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.

For this project I used the quote, “You are not lucky. You are blessed.” First, I think the quote very meaningful to me. I always believe I am not lucky in everything .Although I work very hard, I know I always blessed. I feel thankful in every minutes.  About the image, I used yellow bulbs. I put the text in the middle with the image. Also, I made the circle and put the quote around the bulbs. I put the image be my background because it is bare color and it can catch people attention.

The typeface I chose was Helvetica and I placed them on all capital letter, and put two “blessed” at the last of the sentence. The reason I enter two times of the word “Blessed” was to show it is very importance. This two words were the key words and I wanted them to be large and emphasis. However, I change my idea. I think the same size to circle the word is more beautiful.

Last, I learned how to put text in the form of different shapes in InDesign. I also learned I need different ideas to design. Where I put the single word is my design, I looked at what could look good together with different location in the picture.

I choose the quote, “Just Do It,” which is the slogan of Nike. At the beginning, I did not know that I was not supposed to use the same logo as what Nike uses. Then I have to pick up a new one. And then I did some research in Google, and this baby really caught my eye and I loved the facial expression which can directly what I want to convey. During this project, I know seven contrasts which I used two of them. They are size contrast and direction contrast. I did struggle for how and where to put my quote in the picture. Brainstorming is really important but difficult for me because I am not that creative nor skillful with InDesign. I found that the longer the quote, the easier to deal with this project. My quote is too short to design. I did try to duplicate “Just Do It” many times and I found it was boring and bull. Thus, I duplicated the image once and made one upside down. And I made the quote in Bodoni to connect two fists of two babies which  showed the little boy’s determination. Action speaks louder than talking because talk is cheap.

My quote was “Adults are obsolete children” by Dr Seuss and so I chose an image that had a had a message of having an inner child, and lucky I found this image that shows it really well. I then played around with the type , I knew that I wanted to be deliberate with my font choices. I separated the quotes in three characteristic groups and I wanted each one to represent their word. For adults I made it all in capital cases, in Bodini and I made larger in size than the others. For the second grouping of words I made it Helvetica Neue Ultra light because 1. I wanted to make almost not there and bring to much attention to it and 2. I  wanted to make it ‘obsolete’. I made the ‘CHILDREN’ in way where it was all fallen and clutter on the floor. I chose to put it in red & white pattern because the quote is by Dr.Seuss, so I wanted a design element that was associated to him.

Victoria Barreras

For this project I used the popular Dr. Seuss quote, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn the more places you’ll go.” The image I used was of Thing 1 and Thing 2 running while reading. I put the text in the middle with the image of the Things upside down. I put the image upside down because in his story the Things are known for running all over the place and causing havoc. I put the text in a circle to make it a little bit more whimsical like Dr. Seuss’ stories and characters. I chose to use Century because this one looked the closest to one you would see in a book.

One thing I learned was how to put text in the form of different shapes in InDesign. I also learned that sometimes you need to come up with a lot of different idea combinations before finding the right one. I switched my image and quote many times before making a decision. I looked at what could look good together with different quotes and images and finally made a decision after brainstorming.