Creative Cloud Suite: Illustrator Image Trace

The task for this creative cloud exercise was to produce a image trace photograph with a custom based logo. We was asked to use a sport based photograph for this task, I think that this would work well for a promotional design. I decided to find a quick photograph online for my design, this ended up being a photography of a blonde women running in a city. With this photograph I then image traced at a 6 colour setting, with the result of the colour scheme being below. In addition to this I could ungroup this image trace and delete any areas which I did not particularly like, to perfectly capture of delete any unwanted features within the trace.

Fortunately the design I was left with satisfied the concept that I was looking for. After The completed trace I then had to design a logo to be place on the image. Keeping in mind the activity that the women was doing in the photograph, I decided that my logo would be called Endurance as it symbolized the women's pacing. Using the typeface Helvetica I then added a simplistic curved shape edited with the pen tool, this allowed me to adjust the curvature of the shape to my desire. This shape was on a slight slant, giving the impression of a hill, for when running up a hill you would gain stamina and build up your endurance. I got this idea from the Adidas logo where there logo represents mountains for running.

Here is what the original photograph looked like before the image trace.

Overall I am really happy with the overall design of this image trace and I will make sure that I experiment with this Adobe illustrator feature in the future as it captures a stylised appearance of design, without doing a lot of work to it. This could possibly be a great idea to mock up concepts for designs.

Creative Cloud: Interactive Album Booklet

This Adobe Creative Cloud tutorial was to explore more advanced features of creating an interactive PDF. These extra skills would help us in producing out PDF's if we wanted to include video references in our future research and or development.

We began by reproducing the pervasive percussion album cover using a new blend of tools. A new tool which I found out was to be able to select the exact colour of an image and applying this to text and shapes in the document. This made finding the exact colour of the document very easy. This tool is similar to the Eyedropper tool in photoshop, however in indesign you need to hold the mouse button down and let go when over your chosen colour.

Here is my version of the Pervasive Percussion Album (Below)

After this brief introduction to the session, we then looked at creating a table of contents, which is basically a digital contents of all the pages in the document. The reason why this is an effective tool, is because it saves time on constructing a contents page manually, and can be updated if the documents layout changes. This is also where I found the help tool effective as it guided me to the table of contents, as I was unable to find it.

This part of the session I looked at including video within a interactive PDF. We used a video suppled on unlearn called Swing of change, which was an animated film. Quite simply to have video in indesign you have to simple place it in the document, however to have a fully functional video, with a pause and start button, you are required to mark some options in the media tab. Features in this menu include the ability to have the video play instantly as you go to the specific page the video is on and also create a display window of a particular frame, if the video fame currently is bland. Something which I did find useful however, is that to be able to see videos in the document PDF, it has to be opened in Adobe Acrobat reader.

Overall I gained the ability to add videos into indesign, which in my opinions a very important skill to have when constructing digital media. I also found out that Indesign is much more than a research and publication software, as it can be used to create many sources of media. I am very happy with the PDF I produced and although it's not a publication worthy outcome, I think that the skills acquire fro this session are very important, which I will apply to my future project documents.

Creative Cloud Suite: Cinema 4D Tutorial

This was the final process and production I have left for the remainder of my first year. In this session I experienced using Cinema 4D, a program focusing on a 3D environment, as that this software can be very hard to get the hang of, but can be a exceptionally useful for my skill development as a designer. We began by watching a short showreel, showing myself and the group what we can potentially do with the software, when we practice with it.

We also looked into a website called BEEPLE, where Stephen discussed about a designer who creates a new design everyday and has accumulated over 3000 designs in total.

I started the excise of by looking at preset examples which I downloaded online from unlearn. These assets gave a useful look into what perspective I would have when creating an outcome and understood that everything until the final render looks very wireframe heavy. Stephen then talked about different features and shortcuts.

Key Shortcuts

Number 3 key and mouse rotate the camera

Number 2 key and mouse zoom the camera

Number 1 key and mouse move the camera sideways

E key changes the position of the object selected

R ket rotates the object selected

S key scales the object selected

O key centres camera on selected object

I was set a range of  task's this workshop, in order to learn how to use Cinema 4D.

This image shows myself separating the shape into sections, so that I could transform the shape from its original cube form. My attempt was to make a building from only a couple of assets. This is how far I got before having to move on to the next task.

