Final Project

This was the greatest project I have ever done. I cannot begin to say how much I enjoyed it. I took all of the pictures in the slide show. I chose to do my project on oceans because I find them absolutely amazing. I've always been drawn to water and have even been referred to as a fish by my mother. I thought that this would be the perfect topic to speak about. Not only would the pictures portray the beauty, but I also wanted what I said to be descriptive and create images in people's heads. Some of my pictures were taken while I was abroad in England, others were taken right here on campus. The locations include, Dover Castle, the White Cliffs of Dover, Edinburgh, and various photographs of a beach in Brighton.

I choose all of them to go along with the sentence that was spoken at that moment. I didn't want to just stick in random photographs. I individually choose each one for each portion of dialogue. I wanted viewers to be completely captivated into the world of the photographs.

I choose to use an ocean sound throughout the entire time I was speaking. I wanted to use it as my background and to make people feel like they were actually there. For the picture with the dog running I added a dog barking sound effect. I thought this would be a good addition and would make the photograph seem more real. Kokomo by The Beach Boys was my introduction and end music. This was the first song that I thought of when I decided that I was going to talk about oceans. I think that it really sets the mood and tells you what's coming next.

My title "Let The Waves Carry You Away" was just a phrase that I came up with. I wanted something that would stand out and make viewers want to watch this slide show. I wanted it to be intriguing and to perfectly describe the ocean. I wanted it to describe what the ocean does, it relaxes you and carry's you away to a distant land.

The only thing that gave me trouble with this project was the audio. I boosted the volume on the track of my voice to the highest setting and it still came out a bit quiet. I even tried rerecording my voice and trying to speak louder, but this did not help much. This is something that I need to keep in mind the next time I record voices.

--MY SCRIPT--

Since I was young my grandfather used to walk me over to the small bit of water that could be seen from the plaza near our house. From there we would watch the sunset and throw rocks in the water. That is when my passion for oceans began. Just close your eyes for a second and think about the last time you jumped into the ocean on a sunny day. The excitement you felt knowing that you were about to become weightless and free. You could start to swim and swim, but you would never reach an end. At first step, the water is cold and you feel a little shiver, but you keep going because the initial shock won't stop you. It's worth it. You walk in deeper and deeper and suddenly the water feels like a warm blanket. You can submerge yourself neck deep into the water or float on the surface. Hear the waves crash against the sand. In the morning you can see the shine of the sun and at night the glow of the moon upon the serene water. Moments like this can take your breath away. They can steal you away from reality and bring you to a place of relaxation where you have no care in the world. The feel of the water and sun on your skin act like a natural energizer. There is nothing better than the feel of the water caressing your skin and nothing more beautiful than the sound of the waves going back and forth along the shore, hitting your body with each passing current. How could one not find this amazing? The beauty and serenity of the ocean will be my escape and my passion.

London Brochure Website

I created my very own website based on my London brochure. To see it click here.
Here are some screen shots of my website to provide a sneak peek.









Creating a website was a lot easier than I ever expected it to be, especially using DreamWeaver. I wanted my information to sound catchy and like many other brochures a bit cheesy. Most of what I wrote on all the pages I just thought of off the top of my head. I added pictures because I felt like the pages were really plain without them. I added the globe to the index page because I wanted to show viewers that their possibilities are endless. They can travel wherever their heart desires. I added a map to the contact us page so that they could see exactly where Pearson Travel was located. Lastly, I added a picture of Harrods and Buckingham Palace to separate all the text on the London page. I think that too much text can draw readers away and won't be eye catching. At first I was unable to get the pictures to show up on my website. I tried making them hyperlinks, but still couldn't figure it out. One of my classmates that was having the same problem told me that I had to put the pictures in the folder with everything else and transport them to the web together. Luckily, this worked.

I added two links to my website. I added the Transport for London website. This will tell you everything you need to know and would ever need. When I was in London this was a very helpful tool. It will even give you directions on how to get from one place to the other and if any Underground lines have delays. I also added a link for directions to get to Pearson Travel. Pearson Travel is where my mother works, which is how I got the idea to use it. They do not have their own website or else I would have added the link to that as well.

