EDLD 5366 My Brand Logo

Nancy's Logo by Nancy Petrella is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
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This is the logo I ended with.  I like it the best so far.  I think I have have achieved my goals and made my message as clear as I can without including a lot of text in the image. Along the way I came to realize more of what is important to me and what I strive for in my teaching and in myself.

I did use all 4 principles.  Alignment is not as obvious as the others, but I worked really hard to create good relationships between the curved lines of the bird and the curved lines of the tree.  I wanted them to mimic each other as best as I could possibly manage.  Also, as I layered the Ns on top of, and next to, each other it was important that they lined up appropriately or the tree would not look like a tree.  In the end, I cropped it so that it was aligned nicely with the edges of the space/paper.

I ended up with a cleaner and better organized design.  You can compare them on my wiki page.  I took what I learned from the first one and kept thinking about ways to make the design better.  It occurred to me that I did not have to do so much layering and I began by warping a forward and backward “N”.  The design was much cleaner from the start. 

I wanted to simplify the color as well.  Actually, I wanted a design that would work as well in black and white as it would in color.  I decided to work in black on white, using simple lines of the font aligning each letter carefully as I put it in place to create the tree.  I like the high contrast of the black and white.  I also contrasted the solid silhouette of the bird with the linear marks of the tree.  The really great thing about this deign is that it is a completely vector image so I can add color in any way that I want into the background when it might be necessary and the contrast of black with color will still be very successful.  I also contrasted the fonts that I used.  I ended up using “AR Carter” for the tree which is a might nicer tree like font than any of the others I used yesterday.  I used “AR Hermann” for the two words that I finally decided to use but also contrasting their sizes and tones.

There is a lot of repetition going on in the lines of the tree, which also is contrasted with the open background.  The little flecks of black are actually part of the font, which is part of the reason I think it is a nice match for the tree, also add some texture to the design.

I already mentioned the alignment of each letter in the tree.  I also played around with the placement of the bird and the words so they would line up well with the tree and each other.  That is part of the organization and use of proximity.  The organization is helped by the repeated use of “Y”s and “A”s which make up the busy branches along with the large word at the top of the design.  At the bottom I used only two “N”s and two “C”s in a much calmer repetition along with the smaller word.  The design is divided in two sections a bit more than 1/3 at the top and a bit less than 2/3 at the bottom.  The negative space at the bottom balances the busy repetition of the top.  From side to side the design is relatively symmetrical.

 This is the logo I ended with.  I like it the best so far.  It might be the final version now that I added the words “create” and “innovate”.  I believe I have achieved my goal and made my message as clear as I can without including a lot of text in the image.

As I previously stated, the tree with open branches represents the accepting, open-minded, and knowledge driven part of my personality.  I am always open to possibilities and don’t make decisions based on hearsay.  This is actually a characteristic that will make me a good administrator.

 The trunk represents my steadfast and strong-willed nature. I do not give up when I believe in something, or take on a task for any reason.  Once I put my mind to it I don’t give up.  Failure is not an option for me.

The roots represent loyalty.  I am not a person who betrays confidences or takes commitment lightly. The object the roots protect represents the passionate and caring aspect of my personality.  This fits with loyalty, perfectionist, and strong-willed.  I do not take any job or task lightly, but I am passionate about my son’s well being, my students and art.  Some people describe me as passionate and appreciate the fact that I put heart and soul into my teaching, while others only think of me as huge pain because of those same qualities.  

The bird with outstretched wings represents the free-thinking, creative, and imaginative part of who I am.  By now everyone knows I am an artist.  Art has been a lifelong passion.

What I did not say before and is somewhat subconscious irony, is the prominent repetition of the letter “A”.  You may have noticed, I am a total freak about graduating this program with a 4.0 GPA.  This is symbolic of my almost obsessive quest for perfection.  I have actually chilled a bit in my older age.  My GPA is also important because if I am to sell myself as an administrator I have to show that I am still competitive, viable candidate, and that youth does not have anything over me.

The word “create” makes perfect sense for me.  Initially, I was going to use the word “think” with it because I am always thinking and it has been difficult to get my mind to rest for my whole life, which is different than free-thinking which I did use and relates to create and innovate.  But I did not like the way it sounded with create, so I decided on “innovate”.  

In using innovate, I don’t mean that I am an innovator.  It is more a matter of striving for the best and what is beyond the obvious.  In this way it suits me well because I have always been a person with many ideas and I do consider myself an “ideas” person and a problem solver.  I am a person who can develop alternative solutions, because, in general, I see and interpret things differently than most people do.

Now that I am thinking about it, it appears that I left out some words that describe me.  Even though I did not include them in the list they seem to have been included in a roundabout way.  