This task focused on forcing a cube to curve by increasing the strength of bend object, this created a spiral shape. I further developed on this by adding a small sphere within the curve and adding an extruded text with the title Primecore Industries. This was done to form a logo. I really liked the outcome and therefore began adding some lighting to the 3D logo.

After generating my shape from the curve we then looked at using the cloner tool, a tool which enables the ability to clone a shape without the need to produce a set of individual layers. This created a interesting looking pattern, similar to a fan or engine part. I also added some animation to the cloned shape, making it spin for a duration of three seconds.

Lighting is an important feature of Cinema 4D, it helps visualise the 3D space when in render view. Otherwise what could be really detailed 3D work can look rather flat and boring. I was asked to import a illustrator vector within the program so that I could make it 3D, introducing me to the inter program compatibility of the Cinema 4D. However to be able to insert the vector, I had to downgrade the current version of my illustrator save file, when saving my work, this then allowed for the program to accept my file. As I currently didn't have any illustrator files on my computer at that present time I quickly generate a smily face vector.

Unlike extrude, where the vector would be filled completely, I was asked to use the rectangle within the pen tool drop down menu, so that when I applied the sweep object, it created and outline. This in my opinion work out better for my design as it gave the face more depth than if it was extruded. This worked very well with the implication of lighting effects to better make the face stand out.

In addition to lighting I was also shown how to add texture and effects to objects. I decided to add a some transparency to the face to take the form of a glass like texture, also including some tint of colour. This made the face stand out much more from the background.

The final experiment which I did was to understand some basic physics of the Cinema 4D software. To do this I started off with a partical emitter, which when played thought the animation timeline shows the direction of where the particles were heading. However, no particels could be dispersed just yet as I needed to add a shape and add basic rules to the objects. These rules would give the software information on the objects would react, in addition to reacting to their environment. For example it the spheres which were going to shooting up from the ground would then collide with the ground, instead of clipping through it. Give the animation a more realistic perspective.

Throughout the session I looked briefly into the 4 perspective camera angles, so that I could get a much greater understanding of where my objects were, with in the program,

Here is what text looks like with lighting effects but no sky and base. This is great when you are after understanding what light is effecting just an object.

Here is what the text looks like in standard editing mode.

Here are a couple of short animations which I produced within Cinema 4D.


C4D Experiment #1 from Jordan Harnett on Vimeo.


EXAMPLE 6_Editor_a from Jordan Harnett on Vimeo.

Overall this Cinema 4D software tutorial helped me understand that I as a graphic designer I must be much more diverse in the way I produce my work. Being quite skillful in many particular softwares would extend my creativity, making myself a much more valuable assets for jobs when I graduate.

Creative Cloud:Text and Image Layout - In-Design 2 Page Spread

This Creative Cloud session we looked into generating layouts and refining our skills across a 2 page spread in the adobe program indesign. We were asked to select an image of our choice for the excise and I decided that I wanted to use an image of something I was really interested in. Due to the recent release of the game Fallout 4 I decided to choose an concept art image of the Brotherhood of Steel armour. With this image we were shown ways of altering the its appearance, this was done by utilising both photoshop and in-design together converting the image to a bitmap. When the photograph had been converted a number of effects could be applied to the image creating different visual effects.

Monochrome Textured Effect

RGB Colour Effect

Monochrome Effect

CMYK Colour Effect

We then looked at composition and text editing. This involved placing an image into the title, in this case the fallout 4 title, using the same image I had previously bitmap edited. This title had also certain letter elongated in illustrator giving a unique impression to the page. For good measure I added the pip-boy mascot for the fallout games onto the page. 

Afterwards I used the same pip-boy mascot and place him into a bulk place holder writing text. However by clicking the image surrounded by text icon at the top of the program, this enabled the icon to influence the text placement. I place him many times to see the overall effect this button had on the page. I am not a fan of this feature as I like to have my layouts clean and divined.

While focusing on text placement we was show the how to make text follow a particular path, this was done by firstly creating a path pattern using the pen tool and increasing the stork of the line. I then inserted text on the line, creating its path. I thought that this was a useful tool in creating unique page layouts, adding some creative flare to a magazine page.

To better understand composition we was show how to add rulers and grid guides, it was said that it is best to divide a page by using 12 likes, this is because it has the a good amount of divisible lines allowing for almost any paragraph with. We then created three paragraph each at three bars wide and make each paragraph varied lengths.This was show to us so that we could understand how to make standard text look more appealing, within a layout.

