For
my poster I used a combination of both Pixlr and Sumopaint. With the
exception of a one week Photoshop assignment in my Educational
Technology class, I've never used any sort of image editing software
before, which meant that there was a significant learning curve when it
came to using Sumopaint. After some frustration I resorted to Pixlr to create the top image with the original cow and then transferred that image to Sumopaint,
where I added the pie chart in place of the letter "o" in "Fractions",
and added the rest of the wording and images for the poster. I found Pixlr to be much more user friendly, which helped, because I'm so new at this.
I
wanted to keep the original cow (I mean, come on, he is really cute)
but I wanted to change the color. Red seemed really intense, and not
exactly inviting. I went with the blue
because I think it is less harsh of a color. The original intention
was to have the dark blue offset by much lighter blues and white.
However, since I'm still new at this, all of my attempts to incorporate a
lighter blue resulted in a very tacky picture. I was hoping to use a
lighter blue when I transferred the image to Sumopaint,
but light blue font wasn't visible and when I tried to use a light blue
background, it came out super tacky again. From there I tried to go
sort of minimalist with the dark blue font and white background.
Looking at it now I think it is all too dark and not the inviting blue I
was trying to go for. This picture might appeal to teachers, but not
to the children ages 4-9.
For the overall layout I stuck with the "Works Every Time" design, with the image first, headline, informational text aligned to the right, extra material on the left and the website/logo in the bottom right hand corner. I used "Chalkduster"
as the headline/product font to try and convey that this was a
kids/educational program. In order to make the white letters stand out
more against the dark blue background, I used the paintbrush tool and
outlined each letter to darken the pixels. To create a representative
image, I used the pie shape piece in Sumopaint to replace the "O" in fractions. I also searched Mindforge and found the Mindforge design logo, and the Dr. Toy Winner stamp, which I used in the bottom right portion of the poster.
I'm upset that I feel like I had to compromise my original design because I could not get Sumopaint
to cooperate. It would freeze, or delete text, or fail to save layers,
which was all very weird and frustrating. By doing this assignment I
learned what worked, what did not, and what I would change if I could do
the assignment again.
Images collected from
Leisha have you ever used lynda.com to get training on software? I know they do not have ALL the image software tutorials on there but they do have a good few including GIMP and Photoshop. Here is the link to the GIMP tutorial: http://www.lynda.com/course-tutorials/GIMP-Essential-Training/112673-2.html
ReplyDeleteBest part is that as JMU students we have access!