EDLD 5366 Self Branding

The art of self branding dates back to the Ancient Chinese and then Japanese.  It may date further back but I am guessing not; since the Chinese invented block printing.  Chinese artists, poets, and writers would design stamps to sign their work.  Interestingly, as the piece left the creator's possession other people who had the piece in their possession would also add their stamp to it.   This was very common practice and often the bigger a person’s ego the bigger the stamp.  It was a status symbol to own these admired works and anyone who at any time owned any of these works wanted everyone else to know that at some point in time it was in their possession.  Therefore, the magnificent pieces of art and writing over time became emblazoned with many different stamps.  By our standard these additional markings are as much a part of the work of art as the original signature and add another layer of beauty and history the piece.

The Chinese and Japanese artists inspired me to design my own stamp, although I never did until now.  I might alter it more before I actually put it to use on my own art.  I also have wanted to have my students created their own logo/stamps to use as a signature.  Something I have been trying to incorporate into my classes since i took a seminar on East Asia in 2008.  Until now I wasn't able to come up with a good way to help students understand.  I plan to teach them the same way that this course taught me.  I think it will help them to understand the concept more easily.

Logo

Creating a logo to brand myself is a first for me.  I am not completely satisfied with this one but it has all of the components that I wanted.  I had to stop myself from drawing it by hand.  I really wanted to.  The image would have been so much nicer.  I forced myself to create it in Illustrator and learned how to distort text.  The tree is made from my first initial.  I used a few different fonts and distorted them by using "envelope distort" and then "make with warp and mesh" tools.  Then I had to copy and reflect the initials both horizontally and vertically and layered then until I got the tree shape that I wanted.  For a first attempt I am satisfied.  I don't know if this will be the version I hand in.  I will try again tomorrow and see what I can come up with that hopefully will be better. 

I thought about everything I had learned about creating logos with Illustrator and vector images.  I wanted a cleaner simpler look to the design.  While I still constructed the tree with the letters of my name, this time I used all of the letters and designed it in all black and by only using the warp tool and a single font style.  I also decided to look for free vector images for the bird.  I refined that search because regular clip art and photos don't allow me to remove the background.  I used to be able to do that with Corel Draw which came with a generous supply of clip art.  I knew how to easily alter any clip art with Corel.  I have not figured out how to do that with Illustrator.  I will continue to try to figure it out but for now I figured out that I can get free vector images on the web and save myself a little time.   If I did not find free vectors I was going to draw the bird in Illustrator with my tablet.

EDLD 5366 Ancient Manuscripts I

I used to teach a unit on Illuminated Manuscripts years ago. I can't really say what my exact first impression was except some awe because of the beauty and skill involved.  However, I always looked for the most beautiful, skilled, and detailed images. The images needed to hold up as fine art exemplars for my students. I used examples that focused on all 4 parts of the manuscript, borders, text, initials, and illustrations.

I looked at many of the book examples from the websites that were provided in the lesson. I did this because they are very good websites and ones that I have not visited before. I have to say that the examples, while impressive are not nearly as glorious as the examples that I have used in my teaching.  The examples I viewed from the British Library are by far plainer, and focus on the text. While they do adhere to some of the principles, they are not interesting enough visually for me to want to analyze them.

I am using The Book of Kells for my example. The Book of Kells is closer to what I am used to seeing. The text and images are more decorative but still lack the skill of some other ancient book artists. That might be a matter of time or place.  However, these artist/authors might show importance in the same way as all texts of this nature, by using decorative initials and possibly the symbols. The pages using color can also connote importance.

The plate I am focusing on is the first of The Genealogy of Christ. There are at least three genealogy pages, the first two in black and white and a third in color. Since this is subset of the larger text and lacks continuity this tells me that the creators of the book were not very concerned with principles of design. That is not to say that principles were not followed. If coincidental, intuitively, or with purpose, I do believe there was some concern for order as the plate to the left makes boldly evident. It just seems that if one artist felt like using color he did without regard for continuity. Therefore, either ignoring the principles or just lacking in knowledge and skill.  I question whether or not the use of color indicates importance in this situation.  I would have to study this further before making that decision.

As I tell my students, following these rules really comes naturally to an artist. It is just a matter of being able to identify them and then begin to use them in a more purposeful way.

The Principles of Design

For our purposes I will adhere to the four principles being used in this course. However, these are very different from the principles I was taught as an undergraduate fine arts student, which in turn are different from the less complex principles that I teach as a fine arts teacher of a very young and inexperienced group of students. Even so, I teach 7 principles of design. Using four principles must be something that web designers and graphics designers must have come up with. I had never heard of such a thing, but I do know that the principles of design depend upon who you ask.