The final thing I was shown was how to use layer effects in indesign, this feature is also in photoshop but I didn't know how to apply this with this program. This was accessed through by opening the effects window and using the drop down menu to create certain layer effects over a background image. This image was created by creating an orange back and applying the multiply effect on top of it.

Overall this this was a very enlightening tutorial as I now understood how to make images look more creative in indesign rather than needing to depend on photoshop to do simple tasks. Increasing my potential production speed during projects. 

Practical Drawing Interior Space

This week our practical drawing class with john consisted of interior drawing. This was the complete opposite of my last lesson with john, as we focused on wide open spaces. This week was about understanding interior environments, focusing on perspective. I wasn't very good at this, however I used a basic line style of drawing, using different coloured sharpies for each scene. I wanted to explore the idea of looking outside from an interior, giving a much more enclose feeling but having a glimpse of freedom.

This area was a drawing for the perspective of the practical studio area where we have many of our group tutorials on a Friday. With the late windows I began to use them like a natural frame, focusing my detail within the my makeshift canvas. From my perspective I could only see the roofs, so I was limited to what I could draw, and I didn't want to focus on my interior surroundings.

This quick sketch focused on little areas of inside objects, and had quite an abstract theme.

Overall I am not very happy with the outcomes of this drawing session and I would like to get better in future so that I can better integrate drawing into my graphic design studies, as I see it as a useful skill to have for the foundation of ideas.

Creative Cloud Suite: Josef Muller Brockmann In Design Poster Reconstruction

This purpose of this session is to reproduce Josef Muller Brockmanns most iconic international design movement posters. This was done to introduce those who have not had much experience with in design before, so that they can get acquainted with the software. I have had much experience in the past with this software so I found the session rather easy and not quite difficult. However as I have been looking at Brockmann for my sense of place project, I found that this was a welcome introduction to generating this particular design movement.

Although the idea of this was to reproduce these posters, I decided that I would change a few elements to make them more personal and distinguishable from Brockmann's originals. I did this by changing the original font and some minor colour changes for backgrounds. I think that this was a good choice to make, as it allowed me to experiment with colour and text.

Practical Drawing: Object Drawing

This practical drawing session with john was about improving our skills of drawing and understand drawing with perspective. The task which was set for this was object drawing. We were set given a number of scenarios where objects were displayed together, and we had to draw the objects from our current perspective. I found this task quite hard as I know that I am not a particularly good drawer and struggle with gather a correct perspective. However I attempted at capturing what I saw in-front of me. I decided that I would go along with any mistakes that I made and draw in fine liner as I would quickly shade any darker areas of my drawing. I think that this turned out okay, but I understand that I need to improve.

So that I could improve I started drawing some objects with pencil and setup my own little display with a meal deal I purchased at the student union. I wanted to focus on getting the outline right to begin with, so I began sketching my displayed objects. Overall I thought that I had a nice perspective but struggled getting some detail within my drawing.

Photograph Of Object Drawing Scene (Meal Set)

With my next sketch I began to focus on one particular object, a can, looking at understanding detail. I picked a can as it was a easy shape to draw and I could better concentrate on the detail with some shading. I decided to focus on the top of the can as that was the easiest with detail.

Photograph Of Object Drawing Scene (Can)

Overall I thought that this weeks object drawing task was very difficult for myself to understand perspective in drawing. Though that I believe that the outcomes were not completed very well, I do understand my strengths and weakness much better about myself. I will hope to improve my drawing skills thought the year, and use my strengths to my advantage.

Motion Graphics: Season Finale "Fish"

This was my final motion graphic process and production session with Sara. My final task was to produce a 10 second animation of a sea creature, this would then be put together with the rest of the groups material as a collaborative showreel, showing off our work together. I decided that I would create a fish swimming in the ocean.

However I decided that the design of my fish would be rather graphic and geometric, having a different aesthetic to other sea creatures other people in the group would make. This allowed my design to be simple, and would allow my fish to make slightly exaggerated movements. When designing the fish I wanted many features to be animated. such as the tail, eyes, mouth and bubbles, which would give the fish a more character. However, I needed to keep in mind that for myself to animate these areas I needed to put them on individual layers.

Once I was happy with the completion of my fish, I began animating him in after effects, creating all the movements. This process was quite easy and allowed myself to really take my time to polish the movements so that they did not look jumpy.

