Abstract company mark

This mark is for a venture capitalist company. It is called provenance. (Not a real company) So we needed to come up with an abstract symbol that encompasses many other small businesses. The company was supposed to be in stationed in California. The name Provenance hints at, birthplace, creation, arising; coming to light, bringing forth, giving life, etc. As a company they wanted to be perceived as powerful, supportive, innovative, precise, stealth, intelligent, measured risk-takers and stable. I think I represented those adjectives.

Boo! at the zoo

This was for coming up with a brand that would show the on goings of a Zoo event. The idea was to mix Halloween and showing the varies zoo animals in one mark. So I went with the idea of Jack-o-lanterns. Inside of the center pumpkin you can see a cut out of an angry gorilla.

Chimera

We were supposed to come up with a mock company and try to create a word mark for it. Based off of the adjectives that we used to describe our company this is what I drew. It is really hard to hand draw your own font. I have a lot of respect for coca-cola. That's how they started with theirs.

final raccoon

I decided to take out the raccoon's foot to avoid confusion as to what is there. In my critique my teacher suggested pushing the circular shape of the raccoon more. So I'll have to give that a shot.

animal assignment

This is something I drew for an assignment in Brand and Identity. The project was to abstract and stylize a zoo animal using Adobe Illustrator. I chose a raccoon.

Flash animation

Here is what it looks like. You'll have to move the right side of your browser over. Here is the link.
www.fall10.graphicinterfacedesign.com/students/bfinch/anim/index.html

Sherlock poster

Here is my poster that I'm going to use for my animation assignment.

Website

So my website is up. Check it out. http://www.fall10.graphicinterfacedesign.com/students/bfinch/html/choicefoods/

Making A Fixed Body Background On Dreamweaver

This tutorial will show you how to create a “fixed” background once you have already placed an image in Dreamweaver. A fixed background is used when you want your content or text of your page to scroll but have background image stay in place. This tutorial also shows how to position that fixed image at the top of your screen and center it. So, when you scroll on your browser the content will move but the background will stay put. And when you scale your website on another browser, the background stays centered with it.

View end result in action:

You will need the Dreamweaver program. This takes no more than few minutes to follow step by step, but once you know which buttons to push, it will take no more than seconds.

Step 1:

Once you have placed your image in Dreamweaver using the page properties button you will go to CSS Styles panel. If the panel is not open or doesn’t show on your screen you can simply go to Window> CSS Styles.

The box will appear in the upper right corner in Dreamweaver. The tab will say “CSS styles”

Step 2:

Select “body” inside of the CSS Styles box. This is simply done by double clicking on it.

After double clicking “body” another box will appear that says, “CSS rule definition for body” at the top of the box.

Step 3:

In the “CSS rule definition for body” box select the word “background” located on the left side of the box.

You will notice that your image info for your background image is already there as well as a background color.

Step 4:

In the option that says, “background-attachment”, select the word “fixed”.

This is what allows the picture of the background to stay where it is while having the rest of your content or text able to scroll.

Step 5:

Now select the “background-position (x)” to “center.” Then press Apply.

You’ll notice that your background image has been moved and centered.

Step 6:

Lastly select “background-position (Y)” and choose “top”. And click apply again.

This changes the vertical position of your image. In this case selecting “top” makes sure that your background image will be located at the top of the page.

Step 7:

Once all of these options have been chosen, go ahead and click ok.

Congratulations!

What you’ve created is a background image that is centered starting at the top of your screen and will always be “fixed”. So, when you scale on another browser, the background stays centered with it. And when you scroll the content will move but the background will stay put.

About this tutorial:

I got this information and mini clip from Lynda.com, this site can teach you a lot of things. Check it out! www.lynda.com

Roughs for HTML website

These are my rough drafts for a food website that I'm planning to put together. The site content will be about the benefits of eating certain types of food. The categories of the site will be broken down into fruits, vegetables carbohydrates, proteins, and meals. Each of these categories would be broken up into subcategories such as hydrating, cleansing, weight loss...etc.

Site critique

Site Critique
flash: http://www.mono-1.com/monoface/main.html
html: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

The National Geographic’s website is what I chose to critique. What makes this site successful is it’s content. There is something for everyone who wants to learn. Whether you like animals, history, daily news, maps, games, science or traveling you are going to find information with beautiful pictures on this site. The background isn’t busy or overwhelming and the type is all san serif, which is an easier read for your eye. The beautiful photography that appears under the sites main categories helps give interest to the site.

At the top of the home page there is a strip of black that contrasts with the rest of the white background of the site’s page. This brings the viewer’s eye to the different categories of the site. Not only does the contrasting colors of the site’s background create focus, but the lettering of the categories is either in white or yellow, which goes great against the top black area and creates even more focus on the categories. This allows the user of the site to easily find categories and navigate through the site quickly.

