Whale Watching Brochure

I wanted to use this brochure to make people become interested in going on a whale watch. To do this, I put pictures of what one might see on a whale watch in the middle of the inside brochure, where one's eye is immediately drawn to after opening up the brochure. It was hard to pick what information to put in the brochure so the reader wouldn't feel overwhelmed when looking at it. I stuck to the very basics so the reader would know where it is, what it is, and when to get there. I thought the most challenging thing was how to set up the brochure, like what information to use and where, and also how to make it aesthetically pleasing. If I had more time I would definitely work on the aesthetics of it, I like the inside of the brochure but I feel that I could have done more with the outside of it.

CD Release Poster

This project was very different since it was done in Quark, a project that I hadn't used to make a poster before. Because of this it was somewhat difficult to figure out how to do certain things and it took a lot of trail and error to get a better grasp of Quark. I wasn't sure what to with the background, but I took the idea from an album cover that they had already done and I really like the way it came out and the different colors that were used. If I had more time I would have played around a little more to see what Quark can do besides just the basics.

Jack's Mannequin Kiosk PowerPoint

This project was really interesting because the only other times I have had the chance to use PowerPoint were with academic slideshows. It was really neat to see all of the different things PowerPoint was capable of. It was a difficult assignment at first because I wasn't used to using the creative aspect of the program, so I had no idea how to do some of the things like adding animations and setting up a slideshow so it runs on its own. I figured these out by trial and error, and after a little bit I managed to get the hang of it. It was also hard to figure out how long each slide should run for, and what pictures should go with the slides. However, I really liked using PowerPoint in this way to make a music slideshow instead of just a bulleted fact-based one. I was proud that I was able to make it so everything ran on its own. If I had more time I would work on the style of the slides a little more.

After being taught how to do the first few rows in class and after some trial and error, this assignment wasn't too difficult. It was interesting seeing the different ways that a picture could be altered. The only decisions that I had to make were what pictures to use for each topic, and also what to do with the images in the purpose row, since everything else is laid out as how to alter each image. I really liked using my own pictures with this assignment since it made it more personalized, especially when everyone was doing the exact same assignment. However, the hardest thing to do was picking out what images to use. I liked the content row the most since it was fun to see an image change as it became more and more cropped. I also thought it was interesting to see how the format/mode row really changed how the image looked. My favorite image from this row was DuoTone, which is the pink image shown below. If I had more time I would have played around with the purpose row a little bit more to alter the images even more through using filters.

Font Poem

I chose “Hope is the Thing” by Emily Dickinson because I really like how she described hope and the message the poem sends. To show the emotion of the poem, I made some of the more important words bigger, such as “hope,” “soul, and “never stops.” Other words are gray, like “without the soul” to symbolize the meaning of the phrase and to make it blend more into the background then the other words which were left white for a greater contrast against the black background.
One of the biggest decisions I had to make was figuring out what fonts to use. I chose to use a lot of fonts because each line is a very different example of what hope is, and I wanted to make sure that each line was distinguished from another. Also, in some lines more than one font is used so that a certain word or phrase would stand out more. I chose to use Edwardian Script for the word “hope” since it is a very flowing font and conveys, in a sense, the feeling that one associates with hope. “Is the thing with feathers” and “without the words” are in Tekton Pro since it is a very simple, clean font that neither takes attention away or draws attention to. If it was a more ornate font, I think some of the other fonts would be more overwhelming since there are a lot of them. “That” and “in the” are in Myriad Pro because it’s a very plain font, and the words do not need to be given much attention. “Perches” is in Chaparral Pro because I thought it looked like a very light font, and to me something that “perches” would be very light. “Soul” is in Lucida Handwriting and “sings the tunes” in Curlz MT since it looks very carefree, as someone usually is when they are singing. Lastly, “Never stops at all” is in Gloucester MT since it gives the sense of something stopping without looking very abrupt.
A problem that I encountered was moving different words and phrases around, but I solved this by placing all the words I wanted to move on separate layers. I’m proud of how it came out, and also by the way the fonts seem to fit the poem. If I had more time, I would rearrange the poem even more to make certain words stand out more and to make it a little more creative looking then just having one line after another.

Hi, my name is Tricia Reed and I am doing this blog for my Electronic Communications class. I'm a sophomore at Roger Williams University and a communications major.