Fish Animated from Jordan Harnett on Vimeo.

Once I had created all the static individual movements for my fish, I then needed to create a movement pattern to span 10 seconds in length. I thought that by giving my character a detailed movement, I could express his personally though, by making him quite shy. The idea was have the fish move quickly from one side of the screen to another, having him pop out occasionally in the cameras view. To achieve this I also wanted to make the fish smaller and larger throughout the movement animation so that it would play with perspective and insinuate that the fish was moving closer and further away. With all these technical composition ideas into place I would hope that my fish displayed quite a frightened emotion and seem quite shy.


Fish Movement from Jordan Harnett on Vimeo.

After this we then exported our fish to Sara where she combined everyones fish in to a little show reel. To my surprise this worked really well, because I thought that they would be many inconstancies in everyones skill level, but this worked out to have a rustic charm to it.

Overall I am very happy with the outcome of my final fish finale, I think that the fish was of good quality, however looking back I do think that they could have been some aspects which could have been better, such as the background and the possibility of adding some sound effects and background music.

Practical Drawing: Typography Week 3

The task this week was to produce a finalised version of my chosen typeface. I decided that I wanted to proceed with the creation version of my 5 by 4 square grid typeface. This typeface would also be an experiment which I would include in my EU referendum engagement project.

Finished Alphabet Layout Of Chosen Type

Illustrator Converted Type Vector Design

To better apply my typeface in a more digital way, I decided that I would create a vector based version of my physically created type. With the ability to create cleaner lines and colour I created each type out of a 4 by 5 group of boxes. These boxes would have the letter filled with a black box, while any negative would be a white box, with a slight stoke around the edge. This helped myself visualise the idea digitally. I also thought that this allowed the type to keep to a constant formation when being used to display words.

I think that these typography workshops have been very beneficial to my development as a graphic design, I now think much differently about how type is generated and  have gained valuable experience in the construction of my own typeface. With these skills developed I can hopefully explore a typeface generation project in the future.

Practical Drawing: Typography Week 2

This was the second task of my process and production lesson, the purpose of this task was to construct 3 complete alphabets forms. I have completed three styles of alphabets, each using a particular method of producing a particular shape. However all of these typefaces are being constructed under the theme of compression.

This alphabet is focusing on using shapes to cut out of a square block to produce a an identifiable letter form. This alphabet is mostly using triangles to form negative space for the shapes. This is a really nice and unique looking typeface, however for letters like the G, O and P the letters a much harder to read, this is an obvious complication as a good typeface can be read easily.

Square Box Cutout Typeface

I personally really like the way in-which this typeface formed, giving the impression of digitalisation and almost like a retro themed design. This type of design had a unique form of structure due myself limiting the area of space which I could work with. During the creation of this typeface, I understood how good typefaces require good transition from one letter to another, as it this makes the typeface much easier to read in a sentence or when words are constructed.

5 by 4 Square Limited Ratio Typeface

This typeface focused on compressing the size of letters. Making them look much thinner and removing any curves. This would give the type a particular shape edged look. I also thought about completely filling the lines but I thought that the the way in-which you see the construvtive shapes and lines added to the overall character of the typeface.

Reduced Letter Size Typeface

Overall I am very happy with my three created alphabet typefaces, I will also look forward to producing one of these typefaces further seeing how I can improve and refine the overall design. 

Practical Drawing: Typography Week 1

This weeks practical drawing process and production session focused on the generation of physically produced typography. We was told that this would span across the rest of out process and production workshops, focusing on a different task each week. This week my task was to transcribe shapes into letter forms, either upper or lower case. I began by joining shapes together using a curved edge and in separate parts, this was so that I could understand the construction of the shape, knowing where each part of the text formed. The letter this created was a J and looked somewhat mechanical, like the binding bridge between the wheels on a old steam train. With this in mind I created a few other shapes that used the same process.

I then wanted to explore using simple geometric shapes to explore how together they could create a letter. At this point I wasn't to bother about lower and upper case letter, my main priority was to understand how letter forms constructed. I used a group of circles to produce the letter I. However, I didn't think that these circles should join as this would be to predicable. However this created the complication that the letter I would look much different that its intended form. I decided that to help produce the idea of the letter eye, I would then with the traditional head of a lowercase eye, add some other circles to resemble a pupil and iris, giving a more visual representative of the letter eye. This can also be seen with Dingbat letter forms. 

