Final Campaign: CureJM

One of my favorite projects I worked on this semester was the final project for Graphic Design 2. There were several mini projects involved which would result in the creation of a campaign. We were able to choose any company or create a new one. I chose an existing organization, the CureJM Foundation. Its goal is to find a cure for a rare autoimmune disease which effects mostly children and young adults. The founders of the organization are relatives of mine, and their son is a victim of the disease. I was able to correspond with them on some ideas and thoughts which helped me come up with my results.

The first thing I needed to do was write up a Creative Brief for the campaign. That was easy, (and not necessary to post).

The next thing I had to do was create a logo. After talking with my relatives I decided to focus my design on a "young adult" logo instead of a children's logo since they had developed such a strong brand recognition with their current logo. I wanted to keep their current color scheme, make it modern and easy to read/understand, and make it my own by adjusting the typography. After mulling over sooo many ideas and concepts, I finally came up with this:

The next step was to create a brochure or booklet. Per request, I made a "Fundraising Toolkit" which would be used for guidelines, ideas, and rules for setting up your own CureJM fundraising event. I kept the same theme going and kept it colorful and fun. I didn't have time to personalize it with photos or update the text, but the basic design is there. If time allowed, I would definitely tweak a few things and play around with different ideas. Below are the cover and inside spreads. Most of the heavy text is purely for placement as I started to run short on time.

The last step was to create an advertising campaign. I took advantage of previous and upcoming events already in the making. The first ad was a print ad for one of their fundraising events, a bike-a-thon. There are some spacing issues in the last third of the ad, and some things I wouldn't mind tweaking, but I won't be able to fix them for a couple months. In addition, I also created a banner ad for a website. It was my first time working with flash and integrating it with photoshop. I had so much fun making it, and learned a lot. I'm not sure how to post it to a blog, so the print ad will have to do for now:

That's it for now. When time allows I will probably expand on this or make changes as necessary because it was one of my favorite projects. Let me know what you think, good or bad. And to learn more about CureJM visit their website at www.curejm.com.

Flyer: Ravinia Festival

I created this flyer for the Ravinia Music Festival in my Digital Design 2 class. There weren't many restrictions to the requirements, besides to include the basic information. I wanted to keep it simple and eye-catching. I also played with the font quite a bit, and as a result have several versions. This is the one I ended up with:

HOW Magazine Project: Fold Effect in Photoshop

This project was all about formatting and layout. I chose to create a replica of the HOW magazine. I focused on a newly learned effect of how to fold your type. It was hard at first, but once I got it down I started to make my own adjustments and add things to the effect to make it better and unique. I learned a lot about formatting because everything had to be similar to the HOW layout and magazine format. That was probably the hardest part - as I used Illustrator instead of InDesign (CS5 --> CS3 conversion difficulties). I hit a mental block in the middle of it, but I think the end result was better than I thought it would be.

More Stuff iLike

So I've been collecting, searching and finding some great art and design. Mostly I've been noticing several styles that I enjoy. One company that is rocking the ad world, and also happen to be in front of me a lot, is Houlihan's.

Houlihans has made some major changes lately. Good ones. They're atmosphere has always been sarcastic and relatable. Their menu, waiter's t-shirts, and emails I receive all have the same tone. Here's one I saved because I thought it was clever. It's so simple, to the point, funny, & sarcastic. The graphics are simple and their logo is incorporated throughout the ad. Good call, Houlihan's.

Something I always find interesting is how a company's logo changes throughout the lifetime of the brand. Companies are constantly switching logos and updating them. Pepsi tried to change theirs. Gap, Burger King, Prudential, etc. Of course, there are also companies who have not changed or changed very little in the past: Coca Cola. Coca Cola is one of the top, if not the top, in brand recognition for the world. Their logo is a graphic in itself. People automatically associate it with one thing: the cola drink. I don't think they're going anywhere for a while - unless someone finds out that it gives you cancer or something... then they'd have a problem!

JCPenny has recently changed their logo. For a while I didn't know if I liked it because it was too clean and simple, but after watching their ad campaigns on TV it seems to work for them. They're trying to be more hip and fashion-minded. They've simplified it by using "JCP". Keeping the red and white of course was good. Here's a before and after:

Right now I'm working on re-creating a logo for the Cure JM Foundation. One of my relatives is suffering from JM and his mom started the organization and is still the creator and organizer. She's raised money for research and awareness as well. I thought it would be cool to play around with what they've created so far. Hopefully by the end of it I will create a logo, illustration, brochure, and website/ad campaign. We'll see how it goes. 

Travel Brochure Project: Chicago, IL

On to the next project: a travel brochure. I chose Chicago, because it is only the best city in the world. And because I have plenty of pictures I've taken in and around Chicago. The picture on the front and back cover, and all the large spread photos for each page are mine. Plus the giraffe on page 4, the boats in the lake on page 5, and one of the trains pictures on page 6.

The map was a project in itself. I created a map that was labeled with roads and airports, but the resolution was too low to put it on the back page. That will be one of the many things I will keep working on to improve this travel brochure. Let me know what you think!

Menu Project: Capital Grille

The third project was designing a menu for a restaurant. I chose to do Capital Grille. It's a fancy, upscale restaurant with high prices, high expectations, and great food. The requirements were to create two spreads: the front - back - inside flap, and the inside spread; include the prices of each item; and to preferably create a logo.