BiBi Cards

InDesign

Oh my goodness! BiBi cards were at points so difficult and tedious. I kept thinking I had everything measured then I'd go to the computer lab and find that I was missing measurements so I had to go back and forth. I eventually learned to take a ruler to the lab with me because I was sure I'd need it again.

The first program I used to make the BiBi card was Quark Xpress. At first I thought that Quark Xpress was difficult until I started using InDesign. I began to love Quark Xpress. It is easier to figure out and all the tools you'd need are right at your finger tips. There is no need to go looking around. The hardest part of my BiBi card was doing the blue and green Wired logo. First off, I could not find colors to match. Second, I could not figure out how to do the 3-D effect. I'm hoping that I will eventually figure out how to create that effect because it would be a very useful tool.

The fonts for my BiBi card were easy to find, except for the one that says "Just $1 an issue!" I could not find that font on the computer so I improvised. I used the font "cracked" and added more spacing to make it look similar to the original.

InDesign drove me crazy. I thought it was going to be as easy as Quark, but I stumbled upon one very big problem. When I opened up my document it was not in inches, it was in picas. I have never heard of picas in my life. All I knew was the ruler was not at all what I wanted and all of my measurements were wrong. I had no idea that I was using the wrong measurements. I became so aggravated with InDesign. When I found out that I had to start over in inches my heart dropped. I could not imagine doing all of this over again. All I could think of is how I would be working on it for endless hours and wouldn't be able to do the rest of my work. Once I started I was out of the computer lab in two hours. It was remarkable how much easier InDesign became when I was using the correct metric system. I also had trouble figuring out how to add spaces between the letters in InDesign so I googled it. I looked up kerning in InDesign and it gave me a neat shortcut, option+right arrow(or left) depending on which way you want the letters to move. This made my life so much easier and it was faster as well.

The backs of the BiBi cards came out relatively similar in both programs, but the front sides are not exactly the same. As you can see from the snapshots, there are different blues and different greens used for the logo and the "Just $1 an issue!" I tested different colors, but were unable to match the BiBi card colors in the different programs. Neither of these colors match the card itself either. I had a lot of trouble with matching colors. The InDesign card is closest to the original color once printed.

If given the choice. I would still choose Quark Xpress. It is definitely my program of choice for creating BiBi cards.

Quark Xpress

Brochure

This project was actually fun. I'm starting to like Quark Xpress, which surprises me. At first I had no idea what to do this brochure on. I wanted to do it on something I liked so I chose London. I felt that if I needed to speak about my brochure, I could do it with knowledge and passion.

My first step was pictures. I searched google for good ones, although it would have probably been better if I used my own. Then I started adding the pictures. I had an idea of what pictures I was looking for. I didn't want the pictures to look random. I wanted them to actually go with whatever page they were on. For instance, I wasn't going to put a picture of a pub in the hotels section or a picture of the hotel on the about page. I have a total of seven pictures on my brochure. For my cover page I used a picture of Big Ben because I felt like that is something that everyone will recognize, whether they've been to London or not.

Once I had all the information I was going to use, my next step was fonts. I went a little crazy with the fonts. I made each title and correlating text a different font. I wanted the font to match the topic. I understand how this could make it look too busy though. I changed all the titles so that they matched, but left the body text different. Each title was also a different color. I wanted a way to visually separate the sections. I had also initially used boxes around two of the texts. I understand how this can be too much of an isolation. I wanted to make it stand out then I realized the text stands out without my help.

The last thing I worked on was the side with the mailing information. For the return address I used my mom's work address. She works at Pearson Travel so I just put that. At first I put lines were the address placement was going to go then changed it to a box. I also had to work on the indicia. I eventually just used an actual image from the Internet.

The hardest part about making this brochure was making sure the text boxes flowed. Sometimes I would end up with one word on a line so I had to play around with the boxes a lot. Other than that this assignment went rather smoothly.

I love soundslides

Soundslides is so amazing. I had never heard of it before this class. I had never really put thought into how people did photography slide shows either. It adds such an amazing effect.

My song is titled "Feeling Good" and it is by Michael Buble. I choose this song because it has a lot of great beat changes and up tempos. Before we could work with the song we had to change it from an mp3 to a wav file. I don't really understand what a wav file is, but converting it was easy.

