Yesterday, after the lecture about Font, I suddenly thought of the wall infront of my house in Hanoi. It's the most ridiculous wall I hvae ever seen:)). The manager of my community area commanded to paint a string on all the walls " Don't write on the wall". Actually he had made all the walls have something dirty on them.

More ridiculous, all drilling and cutting concrete factories competed one another to make use of those walls to advertise for them. The wall becomes a mess of all kinds of fonts and colors.They always painted such things in a stealthy way at night so that no one can caught them, therefore all the stuffs lay in a trifling order. My teacher's words yesterday reminded me of the feeling each time I saw those walls: many voices flown to your face:)). I always imagined many people trapped on each other to snatch customers:))I remembered them and used Photoshop to make my imagination come true:D

If you come to Hanoi, it's not difficult for you see such walls, many of which cannot be seen its own colors clearly:))

theme for Na

Yesterday, my friend has downloaded many pictures of Capuchino and cakes from Freeimage website and gave them to me. She said that she wanted a theme with all of them and blou stars and snow. Do you know that how many pictures she had? About 80 ones.
How can I collage all of them to 1 theme?T___T, it will overwhelm all her friends' eyes whenever they come to visit her blog. I then explained to her that thing and make her accept with just some beautiful images. Too many stars and too much snow also results in the same scene. Phewwwwwwww, I got into trouble. Finally, I made something that pleased her but not satisfied myselfT~T from design aspect.

I used Photoshop for this theme, simply just toook an image, adjust the image size, using Marquee tool to cut, copy and paste to my theme. After process of collage, I use eraser to make simple stars all around the surface. ! new layer with 3% opacity and Diffuse mode to make a little bit snow. Pentool, type tool and script font to create something looking handmade and gentle. The main colors are warm colors: brown, orange, red so I chose brown for the script. Easy, right?

So happy to receive grate attitude from my friend and see her eager face:X.
I had to tell her to give me the link to get the image for sure 'coz I never want to meet something called Plagiarism:))http://www.freeimage.com

My business card for fun:D

I have created a business card for fun. The flower on the top is the dry brush of my logo created in sem2. The business card is simple. I had to try on many fonts but I'm actually not satisfied with this oneT___T.

Just go to filter-->artistic--> dry brush for the flower, a cute green rectangle. Text is aligned. I also cared about the space to the margin to make it suitable.

I will use this business to keep contact with my friends who want to get the help from me for simple designs like flyers, posters for their events at school:D

Green planet

I came across a tutorial website about photoshop by chance. It taught me to create a sun and then I change to create a green planet by myself. Is this the earth. No, I don't think so. It's a green planet in my mind. No person there, just exist trees and river. Pure and clean like the earth from early age.

This image used lots of choices in Filter, for ex, layer style--> bevel emboss, render--> clouds, lighting effects, distort--> spherize, sharpen. Te ovelay mode is used much and I like shortcut Ctrl+E for merging 2 layers together so much:D.

It's up to you in playing with several choices of lighting effects and amount of opacity and shperize. Easy and interesting, right?
Here is the link for you to visit the website about tutorial:D
http://www.tutorialwiz.com/planet/

Combination coming from monochromatic male and female:))

Once again, I have a chance to play with Illustrator. Photoshop seems to be stronger in manipulating images, however, I don’t know why I still like Illu more:D.Perhaps, in Illu, I feel as is I myself draw instead of the machine.Trying to use the color scheme and apply design principles and elements.



I use clipping mask to create a series of circle part of the picture. Then I draw black circles with the same center and set them to lie on each other one by one. Through closure process of your mind, you can see the image of a yellow flower. I drew an arrow and a crisscross to represent male and female, two main factors in SEX. The arrow points at “Sex” to bring continuation and can you feel the strength inside that arrow and sex also?

At the right bottom are three images of the flower with different sizes from big to small to bring the proximity. I want to make viewers feel the blossom in plants.
The head title use orange hue with different saturation to focus on what is expected to attract viewers, and for sure it’s the letter SEX. The first letter A in the text is the same color as the title so that the viewer can know where to begin.

There is also alignment in between the text and the title, the text and the image, the title and the image, you can see. There’s not much whitespace ‘coz as I said, I want the viewers feel the blossom in plants, which can fill up the space:D

Black background and white text and monochromatic orange use aims to bring the strength and depth for the layout.

