Afishionados,

Typically I reserve posting any design work until after I turn in the assignment. However, I feel pretty confident that I am done with this one, aside from some very minor tweaking here and there. It’s due Thursday, but you get to see it today because I care about each and everyone of of you dearly¹ and I am in a sharing mood².

This assignment has been one of my more entertaining ones (in terms of creating it). Each student in the class was given the option to choose one of the human rights from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I wanted Article 5, which states:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

A lot of my school work up to this point has been very crisp and clean, and I wanted to get my hands dirty, so to speak. I was instructed to choose up to three human rights in the event that I could not get my first choice, but thankfully I ended up getting it.

The stipulations for the assignment were very general and open-ended. The finished product has to be at least 18″ x 24″ and must contain the right in its entirety. Because this is for my advanced typography class, it must also incorporate type in some fashion. Here is what I came up with:

The most difficult part of this whole composition was getting people to read the human right in the correct order. I presented this in it early state to various people all over campus and asked them to read it. Everyone could make it to “torture” but then got confused as to the correct order after that. Originally, the human right read from left to right and spanned across the blood spilled beneath the wrist. Instead, the gap created by the blood divides the right into two separate columns (like a newspaper article). Once I rearranged the human right text to follow the column-like setup, people were able to read it correctly (and hopefully you were able to as well).

The arm in the photo is my own. I’m right-handed, so I had to take a photo of my left arm in order to get a usable shot. I laid out some scrap paper on my desk and snapped it under a fluorescent light. After some quick Photoshopping, I removed the “seams” from the stacks of overlapped paper. My arm is the only subject matter in the initial photo. Everything else was digitally added after the fact. The very first thing I did was remove most of the color from my arm to give it a more corpse-like appearance. Doing so also tended to highlight the veins near my palm and throughout my arm.

Here is a close-up view of the arm carving. I “carved” this out using my Wacom tablet and gave it that nice gory effect in Photoshop. I can’t say as though I have ever cut myself, but after looking at people online who have, I think the illusion is pretty convincing.

All the bruises and stitches in the photo are real, by the way. They just aren’t really on my arm. My favorites are the wrist bruise and the stitches. In the early stages, I only had the blood in the photo and I wasn’t getting enough of an uneasy, disturbed reaction from people. After I added the stitches, bruises and “weapons”, people were really grossed out, as well as engrossed enough to read what the poster was about. Overly gory is ineffective if people are immediately turned off and don’t read it. I think I found a happy middle-ground.

Finally, I looked at a lot of horror movie posters for inspiration. Most, if not all, added some grain over the whole image to give it an even grittier, darker tone. It’s very subtle, but you can make some of it out in the carving photo above. This was the very last effect I did, and it’s amazing how different the poster prints with the grain than without.

I really like the medical tools and the razor blade. The stainless steel saw is fierce-looking, and really disturbs people I’ve shown this poster to. I’m also very proud of the rust effect I added to the razor blade (the image I used was that of a new, clean blade). Rusty razors are much more intimidating. Another “effect” that I am very pleased with is the shadows I added to the saw, the syringe, and the razor (sounds like a C.S. Lewis books from hell, doesn’t it?). It’s one of the effects that I hope people don’t even notice I added because that means it looks realistic, and therefore successful.

Want to see the original photo for comparison? I figured you might. Aside from removing the aforementioned “paper seams” and some very basic color correction, the photo is untouched. Here it is:

While I’m very happy with how the poster turned out, it remains to be seen what the professor thinks. I suppose if she hates it, I’ll try and sell it to Lionsgate for use as the SAW V movie poster.

¹Lies, all lies.

²Actually, I lied about that, too. I’m really in the mood for chocolate ice cream.

Afishionados,

Afishionados,

Grades for this past quarter have been posted. I got straight As and it’s the first time that I’ve ever had a 4.00 GPA. Just about anything is easier than Nuke School, though. And design classes are a helluva lot more fun, too.

Of course, not everything can be an A. My Mozart brochure ended up being an 82 out of 100 (a low B), so the Colonel was very close in his estimation of a C. Nice work, Carnac.

Here’s the review, straight from her majesty’s mouth:

Several design elements have been editited and manipulated with Photoshop. Computers were to be used to write the panel of type and scan imags only. All effects were to be done manually. Copy inside was to be on ONE panel, not four. Nice overall look to piece.

