For this assignment, I chose a line from a 1958 letter John Steinbeck wrote to his elder son about falling in love. I felt that not only does the quote target people falling in love but about life in general. The last line he writes to his son is, “don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.” This quote really sticks out to me because I feel like I’m going through something similar in the sense that, I’m afraid of things changing around me without my control. It reassures me that I shouldn’t be so worried; changes are good and like Steinbeck says, “nothing good gets away.”

For this quote, I originally decided I wanted something with balloons but later decided on using an illustration by Banksy called “Flower Thrower”, it shows a man appearing to be in a riot, but is armed with a bouquet of flowers instead of a weapon. I think this imagine works really well in telling the audience that, sometimes what you think is bad or undesirable, could be rather the opposite. So don’t hurry your judgement and be patient, you could be pleasantly surprised. In a way, it relates to the quote – good will come your way, just be patient.

When I saw the imagine, I really wanted to incorporate the quote to surround the body of the subject and play along with the movement. I wanted the word “away” to be placed where the flower thrower was pointing his finger towards, to show that you shouldn’t judge based on how things look right now, cause good things are coming. You are not losing anything, but gaining. In this chaos, there is peace and love; don’t worry if things aren’t appearing the way you want, because there are flowers.

In this assignment i picked this quote which is “never give up on someone you can’t go a day without.” i picked this quote because the quote speaks to everyone. The image that i picked to go with the quote was a sunset with a couple sitting on the beach. i made the quote look like it was the time pasting which makes you think about the people. I used Bodoni because i felt it was the best typeface for my project. i leaned that by you moving or placing words on a image you can say a lot of different things.

My quote is “you make mistakes. you learn. Now, move forward.” I picked this quote because I feel like people can relate to it a lot. Growing up is apart of life and with that you learn things because of your mistakes. The picture that I picked was a guy standing and looking towards the mountains. I feel like this picture goes along with my quote because it looks like he is going towards a adventure. And that is what moving forward is about, it’s about moving into a new path to not go through your mistakes again. The typeface that I chose was Baskerville. I picked Baskerville because it is elegant and well-designed. It is a Transitional typeface, so it forms a difference between the Old Style and the Modern faces. So this is a great example on how it transitions old to new. My quote represents that same exact meaning, from going to new from old (past to the future).

From the beginning till the end, I changed a lot of my design, but the only thing I didn’t move out is the yellow umbrella. Here are some steps I took to reach my design destination.

First, the reason why I chose this quote: “Character is how you treat those people who can do nothing for you.” is because I’ve remembered this sentence since 3 years ago, it leads my thought through these years, so no matter how long it is, I will use it anyway, I told my self two weeks ago. Then the question is what kind of image should I use, I was looking for some helping hands, but accidentally, I saw a beautiful umbrella with some love hearts under it, so I draw some sketches to imagine how it will work. However, turns out those hearts will take too much space and I have to use enough space to put that long quote inside of 10 by 10 square.

So I tried a single umbrella, I chose yellow color because it enlighten the whole picture, just like how that quote enlighten me. But problem is I didn’t know where to put my quote, so I just gave a try. After I heard some classmates and professor’s suggestions, I started to rethink, maybe I should add or cut something. So I did some changes: I used black as background color instead of green; I added a little girl looks like she is giving out her umbrella to someone else, so it will more related to the meaning of that quote; I put those words along the umbrella, small but neat. I tried to combine words with picture into a very quite and clean environment. Silent kindness is what I want to express through this project, and I like my second design.

For the visually enhanced quotation assignment I decided to use the quote “ Live Long And Prosper” said by Spock on the classic T.V Sci-Fi series Star Trek. The illustration I choose to use as a reflection of that famous quote was the Vulcan sign that Spock does as he says that quote in the series, the sign is just the shape of a V using his right hand. For the lettering I decided to use Baskerville bold as It has become one o my favorite typefaces due to a previous assignment. The boldness of the letter helps to compliment the bold lines of the hand that is in the picture that I used for the Vulcan sign. I decided to put each of the word going across the 4 fingers used in the Vulcan sign as to create a sense of direction when you’re reading the quote from left to right which I believe really helps draws people’s attention to the quote. In doing this assignment I learned how important not only typefaces are in helping to compliment the picture but to give a stronger or weaker presence for the word overall. I also learned how important placement is because if your word are not placed correctly on a picture, the image can often drag the audience attention away from the quote and perhaps give the quote less meaning in the process where as the right placement helps the quote give itself and the picture a stronger meaning.