I used a 29 second part from the beginning of the song for my Soundslide. I looked for a part of the song that was just instrumental, but was unable to find any. I used a part in the middle of the song. I had trouble with Audacity so I switched over to Garageband. Somehow Garageband kept making my song too long. I had to cut it in many places to get it to one minute 40 seconds. I ended up with a song that was cut into six parts, but it worked in the end.

I have used Garageband before to edit music, but I had never used Audacity. When we first opened it it looked completely foreign to me. I tried using it as I would Garageband, but it wouldn't work. Once I started playing with it I quickly got the hang of it. I cut the song and copied it three times so that it looped and was long enough. I had never thought about doing this before. Since I usually do sound editing for the theatre I just loop it once it is in QLab. I like Garageband better than Audacity. I haven't explored Audacity completely, but I think that Garageband has a lot more to offer.

Soundslides was a really easy program to use. I wish I had it on my computer. Once everything was set and I played it, I couldn't stop smiling. It looked so amazing. I absolutely loved this assignment. I can't wait to do the final Soundslide project with my own photographs. This is something that I can really picture myself doing in the future. I really enjoyed this project.

Quark Xpress Poster

When we were told that we would have to make a poster I started to get scared. Not only had a never used the program, Quark Xpress, but I had never designed a poster. I didn't know what to put on the poster or what to do to set it up.

I knew that I wanted to use a picture of Michael singing that I had used in my powerpoint, one with a purple color scheme. I felt like this would make the picture stand out. I put the picture on the right side of the poster so that he would be looking towards, rather than away from the important information. At first I had the picture as my background, but then changed it so that it was on the side of my poster.

My final poster was not my first attempt, it was in fact my third. I kept changing my poster because I didn't like how it looked. I kept trying to change the background colors and the placement of words. I even changed the pictures, but nothing looked right.

I decided to find a completely different picture. One that was large enough to use as the background without the picture becoming deformed. I found a picture that had a similar color scheme than the picture I had before. Since the picture was so big, I had to crop it in photoshop and then shrink the size. I also deleted the picture of the CD cover. It created to much unnecessary clutter.

My next challenge was to work with font colors, especially since there is a light beam across the picture, it was difficult to find colors that were visible. Doing an outline for Michael's name was actually not my idea. That was advice given to me and I think it was a great idea. I tried to use bright colors and stayed away from colors that would blend into the background, such as light blue, pink, purple, and black.

I choose a unique topography for Michael Buble's name because I wanted it to stand out from the rest. This was a font I had never seen before and wanted to give it a try. The second portion I wanted to stand out was the date and time of the party. For the rest of the information I used standard typography.

I used two starbursts on my poster. One at the top for the album title and one on the bottom for the price of the party. I liked the starbursts because they made everything pop. Since they are yellow, it makes it stand out even more.

Posters look like they are easy to design, but I learned the hard way that they are far from easy. I never thought it would take me so long. There is so much thought that goes into a poster. If it doesn't pop and catch the audiences eye then there is no point in creating it in the first place.

Michael Buble

I was really excited about this project, because power point is one of the few applications I have used before.

I had to start out by looking through my music and picking one of my favorite singers, I chose Michael Buble. It was a bit difficult finding information about him because he tends to keep to himself.

When we were first told that we had to make our own backgrounds I was a little nervous. The default backgrounds never work well with presentations, but I also did not know how to make my own. Or what to use for that matter. I started by looking through pictures on google. I knew that I wanted to make each slide unique. I started by simply adding the pictures into the slide and then I started stretching them into backgrounds or placing them next to each other. I also played around with the transparency of some of the pictures. It was easier to figure out how to add the backgrounds than I had originally thought. I did not want to add pictures of Michael Buble for all of my slides. I decided that adding music notes and a cd picture would be a good touch. I also tried to find pictures of sheet music to add as a background, but found none that worked.

I had a lot of fun creating the backgrounds and the typography was fun as well. I like using different fonts for everything. I try to match the style of the font with the pictures. If its a classy picture then I will use a script or something along those lines. I also never use the same font twice.

I enjoyed playing around with transitions. I tried to use ones that connected well with the consecutive. I also didn't want it to transition so much that it took away from the slide. My goal was to link the music with the transitions as well. This worked very well with the third slide. It transitioned as the music beat changed. It was perfect and made me so excited.

