"Show Girls" Illustration

Toronto Zoo pictures

I took a trip to the Toronto Zoo as part of a field trip with my GRA classmates for our Photography course (SCA266). Haven't been to the Toronto Zoo in about 12 years, so it was interesting going back to see what they have right now.

Here's a few of the shots I took that day that I feel turned out well:

GRA230: Owen & Jones business cards

Our last project before study break was to design a business card for a fictional law firm business. We started out by coming up with 3 rough designs before refining 1 design to be the final piece.

Rough concepts

Final Concept (double-sided design)

SCA266: Final Short Stories covers

The final product. Swapped out the placeholder hand in the first design for my own hand. Lightened up the image for my second design as well as removed the actors' names from the cover; opting to stick to the book cover design.

Black Creek Pioneer Village Brochure and France Composite

The final project for GRA210 is building a brochure for Black Creek Pioneer Village using the photos we took as assets for the project. For GRA220, our final project before our exam was to take an image of a castle and a gold horse stature and composite the 2 images together in Photoshop.

Inside spread

Outside spread

France composite

SCA266: Short Stories Book Cover: Rough Concepts

So our final assignment for our Photography class is to build a cover for a short story. We had a set list of stories to choose from, I chose "Greasy Lake". The story is about 3 friends who travel to Greasy Lake as their hangout looking for trouble (drugs, sex, alcohol etc). However, they run into real trouble after one of their friends gets in a brawl with a biker.

With both designs, I went with a vignette effect. I find that it helps focus the viewer towards the focal point of the design. The first cover I went with a black and white and an accent colour. The red type and the blood on the hand against a black and white background will really jump out at the reader and grab their attention. The bloody hand relates to the brawl one of the characters gets in. The hand is not mine, it's there just strictly as a mock up for the real composition.

Cover Design 1

Cover Design 2

When I got the bulk of this design done, I got the "movie poster" vibe with this one, so I went with it. Added a blue hue to the picture and the vignette to make the image look more eerie and ominous. The shooting location was a pond area in my neighbourhood right next to a shopping centre. It had heavy tree cover and murky, dirty water, so I knew right away that this location would be the best place to shoot my pictures.

Black Creek Pioneer Village brochure: Rough Concepts

For my Photography class in Graphic Design (SCA266). As a class, we took a field trip to Black Creek Pioneer Village. While there, our task was to take pictures to be used in a brochure mock up. It's very neat, picturesque place, so good photos were in good supply. If you block out the sound on traffic along Jane Street and Steeles Avenue, it's like stepping back to the 1800's. All in all, a very nice experience and a very fun project in the making.

Inside Spread

Outside Spread

GRA230: Typography Book cover

For this assignment, we were to design a book cover for a novel from a selected list. I chose the book 'Slaughterhouse 5'. It's a story about a U.S. soldier who gets captured by German soldiers and imprisoned in a disused slaughter titled "Slaughterhouse 5". Synopsis here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five

We had to design 5 covers as rough concepts and then choose the best design and refine it as our final cover.

Initial designs:

Final Concept:

I like the Stencil typeface because it reminds me of the way military units would mark crates for rations, medicine and weapons, given the fact that this book is set during WW2, I figured that typeface would be appropriate. The deep red is a very eye-catching colour, it shows the aggressive, gory nature of the book. The red to black gradient symbolizes the "out of body" experiences the main character has during the story; believing he travels backwards and forwards in time, jumping to all these different scenes including being abducted by aliens to a docile, post-war lifestyle.

Einstein Magazine spreads

For GRA210 (Graphic Design 1), we were tasked with creating 2 magazine spreads for Physics giant Albert Einstein. The first image is a 2 column spread and the second is a 3 column spread. Designing with a grid in mind is great way to balance out the spread and make it much more appealing, design wise. I find that the 3 column grid was much more effective as a layout than a 2 column grid. It was easier to break up the text, in order to make it more readable. The narrower columns made for shorter line lengths, which makes text easier to read.

Here are my spreads.

Graphic Translation: Gaming Headset

Drawn by hand using Medium size tipped brush pen