-Nova

By Xinran Zhao

This is a challenging assignment to me. It takes me more than three hours to work on it. At the first time, I had no idea what to do with the assignment, I simply placed the quotation on the top of the picture, and applied what I learned from this class so far, mixed upper and lower case letters, changed directions and colors of the words. However, I didn’t focus on the purpose of this assignment, which is to enhance the quotation. As a result, I got a very unsuccessful draft. The quotation on my picture was hard to see because I made the words black which is similar to the very dark background. During the critique, I saw a lot of excellent works from my classmates. I was a little bit upset because mine was not good enough, but at the same time I paid attention to how my classmates related their pictures to their quotations. Then I thought carefully how to make changes to my assignment. This time I came up with new idea. First, I noticed that the background of my picture is dark and complicated, it’s hard to catch people’s attention if I simply placed the quotation on my picture no matter what color of typefaces I use. Therefore, I made a pure black bar at the corner of the picture and put the quotation in the bar. By doing this, the quotation was obvious to see since the background is simple. Besides that, I changed each letter to bright color, yellow; and I used complementary color, green on some of the words which I think is important to enhance the quotation. I also enlarged the words that I want people to pay attention to. I chose Bodoni as my typeface because I feel like my quotation is easy to read with it. I like this assignment since I know more about graphic design by doing it.

I chose the quote, “Rule your mind, or it will rule you.” This quote really resonated with how I am feeling at the moment. I am currently going through some tough personal issues and it’s really difficult to not have that affect your daily routine. Some days I want to just stay home and not talk to anyone. I really do  need to remind myself that life goes on, I need to control your own mind and look on the positive side of things.

I chose the ocean as my illustration because it has a sense of emptiness to it. Yet, the ocean is so vast that it shows that there are much more things to look forward to. Endless possibilities with a sense of being alone.

The typeface I chose was helvetica, while i adjusted the boldness and the form of the text. I made the first part “rule your mind” very bold and stern, while “or it will rule you” was italicized to emphasize the alternative.

For my project, I decided to use the quote “Never let go of your dreams” which later due to the design changed to “Dreams, never let go of yours”. I had seen the original quote a while ago from a book my favorite English teacher from high school gave me and I had always liked the quote and so I decided to use it for this project. Since the minute I decided my quote, I already had an idea of what type of photo I wanted to use for this project. I knew I had to find a photograph of a small child preferably holding on to balloon as a metaphor of someone holding on to their dream like the balloon. I was rather surprised how difficult it was for me to find a photo in Google I wanted to use, I thought it was going to be a bit easier. Once I did, I was glad I found the girl not just holding one balloon but many. A dream is more than just one idea, but it comes with many different parts to it that matter just as any other.

During our critique of our drafts, the professor brought a good point on the position of the quote in the photo is not very creative and is just sort of posted on top of the photo. I am still messing with the position and design of the letters in the quote to make it look more integrated into the design. The idea from the start is a simple one, so I do not expect to do anything too complicated with the words, but I will continue to manipulate their weights and positioning around the photograph to make the design stronger.

When I first saw the quote ” Someday is NOT a day of the week,” I first thought about travel. When people say that they are going to this country one day or that country for vacation, they never say the exact date or time. This quote is motivational because it pushes people in committing to their desires by setting a date rather than putting it off to worry about later on. With the theme of travel, I decided to go with the idea of a person getting a letter with the quote from someone traveling all over the world. I chose the typeface Baskerville in italics because of all the options I was given, this looked the most handwritten. The other fonts seemed inappropriate to my vintage letter scheme of project. I slanted the text to align the words parallel to the edges of the letter so that the text looks like it belongs on the sheet of paper rather than flowing around. All the envelopes are beige or brown, giving the overall image an antique, vintage feel to it. I’ve been told that the image could also relate to pursuing a relationship with someone. To avoid confusion, I made my message more direct by inserting a postage stamp of an airplane flying over the word ‘travel.’ I learned through this project is that detail is everything. I first needed a solid mental image of what I would like to create. If I was just given a blank document and have been told to create something, I would have just sat there for hours contemplating random ideas. Preparation is key, as well as patience.

The typeface that I’ve chosen for this project was Century Expanded. I chose this font because it contained the drama that I needed a font to have to go along with the quote and the image. I was debating between Century Expanded and Bodoni, but concluded that I wanted the font to be symmetrical and equally weighed, in the sense that Bodoni has a greater contrast in the thick and thin relationship weight. What I tried to do with the quote and the image is to work with the loud, black image of the mountain, contrasted by the light airy sky, and implant a strict, but light, quote on the sky. I wanted to play around with the heaviness of the quote with the light sky, contrasted to the lack of words on the stark image of the mountains. What I learned through this assignment was that design takes in a lot more aspects of that I assumed would just be copy a picture and add words to it. This assignment had me realize that designers put into account the different aspects of the image, the contrast in colors of the image and font, the font itself, etc when designing something.