Demonstrate a Working Knowledge of Basic Computers and Modification Tools, techniques, Photo Editing and Strategies | Portfolio Assignment

Create One (1) piece of computer art in the form of poster using feature of 3dsmax plus one of the photo editing tools (e.g Adobe Photoshop ). Print your art work in PNG/JPEG: format in the size of international A4 paper (2480*3508 pixels ). The Content of the image are to be entirely determined by the students. Make up your ideas and make for cool Picture.

Introduction

A good poster is the one that effectively communicates the message to the target audience. A poster can be used for many purposes; an advertisement, to initiate a debate or to raise social or political awareness of an issue. Designing a poster involves various graphic design processes. These design processes range from brainstorming to idea development to designing techniques, digital artwork, printing and production. There are many advantages of sticking to the principles of a design process. It lends value to your work, assists in qualitative presentation of the work, keeps things organized and lends credibility to the design.

How you get initial idea

The initial idea was drawn from the samples provided in the assignment itself. The samples were easy to comprehend and provided a basic overview of 2D graphic elements. In all, four design samples were provided. The Internet also proved to be a great source of idea generation. However, for the purpose of attempting this assignment, choosing samples from the assignment itself seemed to be a wise decision.

How you designed

For the purpose of objectively attempting the task of designing a piece of computer arts in the form of a 2D poster, ‘Planning’ was the first stage. This first step was the key element in laying the foundation for other key design principles. These design elements included:

• • Layout: This is one of the most crucial design elements. The mark of any good design is that it flows with a certain ease. Having a column series allows audience to grasp the message effectively, even if they are unfamiliar with your message or subject.
  • Spacing: This element lends a certain grace to the design and prevents clutter. No space on a design sheet should be completely utilized. It will lead to difficulty in reading the poster. Thus, the message will be left in the lurch.

• Balance: Eye-catching poster have a striking design element of Balance. Adequate use of this element strikes a good balance between the text and the images across the entire poster length.

• Readability: Readability is enhanced with the use of these elements:

• Large fonts

• Differentiation (Achieved through size or boldness of text)

• Breaking up large blocks into smaller ones

• Using bullets (to outline the content and provide adequate spacing)

Which tools you used

As part of designing this 2D poster, the following design tools were put to use:

• Drop Shadow: Drop shadow effect is used for creating shadows outside the text. In this poster, this effect has been used to give a dramatic effect to the text. It has been used in all the alphabets.
• Inner Shadow: Inner shadow is used to create shadow inside the text. Again, in this poster this tool has been used effectively.
• Stroke: Stroke is a design tool that comes into play when a border is to be created outside the text. This 2D design assignment saw ample use of this design tool.
• Brush Tool: Brush Tool enhances the background effect in this poster. It also blurs the images. For instance, metro and railway track images have been blurred using this tool in this 2D poster.
• Marquee Tool: Marquee Tool is an efficient tool used for resizing of images. Here, it has been put into practice effervescently.

What were the challenges and how you solved?

Several challenges came forth while attempting this task. At every step, there were some key decisions to be made, which proved to be quite a task. Which design elements to use and which one to avoid for effective and meaningful communication? Why to use certain design elements and why to avoid the others?

Why to choose one particular color and refrain from using the others? Why to opt for one particular font and themes while discarding others. Every decision making process was a challenge in itself. Every option chosen had to be backed by certain logic and support. Every decision made had to be justified through the work that followed. All these decision-making tasks collectively presented a huge challenge in the completion of poster design.

Conclusions

Several designing software can be used to design a poster. However, for the purpose of this design task, only basic 2D and 3D graphic design principles and practices were used. The same have been presented in this design document.

After successfully designing this poster, following were the key learning of the graphic designing task:

• Helped in identifying and discussing design principles when applied to visual media
• Better understanding of graphic design techniques
• Increased understanding of the complete process of graphic poster design, right from concept understanding to making the poster ready for production
• Better grasp on techniques including typography, composition, colour, narrative, etc

While designing this poster, various aspects of graphic designing were put into practice. In the process, best practices were discovered once the initial challenges were overcome. A better understanding was developed of various design skill sets and techniques. Colour use, typographic principles, targeted communication, etc were some of the key learning of this task. These skills will be very useful in enhancing professional practices later while developing a career as a graphic designer.