Extra Blog: Finishing Up

It's done. I'm graduating. Civil Engineering at CPP here I come. After this Evening Presentation, of course. I'm still quite lost on how/what to do, but I'll cross that bridge tomorrow. It's time to sleep for today.

April: Catching up

So now, I have to catch up on filling in my mentorship log. I've kept up, mostly.. I still have some things I have to add and some old things that I forgot, but I remember the dates and time. THIS IS WHY I NEED TO ORGANIZE BETTER!

Finalizing that third answer

So I just realized I forgot to post this before the third answer blog post, but this post was dedicated to the possible answers competing for the 3rd answer. So yea.

So for my third answer, I have two possible answers and about two more that just suck. The two semi good ones are Visuals and Typography. The two ehh ones that I have are Design Flow and Consistency. Visuals are just images and typography is type, the two main components of a yearbook. I'm leaning towards visuals, but the answer seems too broad, so I might go with typography. I think I might just drop the ehh answers. They could work, but with research so hard to find in those two, there is no point in trying it.

Answer 3?

So we need more answers, and I have two options right now, but they are slightly difficult to word right and even harder to decide whether or not they are relevant. The first one is a throwback to my working EQ with Typography. It is an essential part of design. The second one is Photos. Making sure photos are good and proper and things like that.

Answer 2 (?)

With Answer 1 over and done with, it's time to look forward and think about the next two answers. The third one is probably not going to come for a while, but for answer 2, I think I may have an idea....

COLOR THEORY!

Even though there isn't much color in OUR yearbook doesn't mean that good color can't make a yearbook look gorgeous

The New New EQ

So I updated my blog to show my new EQ. With it comes new answers and new research. Without doing any actual research though, I think I have one answer that I can find research for.
Designing a spread is hard work. Not everything looks good. For example, would you buy a yearbook when every page looks like this?

I wouldn't. I prefer when it looks good; something more along the lines of this.

The quotes from Seriah and Pinto are missing here, sorry about that mistake.

So, by implementing a bit of know-how and some design, you can make a mess look pretty good.

What is the answer we get from all this? White Space. Having some empty space helped this page out A LOT. That is one possible answer to my new EQ.

Vector Art vs Pixel Art

So, I found this article that basically told me the pros and cons of pixel art & vector art. In case you don't know the difference, pixel art is normally done in Photoshop and is what pictures use. You manipulate little pixels to your liking. Vector Art is better done in Illustrator. You use the pen tool to manipulate lines to the shape you want.
The biggest con when it comes to vector art is that adding in little details is strenuous work. My latest piece for my Independent Component 1 blog will show it soon when I update it. Making a flat image requires almost no effort, but when making realistic objects, prepare for a long journey of blood, sweat & tears.
The biggest pro for vector art is that no matter how zoomed in you are, there is no pixelation. Since vector art is just mathematical lines, you can make it as large or as small as you wish since no matter how zoomed out or in you are, you can always go further.
Pixel art is basically swapped in that its biggest pro is easy manipulation of realistic objects whereas its con is that if you zoom in too much, depending on the DPI of the photo or file, you will eventually hit pixelation. Here's an example of one of my designs in pixel and vector form.

PIXEL

VECTOR

The New EQ

So when I first came up with my EQ, I thought up of a really shallow question: "What part of a design is the most important in making an impact to the audience?" Not only is it very wordy, it's pretty shallow. After thinking over it a bit, I came up with a new working EQ: "What aspect of graphic design is most important in impacting the audience?"
With this new EQ, I have new answers which is what my presentation foundation is all about. Hopefully this new EQ will be my final one or will be close to it since I really like it.

Possible Books

FINALLY. After about 3 weeks of searching for a book that I can read online using ProQuest, I finally found a couple books. The first is a book on typography by Kristin Cullen; Design Elements, Typography Fundamentals: A Graphic Style Manual for Understanding How Typography Affects Design. So far, its had quite a bit of good information, but I'm having difficulty deciding how to Cornell note it, so I might wait a bit before I cite it. The second book is by Fábio Sasso; Abduzeedo Inspiration Guide for Designers. The main difference between these books though is that rather than being text heavy, this book, so far, has just shown a lot of examples of great design. I probably won't ever cite it, but I'll reference it for future design work.