Overall, I think this was one of the easiest projects thus far.

Podcasting is taking over the airways

Podcasting is the latest craze to hit mainstream media. What is this new phenomenon you may ask? It’s the busy workers best friend; with it you will never be disconnected from anything again.

Podcasting was first developed in 2004 by former MTV video jockey Adam Curry and software developer Dave Winer. Podcasting is like broadcasting. Any individual cannot only listen to a podcast by logging into several sites, but they can even become their own disc jockey, talk show host, or recording artist. On these podcasts you can listen to anything from music to news to sports. It’s like blogging and digital audio technology combined. Podcasting is quickly taking over the place of radio. Podcasting, similar to radio, is a free service. It allows Internet users to pull mp3 audio files from websites and listen to them on their computers, IPods, or other various mp3 devices; one can even listen to soap operas and other popular television shows. There is no set time for when one can listen to these podcasts. Let’s say you miss your favorite soap at 2pm, you can catch it on podcast on your way back from work at 5pm.

To broadcast a podcast one does not need to buy a license and they do not need to conform to the FCC’s broadcast decency regulations, Podcasting is free from government regulation. Copyright laws don’t apply to podcasts either, though one can copyright or license their work. Podcasts can even be used for educational purposes and to find information about a topic, for example you can teach yourself how to speak Italian. BBC and NPR have even gotten into this popular trend. Some companies have tried to turn podcasting into a profitable business, so many networks have begun to feature advertisements and run commercials.

Here are some helpful podcasts to get you threw the day:

- learn Italian

- catch up on your soaps

- get the news on your schedule

Some popular podcasts include Keith and The Girl. On this podcast you can say anything about pretty much anything. It is run by Keith and his girlfriend, Chemda and they proudly boast that their podcast is “Not held back by the FCC or anyone else.”

This is a clip that is currently posted on the website for Keith and The Girl. Since they believe in saying whatever they please, a variety of their podcasts and videos have explicit material.

Nothing is exempt from being made into a comic.

Want to learn how to make a podcast? It’s as simple as going on youtube. You can even use your blogger account to make a podcast, so really all you need is a google account to get on the air. It seems like a complicated process, but for those who ar computer savy it should be simple, as long as you’ve got all the necessary equipment. You can also get step by step written instructions on wikihow.

Here's a youtube video that seems really helpful and informational.

Podcasting, although no longer a new commodity, is still going strong. Podcast listeners have grown and according to eMarketer the growth will continue until at least through 2013, when there will be an estimate 37.6 million people who download podcasts monthly. Double the 17.4 million from 2008.

The top five podcasts downloaded in 2008, include CNN News update, World Soccer daily podcast, Discovery News (video), Global News, and The Economist. Podcasting is not a thing of the past, but very much a part of the future. It helps all those on busy schedules keep in check with reality, whether it be listening to the news on your drive home or listening to your favorite television show while working out at the gym.

Hope Animation

This was by far the most difficult assignment we've done so far. I was so stressed out about this project and am so glad that it all worked out in the end. My poem is all about hope and I wanted to tie that in with my picture. I used Dorothy's ruby slippers as my focal point for hope.

I wanted to achieve many things with my animation. First off, I wanted to bring people's attention in with the topography of the words. Second, I wanted the words to pop out and move about the screen without seeming too busy. That is why I choose not to animate all of the words. I also choose to not add special effects to all of the groups of words, but simply have them come onto the screen.

The hardest part of this project was figuring out how to add effects to the words. Surprisingly, I quickly figured out how to create the animation frames I needed. I figured out that all I had to do was close the eyes of what I didn't want at that time. After this, it was a great deal of experimentation and frustration. Sometimes I would find the effect I thought was perfect and then it would change the rest of my slides as well. So, I would start to freak out. I wouldn't be able to fix my mistake and would have to back track completely.

Once I figured out how to add some effects it became slightly more enjoyable, but the stress never really stopped. I wanted to make sure that everything worked out.

I am proud of my final picture the most. I am definitely proud of myself for figuring out how to animate the words, but I am really fond of my picture. I think it looks amazing and is exactly what I wanted.