Initially I wanted to work with neutral colors but decided to go with black and white since their staff wear black and white. I wanted to include stars in the menu somehow because they have a tradition: every 10 (or is it 5?) times the wait staff get a call/emailed/formal compliment they receive a gold star to pin on their shirt. Some of the waiters have been there for years and have over 6 star pins. I also wanted it to be clean and elegant. The Capital Grille prides itself on its vast variety of wines and their large stock of over 5,000 wines. I wanted to incorporate that into the menu somehow.

It was an OK project. I wish I spent more time on it to make the menu more unique, especially the inside spread. I did learn a lot about formatting, grids, and editing images (rotate, gradient makes a great reflection). And although it isn't much, I did re-create their logo. I wanted something more elegant than what they offered. This is what their current logo looks like:

I probably could have taken out the border on my logo? The formatting and the layout took up most of my time so I made only a slight change the second menu. The only difference between the two variations is one has the same bottle of wine on the front/back flap and the other one has a white wine bottle on the front flap with a red wine bottle on the back flap. Which one do you like better? Here are the results:

 The one with the different bottle colors:

Project: Typography

The second project was based on typography.  I had to design a layout or spread of copy (which happened to be about typography) in a creative way. Hierarchy was a must so I focused on that first by creating a simple layout. I liked the idea of using bold typeface and different sizes to create the hierarchy.  When I started to experiment with different ideas, I created a more complex layout to make it more interesting. I thought at first that having all the white space would help it, but I think I had too much. Eventually I wanted to use color, but only one color: green. Then I played around with pictures and using type as an image.

Overall I had a lot of fun with this project. It was a challenge to keep thinking of new ideas once I had one on the screen in front of me, but I essentially rearranged and added/subtracted things to make them different. I learned a lot of new technical features in InDesign like creating text on a shape and using the eye dropper tool to keep similar formatting. Here are the end results: suggestions?

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Homage Project: Stefen Sagmeister

For the first project we were instructed to pick a developed graphic designer or artist and create a homage piece which displays their most common design concepts and ideas. After researching multiple designers I decided to go with Stefen Sagmeister. He is definitely one of a kind. Every seven years he takes a one year sabbatical to refresh his mind and directional talent and has a lot to show for it. Here's a video about him discussing his sabbaticals and what they've done for him as a designer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNuOmTQdFjA These sabbaticals create life lessons which he usually ends up expressing through his art work.

He has done several art pieces that involve using expressive typography. He has also designed multiple CD covers for famous artists like the Rolling Stones and David Byrne. He is most well known for making his designs interactive. Take a look at some of his popular work below:

Below is a wall full of bananas spelling out one of his life lessons: "Self-confidence produces fine results". This was left on the wall until the bananas started to change color...Much like the "A Diamond is Forever" advertisement by De Beers. 

Below is one of his more famous works from which I imitated while making my homage piece.

There's plenty more where that came from, just check out his website or simply 'Google' him. The piece that I made reflects Sagmeister's work by using type to create the art work. Although the typeface wasn't exactly what I wanted, it served its purpose. I used Illustrator to create it from scratch. By using the pathfinder attributes and simple shapes and type, I created a this homage piece. I wanted to make it appear to be chaotic and random, but also keep a level of simplicity.  I learned about balance and technical Illustrator alignment tools during this process.  Let me know what you think!

Conquering the Pen Tool

As an exercise we received a template to work on our "pen tool" skills in Illustrator. Since I haven't kept up with them since last year, I had some difficulties. But, as in all things, practice makes perfect. After about the fourth round I made significant progress and conquered the several twists and turns with the pen tool. Below is the template I used.

Some tips I learned:

-When creating a circle or curve, always insert each pen point at 90 degree intervals to manage a perfect curve.
-Cut the point when going from a curve to a straight line.
-Use live trace when possible and lock it in the background if you need to have a guideline.
-After you're done, zoom in and eliminate any unnecessary points. The more points, the more ragged. The less points, the more smooth... however you want to look at it!
-Hold down the shift key to make very straight and even lines. It will make equal angles and straight lines according to your last point.
-When re-creating a logo or type, try using shapes if possible and create as outlines and minimize the points if needed.

Let me know any additional hints or tips that you use!

iLike

Just got done with Day 1 in Graphic Design II class. I can tell I will like it and I'll learn so much more about CS5. It's nice to have a structured environment where I'll constantly be working on a project. I really hope to get better at Photoshop and InDesign, especially since I'm starting to work with creating websites. Well, today is about the twentieth time I've been told to keep a folder/book/reference of all the design, art, ideas, images, etc that I like so I can refer to it later. Here's part of my collection so far.

Ad ran for Barilla noodles around the New Year: simple & eye catching.

Ad for Smoke Vodka: One of those things I just think is great design.

Chicago Sky Deck's graphic for the Sears (I guess Willis...) Tower. I like the simplicity of it, and that it explains the attraction so well by using typography.

Below are some random links I've saved. There are videos, commercials, and ads, and clever guerilla marketing implementations that I find ingenious. Check out the links I've posted at the right hand side of my blog if you want to keep up on the latest art/design awards.

Piano Stairs! Great guerilla marketing. Reminds me of the T-Mobile Dance in the train station which was a very successful viral video.

I LOVE this Old Spice campaign. I mean, completely love it. There's a video online somewhere that interviews the Creatives for the campaign. They go step by step through this commercial and find out whether it was done in one take or not. I won't give it away.

Thought Nike did pretty good on this one. It's quick, catchy, and sports-y...exactly what Nike is all about. It does a good job of keeping my attention even with such a well known brand.

So, what do ya think of my favorites? What are some of YOUR favorites?