Notice the typos of “editited” and “imags”. Perhaps it is just me, but shouldn’t professional graphic designers be able to correctly spell terminology associated with their line of work? And is the Queen’s eye so highly trained as to be able to determine which digital editing software suite was used on the Mozart piece? Could she really differentiate between Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro? Nay, says I. Methinks her highness hath stumbled upon the Fish, in which case I say to her: You’re a terrible professor and a hormonal bitch. Now go away.

The school is in the process of reaccreditation, so the instructors have been keeping various works to show “them” that the school is, in fact, capable of producing results. I shudder to think which brochures the Queen kept as examples of “A quality work”.

Afishionados,

Tonight was my last night with the Photocopy Queen. A BIG HOORAY to this, as I will never take another one of her classes ever again. What an uppity bitch she is. She works in Cincinnati at some design firm but lives and commutes to Dayton to teach. So she is always¹ in a FABULOUS mood when she arrives for class at 5:30 P.M. Tonight was no different. I’m pretty sure that my class is the worst she’s ever had, which isn’t really fair because most people do their work and turn it in on time. There are a couple of people that seem to have ruined it for the rest of us. I think the real problem is that most of the students in my class have personalities and the Photocopy Queen (PQ) doesn’t.

My final project was to create an brochure or pamphlet for my musician (Mozart). The way that the PQ wanted us to design the project was just as retarded as all her other “ideas”. Create a really nice comprehensive mockup and then (any guesses?) photocopy it for the final piece. If you have to, you may glue additional elements to your final piece as necessary.

I love this post

No, I didn’t make a typo. You read that correctly. I said “glue”. Who the hell glues things into a FINAL brochure project? I can understand gluing two prints together to form a brochure, but I would never in a million years glue something inside a finished piece.

There is also a serious problem with students using images they found online inside their brochures. Copyright issues aside, the biggest problem with this is that the images are typically at resolutions of 72 dpi (dots per inch). This looks great on your monitor, but looks like total shit when you print it out. But nobody seems to be able to grasp this concept and of course the PQ never explained it to anyone. To better understand how poor 72 dpi is for printing, consider that a newspaper is about 150 dpi and most printed material you see (magazines, photos, books…etc.) is 300 dpi or better.

My classmates can be thankful that I am not their professor, because I would fail you instantly for using pixelated images in any final work that you turn into me. Instant F, no questions asked. I am a resolution Nazi.

I created my whole project by cheating with Photoshop at 300 dpi so it looked perfect when printed. I created a cover and back from scratch using an old leather texture. The cover should look familiar, because it’s what I was working on when I decided to redo Old Fish and Lemonade’s appearance. It even uses the same font.

All the burns, stains, and “spine crease” were added by me. There is also a gradient and burnt effect added to the text, in addition to separate stains for the W and the A (Wolfgang Amadeus, in case you were wondering). I “carved” the corner pieces out of a brass texture and added stains and cracks to them to make them look older as well.

There were 16 panel pieces in total, but these are the parts of the brochure that I like the best so I’m not showing you the other 6. The brochure unfolds to this “mini poster” made up of the interior 8 panels.

Notice the return of my flowery violin pattern! I wanted to use it somewhere in my final project and I’m glad I did. Also notice that the treble clef is stained inside and slightly blurred to look like an antique drawing or print. The text over Mozart’s head is a snippet from a biography paper we had to write about our musician and is typed in one of my favorite fonts. I added a slight golden glow to the text to make it look older, stained, and easier to read. The quote is from Mozart and is meant as a jab to the PQ and her ignorant beliefs about photocopying everything. I think my approach is better than hers.

The final brochure is 8.5 inches high and 17 inches wide. I printed the two parts on a plotter and used a spray adhesive (Barbaro in a can) to stick them together. I trimmed the edges so that they lined up then folded it together so it ultimately became a 4.25 inch brochure that unfolds into a poster. No glue or photocopying required!

Perhaps I am too conceited, but my brochure was one of the VERY few brochures that didn’t suck horribly. It really did look better than everyone else’s and I’m glad that I used the computer and Photoshop, despite the bitching of the PQ.

¹Never