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Today’s Graphic Design Exercise by Alex Griendling
It really is quite genius.
He says “I do these as experiments, and use the below formula. It doesn’t matter if the finished design is any good or not, only that I’m challenging myself to think on the fly, and develop an interesting solution to the problem presented.”
Here are the rules:
1 – Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random” or click
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 – Go to “Random quotations” or click
www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click
www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 – Use photoshop or similar to put it all together. Your finished piece should be 11″ X 11″ trimmed and put on the white board.
You have one hour…..ready, set, GO.
*****
My random article was about Crystal Township, Michigan, and my random quotation was
“Life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all.”
from the Princess Bride.
For the picture, I chose a photo of a cow from flickr.
And here’s my album cover! It was so much fun to make!
]]>And so gave birth to Diamond Horseshoe Cocktail Sauce, named after a well-known supper club of the 1930s.
I had a lot of fun sketching for this concept; looking at art deco, movie posters, billboards and a lot of 1920-1940 signage. I picked up the typeface “Lemon Chicken” for free on fontsquirrel and altered it to give it more of a vintage flair. The flourishes, fish and diamond logo and shell seal are all hand-drawn. The two bottom images are the seal for the lid of the bottle and the wrap label for the neck of the bottle.
Here are a couple of my final sketches:
And the finished product:
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When I thought about St. John’s, Newfoundland, I thought of weather. When the project was assigned, at the beginning of January, St. John’s had just been on the news for having “the storm of the century” — businesses and schools had been closed due to subzero temperatures and snow. I was walking through the park on my way to my car after class, my umbrella buckling against the wind, battling a little Seattle version of an ice storm. That got me thinking about protection from the elements. After all, that’s what any skincare product’s primary function is: to protect you from the sun, UV rays, the wind, and the cold. Then I thought — wait a second. The owners and operators of the company, a husband and wife, both have PhDs in biology. Then I thought of the periodic table of elements, and decided that my concept would be “Elements” as in, protection from the elements, as well as the periodic table, and the science behind the manufacturing their skincare products.
I made the custom typeface for the logo typeface and “Clean Body Butter” letters, and the “blossom” in the logo is a drawing I made of an atom, raised ‘to the power of’ the Tval Skincare name. My mood board and concept incorporated the five elements: earth, water, metal, fire and wood.
A special thank you to Sean Balko, product photographer extraordinaire, for doing an amazing job of my promo photo. I am still completely blown away with his finished product, not to mention his outstanding professionalism. Even though he was doing me a tremendous favor, he treated this project with professionalism and integrity. Thank you so much, Sean. I owe you a big one!
Here are my slides from my final presentation.
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