was so struck with an overwhelming sadness when I came home and Bruce told me how Troy had felt, crying for me after I left. My parents always told me that I had begged to go to school when I was very little, too. Now I know what it felt like, being that I can't remember that far back, to watch my siblings, my playmates go to school every day without me. Thankfully for Troy, (and for Bruce's sanity), big, cheesy slices of pizza make everything better!