A bit of hope goes a long way

I absolutely love this picture. Not because I made it, but because of everything that is in it. I love the colors, Dorothy's ruby shoes, the flowers, the heart, and my reminders of Paris. At first I was so stressed out about this assignment and then somehow it clicked. I looked at Blackboard and followed the instructions. I started adding the images and then just clicking random buttons to see how they would word out. I used multiply a lot for this picture. This picture consists of Dorothy's shoes outside of Harrods, some lily's, the Eiffel Tower, the sign for Hotel Astrid, and the outline of a heart that I took from a shop window. I wanted to not only bring different colors into this picture but also different textures. The Eiffel Tower is the best texture picture I had. Not only does the Eiffel Tower have great texture, but it is also one of my favorite pictures. All the pictures that I have taken of the tower have come out looking amazing. There was also something else I wanted in the exquisite corpse. I wanted to add words, which is where the Hotel Astrid sign came in. Before I even started I could visualize where I wanted everything to go. It was just a matter of fooling around. I also lightened up the image and changed the hue. I love bright neon colors so this picture really describes me. The colors really pop and draw in the viewers attention.

I really stressed out for nothing. Once I got the hang of it this assignment became really easy and a lot of fun.

When creating a font poem..."HOPE" for the best

When we were first given this assignment I had no idea what to do. I didn't even know a poem that I could use. So, my first step was to google some poems. I found some good ones, but most were either too long or too short. This is actually only the first few lines of an Emily Dickenson poem. I felt that even though the poem was cut, these sentences still had meaning.

It took me a while to figure out how to get a new document on photoshop, one with an actual background. After I figured this out I inserted my poem. I kept staring at it, hoping that something would pop out at me. I knew nothing of typography and had no idea where to begin. I knew I wanted to bring the words alive and make them pop. I was trying to bring out the main sense of hope. I feel that is a very strong word and it's important to always have hope. I wanted to make "hope" the focal point, so, i started by making it the largest word. Then I started to take a look at the fonts. I picked the key words in the poem and changed their font. I wanted the font to connect with the words and portray them accurately, so each word had a different font. The words that I felt were not as important were all given the same font. I also enlarged the font of all the main words, although leaving hope the largest.

Some of my font choices were intentional and others were merely done, because there were no other options. My favorite words are hope, soul, and sings. I wanted "hope" to look classy so I put it in a script font. There were a few to choose from, some were not very legible. I wanted this word to be clear. "Soul" was a difficult one to choose, but I wanted it to look edgy. Someone's soul is the very fiber of their being. I wanted the word to seem sharp and to the point, while also seeming mysterious. I felt that this font completed all three. At first, I did not know what to use for "sings." I scrolled through the fonts and came upon this one. After looking at this I thought it was perfect. I feel as though it looks like the font that is used for play titles. For instance, I feel like if you looked at a theatre and saw the play title in bright lights this is what it would look like.

I've found that typography is not as easy as it looks. It is in fact difficult and takes a great deal of time and thought.

Contact Sheet

As our first assignment, we had to do a project using photoshop. This really scared me, because I had never used photoshop before, I'd never even heard of DPI. I was going crazy trying to figure everything out, but suddenly, as we kept going, it started to make sense. The further we got in the assignment the easier it got. One night I went to the mac lab to work on the project and was going insane. I suddenly couldn't remember how to do anything. I had my notes with me, but they weren't as detailed as I needed them to be. The thing that I struggled with the most was making a picture Duotone. For the life of me I couldn't remember what to do to make the Duotone button show up. I was freaking out by myself and was about ready to pull my hair out until it clicked. If I striped the color from the image and made it black and white then I could add color to it. When I saw that this worked I was about to jump up for joy. I was so excited that I was able to figure it out. The other problem I had was with some of my picture choices. When I put them into photoshop and made them 300 DPI they would become blurry. I had so many that were like this that I was running out of choices. Luckily, I had more than six pictures on my flash drive. Despite all the problems, this assignment was not as bad as I thought it would be once I got the hang of it. I found that I actually like using photoshop and I think its a really helpful tool to have if you like playing around with pictures.

This is a close up of my favorite image from the contact sheet. I think the texture and shading make it look amazing.

First Class

Covered all the requirements for the class and what was going to be covered. A little worried, but hopefully everything will be alright.