Simply hovering over a main category with your mouse will bring up more specific subcategories to choose from. And from one page to another the layout mostly stays the same. The top always remains with the original categories wherever you go so that you can navigate quickly to somewhere else. The only things that change are the pictures that deal with the categories you choose and there are subtle gradient changes to backgrounds, other than that you can see basically the same “rule of thirds through each of the pages.”

There is both a visual and informational hierarchy. The largest at most interesting pictures along with the most important or most sought after info is at the top and then it goes smaller as you work your way down the page.

This site allows its user to be both informed and entertained with its information, photo’s, videos and games. From child to adult this site can work for the general population who want to know more.

Looking at the layout of this page allows me to have some ideas for when I create my own web page. I’d like to have elements that help lead the users eye to places where they can navigate easily. Keep things uniform or try to keep the layout the same or similar from page to page. It is also important to have elements that keep the user interested and entertained without overwhelming them. I’m still not sure as to what subject or site I’m going to make, but applying these elements should help me have a better user-friendly site.

HULK SMASH!!!

Sometimes you have those days when you get angry and you want to break something...I love the HULK! This is a PAINTING from a scene from the movie, I did this in photoshop ONLY USING THE PAINTBRUSH TOOL (and layers). I'm pretty happy with it, the artist in me always says there is more that could be done, but I think it's good enough to post. Take a look at the strokes by clicking on the image. Enjoy!

SLCC little label

So I was able to put this together very quickly in a tight pinch. I work for the SLCC bookstore, and they needed a little label or display sign for some clothes. SLCC's mascott is a bruin, so, I like the creativeness of the phrase to go with the imagery of the bear claw slashing or "tearing" through the background. If I had more time I think it would look awesome.

MADE MY OWN BLOG BACKGROUND!

This something I put together. I always wanted to do my own blog background instead of taking a template from a free site or something. So now, even the background of my blog is art that is done by me.

Grandpa Finch

Well summer is here and I'm happy to report I have still done some art to start it off. This is a drawing of my Grandpa Finch. It was a little difficult for me because I was working from a very small, fuzzy obituary pic out of a newspaper and the values on it were hard to work with or make out. It was fun to do.

Poster

This is my Helvetica poster. In my type class we were supposed to pick a font, represent it visually, give a brief history on it and display what the letters and symbols looked like in that font style.

TRIFOLD BROCHURE

Paintball! I did this brochure for my typography class. I thought it would be fun to do it on paintballing. There were lots of little things to fix on it. It finally turned out great. Hope you enjoy!

Working with a spread

This assignment was knowing how to use a grid system to come up with a good spread. We could only use certain pictures so i feel that its a little boring. It's good though.

Playing with Words

Past assignment: These are words that I tried to represent visually.

I forgot to put these up. They are just some assignments dealing with paragraph use and text. The assignment was to show how to distinguish different paragraphs in unique ways.

PAINTING

This is an enlarge-to-abstraction of a Calla Lily that I painted with oils. I did it for my buddy Matt Keyes and his wife Cassie. They are so great and fun to be around! They wanted a piece of art work to go in their downstairs and so here it is. Having such a large piece made it difficult for me to paint quickly and school made it hard for me to find time to work on it. Thankfully Spring Break gave me the time to put more brush strokes down and finish it up. Like I always say..."I worked really hard on it". I'd like to think my oil painting skills have developed a bit and are becoming better.

From the mouth of Mr. Schrute.

You gotta love Dwight Schrute. He is so ridiculous! I laugh a lot when he opens his mouth or just tries to sound deep. This picture is from an assignment for my typography class. We had to take a quote and put imagery to go with it. Most class members chose something really deep and meaningful for their quotes...I just wanted to relay a big smile or a good laugh to the viewer. I chose to play with the word trap in this quote and use an extreme angle of a mouse trap. And since it's a typography class, I obviously had to do some messing around with the type.

CERAMICS!

I really enjoyed doing a different media this last semester. I worked with clay! I used the wheel, and did some hand building. Surprisingly all of these items were hand built except for the Black plate.

MORE PRINTS!

Here are two prints that I have done for my print making class. One is a self portrait wood cut based off of old German wood cuts. The other is a aquatint print that I etched with acid in a stage bite process. I really enjoy the look of the eagle print. I worked really hard on both, however I feel I really busted my tail on the eagle print.

Collage

This is a collage of some of the past work that I have done. Some of these works are paintings, 3d pieces, charcoal, colored pencil, computer painted images, images drawn in photoshop, pencil, and torn paper. Some of these go way back to high school, but I just love them so much. Hope you can see them. Enjoy.