The ABC's of Spanish

This is the website I created for my final project.
http://webspace.newschool.edu/~lokus125/Final-SpanishSite/spanish-class-template.html

The ABC’s OF SPANISH will be an interactive, educational children’s website. Children’s education is an important topic and I believe learning a second language can be advantageous. Studies have shown it is easier to learn additional languages at a younger age. For the purpose of this website, I will focus on Spanish. The Spanish lessons will be created for children ages 5-10. This will be
depicted in the images, colorful text and the lessons themselves. I will cover several basic topics. There will be 5 subpages for each topic that will lead to the answers. The answer pages will be the ones I animate. Children will learn the Spanish word for different types of animals, places, people, numbers and time. I want the lessons to be animated, full of bright colors, and most importantly, fun and easy to learn. The goal is for children to begin to learn another language without realizing they are studying. I would like for this to be a stepping stone to move forward with the Spanish language.

Brooklyn Botanical Garden

I love flowers and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens is one of my favorite places to visit in the summer. Here are a series of some of my favorite pictures that I took. The first few are bright and full of color, followed by 2 scenic shots.

The Expert 2.0

Below is the design I created for a thesis book cover: The Expert 2.0: How Blogging has Changed the Notion of the Expert. I decided to go for a simply color scheme and format. I liked the idea of using a venn diagram to incorporate different social media networks and tie it in with the idea of an expert.

Opacity Mask

I followed the bittbox tutorial to practice the opacity mask tool and I think it came out well.

Summertime

My first attempt at anything in adobe flash. I was determined to make the ball bounce.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Launch Button

After numerous attempts, probably too many, I have only been able to create the below image. Around step 5 and 6 I decided to create the striped box with my own tweaks. The launch button was the most difficult to create. I don't fully grasp the opacity button and I wasn't able to create the word "launch" properly. I can't get the white font to stand out after using the opacity tool one last time.

Photo Shoot 7

Baseball in the Spring

Below are a series of baseball pictures I took at a Yankees game opening weekend. Everyone says Memorial Day weekend means summer is upon us and I believe baseball season is an indicator that spring has arrived. I took images of the game and the stadium to capture the overall essence of Yankees stadium, which is one of the more modern stadiums.

Shield

This is my attempt at following the gradient tutorial. I created a shield, but couldn't create the shine effect as well as I would like.

polka dog bakery

When I was first shown the logo for polka dog bakery I thought it was terrible. I found the worst part of the logo to be the dog. I understand they are going for "polka" dots, but the image itself is awkward to look at. Well, after looking into the company I understand why they have a logo of a dog with one eye.



Polka Dog Bakery is the company's tribute to Pearl, a stray dog the owners found. Pearl had only one eye, which gave her the funny habit of dancing her head from side to side whenever she stopped to say hello. She did a little sort of polka to everyone she met. So Pearl became the Polka Dog and danced her way into people’s hearts.

I do not want to completely altar the logo knowing more about the back story on this company. Unfortunately, I think it's safe to safe most of polka dog bakery's customers do not know this story. I have a suggestion for re-designing a new logo, but still being able to maintain the image of Pearl.

Here is what I propose for a NEW logo. I like the idea of making the font logo black and white this way it can be placed on all the packaging and not contrast with the other colors. The font is a play on the name polka.




Polka dog bakery has images literally reflecting the flavor of dog food in the packaging. In my opinion, this is the worst part of the brand. A customer doesn't need to see an image of chickens when they purchase chicken flavored dog food for their pet.



Rather than these gaudy images, I think the image of the polka dotted dog should be on all the packaging. On the back of the packaging, whether it be tin cans or plastic bags, should be a little excerpt on Pearl and how they came to found the company. At the end it should explain how you can donate to the SPCA OR if the company can budget this on their sheets, perhaps 5 or percent of every purchase is donated to the SPCA. People love to purchase products where they know part of the proceeds are going to charities. They love that feeling like they contributed in some small way.

Personal Logo

I went for a flirty cursive font with my initials. I think it represents my style, from the flow of the initials to the colors I chose for the design.



I originally chose a design that had a simple flower leading out of the L, but I decided to go without it for a simpler, cleaner look.Now I'm re-thinking this logo because I'm not sure if the monogram alone is enough.

Tools

Here is my attempt and creating a wrench and screw driver off of one of the tutorials given to us. I decided to add some color to the tools to make them stand out more against a white back drop.

Skull and Alien?

This is supposed to be an image of a skull and barbed wire, yet somehow I created an image resembling an alien theater mask, not too sure how this happened, but I'm going to own it.



Here is my 2nd attempt, which I feel is much better...

Photo Shoot 6

The theme is something along the lines of the calm before the storm along the hudson river. At first glance the images do not look like they represent NYC. They are dark gloomy. I didn't have to alter these images too much to capture the darkness.

Brands

Rue La La

I love the cursive Rue La La font as their signature logo. It's feminine and flirty, which works since their target audience women.

Dunkin Donuts

I associate Dunkin Donuts with great, inexpensive coffee. I like the bright logo.

lulu lemon

I recently jumped on the lulu lemon bandwagon. They provide quality products, but some of their merchandise is a bit over priced. They are a higher end athletic clothing store. Their logo is a stylized A, which I didn't recognize at first. I feel like the logo is easily associated with lulu lemon, but only if you are are into athetics, specifically yoga or running.

Verizon

I have had some horrendous experiences with verizon. There brand logo is simple, but there service is definitely not. Whenever I see verizon I associate the name with corporate, corrupt, terrible, but a company with excellent service.

Coach

Coach is one of my clients. I associcate them with being youthful and moderately affordable for a designer brand. Their advertisements and merchandise are full of bright, vibrant colors.

Photo Shoot 5

This photo shoot was about capturing animals adapting to life in a public park. The animals in this public park go about their daily routines and even interact with people. I tried to take pictures of the animals where a hint of color would stand out which I them played with in photoshop to highlight the pops of color.

Flags

These are my first attempts at creating anything in Illustrator. I started by creating designs then included a color palettes.The top image represents a more safe palette and color pattern. In the bottom image I was going for fun, bright colors.

Color Palette

Here is my color palette of soft feminine colors.

3D Image

Triptych

Here is an example of a triptych using similar shades of light blues and pinks. I noticed as I moved through this shoot I captured a lot of pastel colors so I decided to create my triptych with these images.

Photo Shoot 4 - Colors

Below are examples of colors I found in my apartment.

Burnt colors blending together.


Multi-colored images with print for graphics.


Bright colors for a fun display.


Vibrant scarves!

A small dose of pastels.