EDLD 5366 Ancient Manuscripts II

The Four Principles of Design and The Book of Kells, Plate XV

Contrast: Besides the contrast of black and white there is the contrast of large decorative
letters with the normal calligraphy of the text, including the word "ET" in the paragraph text.
In addition there are some smaller decorative elements that also contrast with the body text.
The author used some different decorative elements that provide a more subtle contrast between lines of text.  This can be seen in the word "FUIT". The same is true with the word "QUI" as it is written over and over down the page. The first "QUI" is more decorative with a human image included the word gets slightly smaller after that on the page.  

Repetition: There is much repetition. The text itself is repetitive. The initials and words
are repeated many times in the list. Those words are also divided into columns. There
are three columns across the page. The decorative initials repeat, but are not exactly
the same.  There is a small flower motif that repeats and seems to serve no other purpose
than to align and balance the text.  There are some other symbols in the 3rd column of text
that seem to have more meaning, but I can't be certain without reading an analysis of a
scholar on the subject.  That seems to strengthen the text and aid in the repetitive nature of
the lines, but that would not be the only thing they accomplish.  The small repeat of a
human in the lower right corner serves to balance the human figure in the first "QUI" initial
and the word "ET".  

Alignment: As I have already stated the repetitive flower motif serves to align text in
rows and also to the edge of the page.  The symbols in the 3rd column, setting any
possible meaning aside, also align the text in rows and to the edge of the page.  The flower
motif and symbols also serve to align the text in columns.  The paragraph text is aligned
at the top of the page while the visually heavier columns run across the bottom 2/3 of the
page.  All of the text itself is aligned left, typical of western culture.

Proximity: The columns allow for proximity.  They enable all of the "QUI"s, "FUIT"s,
and the name text to be compartmentalized. The paragraph text also exists within its own
compartment. Even though the word "ET" is in the paragraph text it is still in close
proximity to the words "QUI" and therefore does not seem unbalanced.  The small human
in the lower right is necessary for the visual balance of the page.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/bok/img/pl15.jpg PLATE XV. THE GENEALOGY OF CHRIST. FOL. 200 R. The Book of Kells by Edward Sullivan [1920]

EDLD 5363 Week 5 Reflection

This week has been a bit crazy.  I am trying to be on vacation and complete the course at the same time.  I think I managed both.  The project and our group were great. We really enjoyed working with each other.


I learned, from this group experience that it is possible to have a successful collaboration in the way that it is meant to be.  I don’t think that comes from working with anyone under any conditions and circumstances.  I learned and believe that it takes an understanding of the group dynamics and being able draw on each other’s strengths.  This has been a very important thing for me to learn.  The success of our group was not only that we all want to get an “A”, but that we were able to speak up about our own strengths we were able to acknowledge and appreciate the strengths of others in the group. I will also point out that another strength of our team was our ability to accept each other’s quirks.  None of us would ever look back on this experience and feel like anyone else did not do enough.  This has been a very positive experience.


As far as the technical aspects of the learning experience, I was able to build upon what I had learned using PRE 4.  At the beginning of the project I decided to upgrade to PRE 10 and it was a good thing that I did.  I never would have been able to make the visual effects that I achieved happen without it.  Even though I experienced problems with learning the software, I was able to either solve the problem myself or seek help from Adobe in order to fix the problem.  I still have a lot to learn but I have come a long way.  What a difference it made to have 3 video tracks, 3 audio tracks, a track for narration, and a soundtrack.  The visual effects that I made happen were totally dependent upon the 3 video tracks and I used all of them.


Even though I have more to learn, I am confident in my ability to teach students and teachers how to use Adobe software.  I am also more confident in my ability to facilitate group projects with both students and teachers, because I have a better grasp of group dynamics and can help others with getting the most and best out of each other in a group project.   

5363 Collaborative Project

EDLD 5363 Week Four Reflection

I made changes in the video and it is coming along fine.  However, every time I make major changes it ends up causing big problems.  I have found that deleting and adding new audio has the tendency to break the video apart.  Then when I try to move it back it won't budge like something is blocking it.  Upon further investigation I can see black lines.  Sometimes they aren't an issue but they ended up being tiny clips of video and they seem to be locked in place.  I am not certain but I think that every time a clip snaps in place next to another it cuts a tiny splice off of the video.  That is what is left behind and begins to mess things up upon further editing.  The issue would be worse without the snap because then I might end up overlaying larger segments of video.  Another problem that I am having is audio getting cut without me wanting to cut it.  It mostly happens when I put a new clip in place and haven't deleted the audio from the video clip.  At least I have figured that out but it happens another way that i haven't figured out yet.

I began trying to line up the audio tracks so they are more synchronous.  However, here I go again.  I am going to clean the video up again from all of the tiny clips and then put the audio back in.  I think I have figured out how to align them now.