be rad…be foolish

I recently designed and coded an HTML email campaign for a web-based wine seller out of NYC.  In the span of one evening, I had to teach myself how to code tables.  I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

I also had to create an HTML landing page users would be taken to after clicking through the email.

Below is the main graphic I created.  Click on the links above to view copies I’m hosting.

About a week ago I saw online there was an unofficial contest to redesign the food label.  Since this kinda goes right up my alley, and I don’t have a whole lot to do at the moment, I figured I’d submit something.

It should be pretty self-explanatory.  I have the four icons/badges at the top with the thought food producers would start making foods that would meet those parameters so they could brand their products with the most badges.  The ingredients list is at the top–organic ingredients are green and italicized, bad ingredients are bolded.  The next section uses a little bit of data visualization and color coding with an easy to read grid below.  The grid places the emphasis on the number/amount.  And at the bottom is a representation of where the food falls on the glycemic index.

I’ve been in talks with an ecommerce web design firm in Austin.  Part of the application was was to create a comp for a hypothetical client.

I had two options, a skateboarding shoe company and a women’s clothing company.  I was leaning toward the skateboarding shoe company and decided to commit to it.  I figured if I end up working for them, I wouldn’t get to choose the clients I work for.

Below is what I came up with after about a day’s worth of work.  As I designed it, I kept the word ‘mobile’ in mind.  I feel like this design could look good on a computer screen or a mobile phone screen.  I pulled the images from Google as placeholder images.  Otherwise, everything is my work.

For class we had to feature an undergrad in an audio slideshow.  A professor here at Elon put me in touch with John Mullen, a percussion music and performance major.  Really great and talented guy.  I thought the slideshow turned out pretty well.

As of today, I have been working with Photoshop for seven days.  Our professor assigned a website design project using only Photoshop.

The first photo is my ninth and last save and what I’ll likely submit to my professor.  The second photo is my first save; I like seeing how the project took shape.

click the images to view larger

This post is of a photo I’ve heavily altered.  The final product is terrible.  The quality is horrible.

I want to be able to compare my abilities in ten months to what I was able to accomplish my first day using Photoshop.  This is my first attempt to make a photo more vibrant altering most of the image.

I bet I’ll learn less is more in the coming months.

Before:

After:

Not too bad for my first day playing around with Photoshop.  I used the color range tool and changed the histograms for the sky and sides of the windmills.  Slightly grainy around the spokes on the windmills, but I’m pretty satisfied.  We haven’t covered any photo modification like this in class yet.  It’s all up from here!

The photo is from Greece in Spring of 2004.

Before

After:

We began learning about Adobe Photoshop today.  It was my first experience with Photoshop.  I couldn’t wait to start.  It’s about 5:30 in the evening after class and my head is still spinning; tonight’s going to be a long night with a lot of practice.  I’m hoping to produce some interesting work in the process though.

Our instructor spent about three minutes on the Cloning Stamp tool.  I had a photo from a couple nights ago that I’ve been excited to modify.  In two or three minutes I figured it out.  Here’s the result.

Before:

After: