I started putting by putting the elements all together. The hardest part was finding the fonts that I wanted to use- I had to use dafont.com to find the fonts that I felt expressed me in a simple way, yet contrasting with each other. I chose a bold sans serif and a serif, sort of oldstyle font as the smaller font on my first and last slides. I used the eye dropper tool to choose the color of the background of each title. I realized how simple it looked, and I wanted to add another border to bring it all together, so I put a strip of the same color on the other side to frame each slide and bring it together. For the intro and conclusion, since I’ve been using my last name in C. Dade Cook author marketing, I decided to continue to play with that. My target audience is those looking to see what I can do and potentially would like me to work for them. I used my last name and play on works to invite them to agree that I can help them!
Critique:
I had Carrie Clark tell me that I should put the titles on the pages in one spot, but I decided to keep the titles where they were. Instead I used the static ruler guide to help align my titles more accurately with my projects in the slides. It was when Sister Peterson pointed out a couple of them that were almost aligned, but not quite. I realize that “eying” it doesn’t work, sometimes we need to use tools to create a pristine piece of work. Sister Peterson also pointed out that my title seemed to be separated, so I move my first name above my last name and made it a little smaller.
For my magazine project I chose to write to an audience going through trials, or preparing for trials. This proposed article for the Ensign is for generally everyone, since we know everyone is or will go through a hard time in their life. Sometimes I feel like we feel that being sad is a bad thing and we try to cover it up, so I wrote about my ongoing experience to show that we aren’t alone in our trials and there are tools to prepare and overcome them. This is relevant to my audience because it will help them when trials come.
Content: Don’t let the BLUES get you down.
We have all been a little blue sometime in our lives, especially on rainy days- metaphorically and literally.
On one rainy day in particular I saw my husband looking through our window. “I like watching the rain through a window inside,” he said. I smiled, of course he does, who really enjoys being rained on?
However, when my husband said this, other memories came to mind. You see- I live in Portland, Oregon, where it rains more than 130 days of the year. Growing up here I learned to only straighten or curl my hair with low expectations of it actually staying nice. This is because when it rained, if anything I only had a hoody to cover me. I have always considered rain to be Oregon’s sun.
One memory in particular came to mind. It was pouring outside, very different from the constant drizzle that Portland is known for. My mom was excited and said we should go run out in the rain. I remember we were apprehensive about the idea of getting wet, especially thinking about having to come back in, possibly take a shower and get a change of clothes. In that moment there were a lot of, “I’ll do it if you do it,” until two of my other siblings and I were running toward the street that had turned into a stream, and what felt like a turbo sprinkling system falling from the sky. These are the feelings I remember about running or if you will, dancing in the rain.
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s learning to dance in the rain.” I don’t know who said it first, but if the storm is our trials, then I know well what it’s like to feel like the storm will never pass. My first boyfriend cheated on me, my best friend died from an unidentified cancer and my dog died shortly after; this all happened within a three-year period. At age 21 I chose to go on a mission, where I felt like I’d learned to dance in the rain until I came home and fell into a depression.
Two things have occurred to me recently. One, I can’t ignore the tender mercies of the Lord in my life today. I was married in the temple four months ago; I am living 15 minutes away from my hometown, with a brand new puppy. We have been told that “after much tribulation…. cometh the blessing.” (D&C 103:12) and I’ve seen this in my life. There was something similar to this that I learned on my mission in São Paulo, Brazil. When a day went bad, no one would talk to us and everything canceled, there was one thing I could count on, that I could smile and tell my companion, “there’s a miracle waiting for us around the corner.” I knew the adversary would do all in his power to stop the miracle, but with hope we have the power to be God’s hands here on earth.
The other thought I had reminded me of the words of my husband looking out the window. “I like watching the rain through a window inside.” Not only must we have the hope to wait through the rain, but also we need to step inside and get another perspective of our lives. This means preparing for the attacks on our lives and understanding why the rain falls like it does and knowing where lightening will strike next. Bednar continues, “…in my latest reading of the Book of Mormon I paid particular attention to the ways the Nephites prepared for their battles against the Lamanites. I noted that the people of Nephi “were aware of the intent of [their enemy], and therefore they did prepare to meet them” (Alma 2:12; italics added). As I read and studied, I learned that understanding the intent of an enemy is a key prerequisite to effective preparation. We likewise should consider the intent of our enemy in this latter-day war.”
The storms will always come, but I’ve learned that the Lord has given us the tools to be prepared to face the storms. We dance with hope, an umbrella of protection and a window to clearly see and be prepared for the rain that will fall in our lives.
As I pieced my final project together in In Design, I played around with ideas other than my sketches, but then decided on the layout I had originally chosen. I chose solid colors and a black and white and blue monochromatic color scheme. In editing and refining I lightened the blues in the quote text and in the title to make them pop out more. I had used the eye dropper tool to find the blue and then used the sliding editing panel to take out the yellow and make it less green and more of a true blue. I used white boxes behind my body text to help it stand out on the busy background and make it easier to read, but I made it somewhat transparent and feathered he edges so it would also blend and match the background. I used little white boxes next to the “BLUES” to help it contrast and stand out and used it as my repeating element and used the same box for the page number.
Critique:
Mackenzie Lachaga and Linda Morrison critiqued my project. They pointed out that I should put the text into multiple columns to make it look neater. Linda suggested I make the background lighter so it doesn’t distract from the text too much. She also suggested that I move my title to be on the same page. In doing so I made sure they aligned with parts of each other.