Shake a little bit in class:D

My idea about the running image of this layout started in the tutorial time in class but when staying at home, I did it after two above layouts :D. The most important thing in this design I nearly forgot is arrange layers in a proper way. I still use the same hue and different saturation degrees and Path type tool for the title. The color scheme applied in this case is complimentary, red and green. Three small images after clipping mask step and the big background image are manipulated with Filter--> Blur--> Radial Blur (Spin mode and Good quality) with different amount. Three images are applied 1 more effect to make it less sharp and mixed with the background: Effect--> Stylize--> Outer glow Soft Light + White+ 70% Opacity+ 7px.
The alignment is kept like the above designs.

Hope that you like it. If you think I should change something, feel pleased to leave me a comment:X

Dropping, falling, enjoying split complimentary scheme:X

The next layout is created basing on the coming color scheme in my mind, split complimentary, green, red and orange. I made use of two images, the yellow flower and the green piece with a dot of water. Playing with Filter--> Artistic--> Outcut, my image will have a costume like that:D. The yellow dot is still created with the clipping mask skill got from lecture. I arranged those dots in a way to make them seem to fall along the blur green leaf--> both continuance and proximity. To create the balance, a series of same dots in an inverse way (using rotate tool) is put at the left top. This series lies on one part of the “secret” letter to bring closure gestalt.

The title is created with red hue in different degrees of saturation to attract viewers’ eyes to what I want them to focus on :D. The title, the text and the image is aligned also.
Perhaps, something still needs to be improved ‘coz I’m just a amateur designer:D. I tried to apply gestalt in these two layouts. Each of them carries two distinctive theme, one strength and one secret.

Running away

I made this piece by chance. Yesterday, to someone, was a special day, Saturday Jul 7th 2007, however, to me, yesterday was the day I was so shocked. Anyway, I don't want to talk about it any more. I just played with different gradient levels and use one basic shape only. Black and white is so strong in creating feeling. The repitition of red dots and the complexity in those strings are part of my inside feelings now.Illustrtor with basic tool like fill with gradient, basic shape helped me. I still feel something not pleasant in this one but I haven't found out:(. I hope that after my calling in the dark, I can pull myself out of this ending...

Lines create feelings

Last week, after enjoying a lesson about design process with unforgettable example of Bitis:D, I was asked to create some buttons for a photographer’s website. I thought about them nearly four days and tried to follow steps of the process. Honestly, each time creating something like this before, I just thought a little bit and felt so eager and aggressive to start using my software. Hence, this time, it’s rather difficult for me to do it in a serious way. I don’t know anything about the photographer and his work. I just use my imagination and my experience to create these buttons.

I sketched many drafts in my notebook and was nearly dissatisfied with all of them. Finally I started with Illustrator. I don’t know why I just wanted to use lines instead of shapes in this case. Perhaps, lines can effectively bring both stability (of the mountain, the nose of the face, the relationship after wedding) and movement (of the river, the smile on the face, the harmony of a couple) in these different content buttons. I intended to use brush tool to create lines in a natural way. Unlike before, Chalk scribble is my favorite choice, this time I used Charcoal thin on purpose coz’ in the natural lines, I still want everything sharp.

First, I intended to draw something abstract and impressive, but then , I thought about wedding photos, something familiar to ordinary life, where ordinary people can enjoy them. I changed my thought. I want to combine both images and type so that every viewer can enjoy them. The idea began from the first button. I found the letter “L” in the image of the mountain and the letter “S” in the image of the river so that they can create the word landscape. The next two buttons are made according to some original drafts, however, majority of this creation is due to the mood:D. You can see how I created the letter “P” and the letter “ W” in them. I automatically thought about a script font to do the rest. Just a script font with the suitable degree of inclining can continue the mood of those lines. I tried some fonts and finally chose Edwardian Script ITC, regular and size 43. Remember not to stretch them:D

The background of the button is gradient coz’ it serves my request, the gentleness and anger in landscape photos, the mystery of each human face and the sacred feelings of the marriage.

I don’t know the accurate website, the photographer and his photos, therefore I just created these buttons leaning on my feeling and guessing :D. If you think I should change something to make them better, feel free to leave me a comment:X