In this project cohesiveness was very important when making choices on what to do. I thought of cohesiveness when looking at the movement. I looked out for cohesiveness too so everything could fall into place and not look unorganized and cramped together.

The color palette is important for this project because color has a meaning. For example in my project I picked red for the locator of the cities because it calls out attention and drags the eye there. I also picked red for high temperatures and blue for low temperatures portraying cool and warm through the color. I picked colors for the background thinking of not making the context less important by distracting the viewer by the color of the background.

I also thought of legibility when I picked the typefaces for the names of the cities. I was trying to go for a typeface that sort of portrays each city but for some the typeface was not easy to read therefore I looked for a similar one but that was easy to read. I made those decisions for the intro and the first latch but because my second latch has more movement I made a decision to change my typeface to a Sans Serif so it would be more legible, cleaner and it looked more cohesive.

From the projects of my classmates I learned that I made some poor decisions on the color palette. I think I have more colors from the palette than they do. The fact of not having many colors works better for unity. I also noticed they used the same typeface through the whole project and it helps legibility because they looks cleaner.

This assignment was to make a map based on decisions of Yes/No or multiple choice but the hard part was that at the end there could only be one choice. The first part was the hardest for me because I did not know if the topic had enough options so I changed the topic three times. I came up with several questions that had a Yes/No decision but I want to go back and think more about it so I can have more options. It lacks symbols and that was a big part of the project.

 

This project illustrates how I organized my budget of food for six months. The point was to create three different charts, bar, line, and pie, and show different information for each one but at the same time related to the main topic. First, I went through my expenses, find the food transactions, and then I organized them into three categories: groceries, restaurants, and junk food. I fulfilled the requirements but I want to go back and do a little more research on the information I am providing so I can make iterations to the charts and make them more different from each other.

For this project we were asked to pick two locations and to identify something between that area. We were supposed to add zones, networks, and choropleths into our map. I picked the area between St. Edward’s University and my apartment and the map illustrates the price range of the car washes located between these two locations. I looked up the prices of each car wash and illustrated them with color. The darker blue are the most expensive and the brighter blue are the cheapest. I focused a lot on the specific location of the car washes instead of making it a choropleth map.

For this project I chose to create a symbol for photography. It is something that I really enjoy doing and hopefully in the future I would like to have a photography business besides being a graphic designer and because of that I wanted to create a symbol for it.

The first step in creating the first six symbols, traced and stylized, were done directly in illustrator and were not as hard to accomplish as the last three that were abstract. I had a hard time with the last three because at first I did not get the concept of abstract but at the end I understood but it was still hard to make a meaningful symbol without looking like something.

For the hybridize step, I combined 2 or 3 of my symbols but at the end I picked the symbols that looked best and combined them.

For my final three I combined film with memory, collage with camera, and lens with frame. I made different symbols for the three changing little details on them.

 

 

 

 

After “massaging” the symbols, these were my final versions.

The rubric I followed for my symbols contained the following rules:

• Black and white only
• Simplicity but detailed
• Not too complex
• Legible at any size

Plotting my symbols was easy for me and I had no problem with it. The lines in my symbols were bold enough so they could be distinguished from a distance. I learned a lot in Illustrator and from the critiques during class on how to make my symbols better. I participated when asked for critiques and accepted the critiques and feedback for my symbols. They are not too complex but they go straight to the main idea of photography. On a spectrum of grading for these symbols,  they meet the criteria required and I think my work deserves an A. The viewers get the main idea and the meaning of the symbols so I think that gets to be above a sophomore A grade.