An Example Of Dingbat Letter Forms

I then looked at producing a few more compressed letter form, forming shapes within a boundary or touching each other. For example the letter S would commonly be much taller on a standard font, however I shortened this letter by removing unnecessary parts of the letter, but retaining its iconic state. I understood that this was a very relevant factor to creating a good typeface.

I then began to produce an alphabet series based on my compressed typeface idea. I decided that I would go with a restriction 5 by 4 squares, to fit with the theme. Overall I am very happy with the outcome of this typeface as it gives a really nice introduction to this process and production typography series.

Motion Graphics: Character Animating

Character Creation #1 from Jordan Harnett on Vimeo.


For this motion graphics studio, the group was asked to design and create a character in adobe illustrator, which would then be placed into adobe after effects to be animated. In order to make the particular parts of the character to move, I needed to create each part of the character on separate layers so that when imported it transferred the layer information into after effect, so that the character would animate correctly. I wanted to create a minimal design for a character, so that I could focus on transferring an expression in correlation to motion. What inspired this design was the concept of Disney's Inside Out characters, using colour and focusing on a select emotion. In this case my character was to display bordem through the use if a blank expression and rather frustrated eyebrow and mouth placement. I think that this resembled the concept of boredem.

Once the static character had been created, I needed to understand how motion could better express this, so I decided to have the character dancing slowly while moving his eyes, this expressed the my character was uninterested in taking part of the dance. Overall I am very happy with the outcome of my character.

Creative Cloud Suite: Photoshop And Illustrator Photograph Editing Tutorial

This creative cloud session we looked at using photoshop, a photo-manipulation software created by Adobe. This focused on editing photographs, primary photographs shot in a Raw file format. It was explained that Jpegs are compressed version of a photograph, whereas Raw files are the complete unaltered file. The importance of Raw files is that they can have many more colours available when editing, making the quality of the image much more realistic. 

We were tasked to edit a poppy image provided within the mini photoshop window which opened before the image was opened into photoshop completely. This is where we could change the image from 8 bit to 16 bit. Once the image was changed to 16 bit, I then played around with the sliders, changing the contrast, saturation and clarity of the image. As a photographer I knew much about this process, found the task easy to do.

After editing the poppy, we quickly moved onto another image in a city. We followed a similar process as before, however with this image I changed some of the composition and kept the image in colour. Once I got the look I wanted we then was to produce an image with a creative look.

I decided to threshold the image on one layer and use another image to create sections of colour. The image was made up of 4 colour layers overlaying each other, but retaining the threshold effect of the black on top. The outcome was a really unique acid looking image, which added some unique creative flare to the image.

Image After Manipulation

Image Before Manipulation

We then learned about the clone tool which is a tool used to clone areas of an image, if a area is lost due to image rotation. For instance, we was asked to rotate this image, however when done so in photoshop, the white canvas was showing. I could however stretch the image so that it fills the canvas, however this would compromise many aspects. Stretching the image could create a less detail image, which isn't good for if the image was be printed. However with the clone tool, I would select an area of the sky near to the area which I would want to clone, and then paint the area. This tool mostly work on areas like the sky and water, if done with other detail there would be a unwanted glitchy effect, ruining the entire photograph.

Below is a an example of when the clone tool is used incorrectly.

Here are some art boards made in photoshop, this was something new to myself as I previously thought that Art boards were only exclusive to illustrator. This would be useful for when constructing application designs in the future.

After the initial session an addition session based on illustrator was offered and I stayed behind. This session focused on create vector shapes, which look very much like musical waves. We did this by creating a shape with the pen tool on illustrator and duplicating it to intercept with each other. This is when we were introduced to the tool which created this.

With both shapes selected you then clicked on make, which then created another shape and merged all shapes in a group. We then expanded the menu to increase the amount of steps within the vector. This produced a mesh like vector, which I then placed the vector over to photoshop and with this vector created a quick album cover. The album cover generated was in correlation to my visualisation of sound project.

Set Task Outcome

Non destructive portait 

After (Left)                                                   Before (Right)

With all the photoshop skills learnt from this creative cloud photoshop tutorial I then enhanced one of my own photographs I had taken. With this image I increased the vibrance and changed lighting levels to best suit the image as it was underexposed. I am happy with the outcome of this non destructive portrait and I will keep into consideration the skills and apply them in my future practices.