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Friday, July 27, 2012

Ad for Painting with Fire Studio

I know just enough about graphic design to be dangerous.  Right now I stumble forward and manage to come up with something. First of all, the new logo was an accident.  The web designer was working with some text, but then I started fiddling around.  I came up with Thompson Enamel color ... Flame Orange, Bitter, and Steel.  


Somehow I did something with transparent circles.  I know I was working with the brush making swirls, but how they got transparent and how they ended up on top of my logo, God only knows and he's not tellin'. But I thought it gave the contemporary design a slightly distressed look.
 


The first "ad" I did in Adobe Illustrator was slightly the wrong size and I couldn't figure out how to resize it.  When I started over, the image of the beads took up less room so I had a white vertical space I needed to do something with.  I drew a line ... or I thought I drew a line ... and I was attempting to put an arrow on the end, pointing to the gray box. What ended up happening was that I got a line of arrow heads!  Who knew! Previously, I had already accidentally given my green block behind the logo a texture, so I thought the arrows echoed the texture of the weave.  


I saw a recent ad from Ornamentea that I loved.  Actually, I love all their stuff, but this one has "x's" that made the block look as it were a patch that had been sewn on the page.  I eventually figured out how to do that ... I'm aging rapidly now ... things can't take this long in the future! 




I think the gray box needs to be reduced a little bit, but by the time I had already spent hours on this, I decided to give it a rest ... or me a rest, rather. 


Saving my work to the right format and size is another story.  Then sending it by my an email program that likes to reduce the size of the file, without telling you, is also a nightmare. I've been using Dropbox successfully to send large files.  North Light introduced me to that little trick.    


I've decided to take an online class in Adobe lllustrator from St. Pete College.  I think the online format will suite me just fine and I'll be able to schedule my time a little better.  I'll keep you posted on my progress.  


7 comments:

tammy vitale said...

Lucky for me I have a genius graphics design person in my art gals group - she teaches me a little teeny bit at a time. I practice until I (mostly have it), then I can get a little teeny bit more - on exactly the things I need to learn!

I think you did a great job! Happy Accidents indeed!

Jill K Berry said...

I love this tumbling, stumbling story and what came of it! Trained designers don't do better work!

Cyndi J said...

Sounds like a tale of Happy Accidents! Have fun with the class. I use Illustrator (about beginner intermediate level) so if you have questions, feel free to ask. No guarantees I'll know the answers though!

Laura Twiford said...

Well Barbara, you're just having happy accidents at every turn! I think it is looking pretty good so far, I agree about the gray box but otherwise it's great! Good luck in your online class, I once did an online class ( many years ago) in dreamweaver to build our websites when we only had dialup! By the end of the course, network solutions had arrived on the scene with basically fill in the blank options and I went with that :) I think I still remember some of the basic HTML but the rest as they say use it or lose it!

Carol Dee, CZT said...

I have tried twice to take a local PhotoShop Elements course. Both fell thru for lack of interest. Never thought about online course! Of COURSE! Thanks for sharing. I think your accident is a keeper!

Marcie Dove said...

Barbara - you should not apologize for your work, any self respecting artist will tell you that when accidents happen you are supposed to say that you planned it that way! Adobe Illustrator is amazing but patience is what is needed. Have fun!

Marcie Dove

jeanniek said...

I know this took up a lot of your time, but always fun trying to work our way through it. I do love the ad and the colors.