Graphic Design Project

Hello, and welcome to my graphic design project. For this post I’ve decided to create a poster that illustrates the idea that cats seem to see themselves as a “top of the food chain” type of animal such as their relatives, the tigers. This topic is of course related to my topic of raising a kitten in that a new pet that acts or behaves like they are a wild tiger seems to be a difficult, and yet surprisingly common obstacle to overcome.

My inspiration for this poster came from a social media post that I saw many years ago making a joke along the lines of “what I think I look like *while doing random action* vs. what I actually look like”. This came to mind immediately as my kitten is constantly behaving as if she is much larger than she is. For example, she likes to sleep at the head of my bed in the center, across multiple pillows, making it impossible to get into my bed without waking her.

To begin creating this project I found three images that I wanted to use, each selected with a plan of where they would go and what they would look like. After locating these images, I created individual layers for each of them, and began to position them roughly where they would be as a finished result. I then used the eyeball icon on the layers to take turns showing only one-to-two layers at a time, as to be able to fine-tune each layer accurately. Some of the elements used most frequently were the magnetic lasso tool, the elliptical marquee tool, and the free transform/transform, but there were many more used to be certain.

In creating this project, the elements of Photoshop learned from the tutorials were crucial to success, and I tried my best to use most of the elements taught. However, there were also things that were not covered in the tutorials that I wished to do. These tasks were very difficult at first, but a simple search on YouTube will go a long way for most short questions such as “how to ___ on Photoshop”. I was not able to utilize feedback unfortunately, as it seems that my blog’s URL was omitted from the announcements page. However, I was able to choose a number of ways that my project could be improved.

The three main things that I decided needed improvement on my poster were: the center/focus of the image, the matching/compatibility of the color of text, and the smoothness of certain spaces between where images were placed together.

In changing the center of the image, the goal was to more easily catch the viewer’s eye on the topic of the photo-which was not the living room, it was the kitten laying on the sofa. In order to solve this, I chose to crop the background in a way that keeps the couch more in the center of the image. Another way to further this goal was in altering hue/saturation settings for the background layer, taking some of the color away from the living room, making the other layers stand out more.

the reason for altering the color of text for “we all dream” was in order to make it match better or be more comparable with the rest of the images. I noticed after turning in the draft project that the color used was not one that made sense to use in an image such as this, as it completely takes attention away from the actual focus of the image. The solution to this was to make the text a color that was much more similar to the couches, yet distinct enough to be easily readable.

The last change that I made in updating my graphic design post was in attempting to make the images that have been placed appear as seamless as possible. For example, upon re-centering the photo to focus on the sofa, I was forced to resize the layers containing the bubble that the tiger is in. I was also forced to align each of these layers precisely so that all images would appear flush. I then used a combination of tools with beneficial uses such as the blur tool in order to blur the smallest amount of pixels possible in certain areas to make the bordering areas that separate the background from other images appear unaltered. All in all, I believe that the changes made have been substantial, and that these changes have come together to improve this project significantly in aspects such as, use of space, organization, storytelling, and all-around quality.

Tiger photo

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Pixabay License: Free for commercial use

https://pixabay.com/photos/animal-tiger-big-cat-safari-1868911/

Living Room photo

Image by leemelina08 from Pixabay

Pixabay License: Free for commercial use

https://pixabay.com/photos/home-luggage-sofa-casa-cor-1622401/