Fonts: Header Blues: Dock 11 (bold san serif), Header2: Matura MT Script Capitals (script), Body: Minion Pro (oldstyle)
Process: I wanted to create this for my future author website- so I decided to use the same colors I have been using. I feel like they are calm, yet inspiring colors. Off the bat I already had this in mind, and I decided that I wanted something simple and straight forward for my readers. I looked at some other author web pages and tried to do something similar. I named all my files really clearly to keep organized and found some images I wanted to use. As I was putting together my assignment I realized that there was something missing- I felt like it needed a texture in the header and footer. I used textures.com to find some books and created a faded look to both my header and footer.
Critique: In both the critiques that I received on facebook it mostly had to do with my boxes in the center. Brandie Pratt noticed that I hadn’t taken enough time to align things correctly- my image with the bottom text box and the text on the right didn’t come all the way to the bottom. Betsy Buckly noticed similarly that something needed to be done with the organization of my body and suggested that I organize them differently. I ran into this problem because my image was more square than I planned, so I found myself needing to fill up more space somehow. But then in the second critique, after aligning things better and moving the squares around, Sister Peterson told me that the main body was still not quite right. She suggested that I make the text smaller, the images bigger. I ended up taking out one of the text boxes and overlapping like she also suggested.
Color Scheme: Analogous: yellow-orange, orange, orange-red
Fonts: Britannica Bold (modern / slab serif) and Book Antiqua (oldstyle)
I really wanted to do something that I would like, and since I love horses and western things I decided to go the western movie route. I wanted this to catch the attention of those with similar interests- and make it look like a dramatic country film… Because what country movie isn’t dramatic? I looked at a lot of different movie posters and I liked how some listed the credits underneath, so I tried to make it look the same. And I while I wanted it too look like a real movie poster, I also wanted to make it ‘mine’ in a way, so I added all of my family and in-laws into the credits. It was fun giving them roles that even kind of fit.
Critique:
Carrie Clark let me know that I needed to make my print smaller on the bottom. Eva Walburger cautioned me against having my text at the top too close. So I made my text smaller and added more so it would fill the space and look like a legit movie poster and moved my text down. These are the same things Sister Peterson pointed out. Sister Peterson also suggested that I change the font to a slab serif font that fit the theme, so I found a rustic country font that I liked online and downloaded it and used in photoshop. There were a lot of typos that I caught last minute too- like I put my maiden name on the original and a few of my in-laws I misspelled their names.
For this project I chose to use my dog as the subject. I had hoped for better weather and do outside photos, but it was always cloudy and even with my camera on the cloudy setting- my it was hard to get good lighting in the gloom. It was hard to get close to my puppy, the closer I got the more she wanted to eat my camera. However, I learned a lot in photographing animals, and it helped to use treats. For my collage I started out using the grid guide lines like the tutorial started out teaching, but then I went a different route and deleted the space between to create a grid template and put my photos underneath. I felt like it gave me more leniency in positioning my photos and figuring out how I wanted them cropped.
As for editing the photos, I felt like it was easier with the outside photos. I’ve never liked flash and I still have a lot to learn, but I learned a lot in editing photos with flash. For one, in case you were wondering, dogs get “green-eye” instead of “red-eye” in flash photos. I had to look up a tutorial on how to get rid of the green in a couple of the inside photos.
FONTS:
Gill Sans Ultra Bold – Modern Sans Serif
Cochin – Serif
Photo Edit 1 – I took a lot of different photos trying to get a photo of my puppy in motion. I picked this one to edit because of how the lines of her neck and ears point up. This one had a lot of shadows and uneven lighting at every edge, I added a feather on each side to lighten or darken as needed.
Photo Edit 2 – This is another action photo that I chose to edit because it uses the rule of thirds vertically (with bookshelves) and her paws create a horizontal thirds section. It was hard to edit as far as lighting goes, but I feel what I was able to do focuses on her jump and has a feeling of going both up and down.
Photo Edit 3 – This is a photo, I focused on the texture of her fur, and I was attentive of it in my edits as well.
Photo Edit 4 – I took a lot of this shot, my husband ran in circles as I took photos from different angles. I liked this one because of the natural leading lines of the leash and the road lines that create a circle between Juneau and my husband. I wish her tail overlapped more or wasn’t such a tangent, but this one is kind of hard to do a simple retake. Also, in this one it was really dark at top and light toward the bottom and somewhat dark in general, so I had to lighten different parts of the photo separately. In all of my photos I really enjoyed using the lumination tool in LightRoom, it helped bring the focus on the subject and blur the background, and even smooth the subject a little if the lighting (especially with flash) made it grainy.
Photography is one of my favorite things! I’ve taken a class before, but it was a while ago. So I’ve applied some of these things in photos before. The Rules of Third and Outside light photo I took when I was on my honeymoon cruise just some months ago. I had to darken the sky in the outside light one because it was washed out, I also used a brush to lighten the boat. For the Rules of third I did some slight lighting changes as well so it wouldn’t be so murky looking.
The others I took today- it’s rediculously difficult getting our puppy to stand still, but the close and far focus photos were miracles! Aperture is one of my favorite things to play with.
My owl indoor lighting has light from lamps and light from outside. I had to crop it so it met some of the rule of third rules and lightened and darkened so it was more crisp.
It was raining or I would have put my cowboy hat on the railings and used the lines to lead to my hat, but I found the mat worked well instead. (:
It took a while to get used to Lightroom since I’m so used to Photoshop, but I enjoyed it and I can see how it would be faster the more I get used to it.
I’m also using this facebook page is part of my social media klout score and I realized that my facebook page didn’t look very professional. While making it look more professional I wanted it to promote me as an author while getting my followers involved. I’ve noticed that on facebook pages with just ‘posts’ don’t keep my attention, but when you are invited to do something- there’s a chance they’ll do it. Whether clicking or inspiring to do something. For this project I wanted my followers to get involved in writing, whether helping me write with providing opinion or getting them to write with programs that I’ve been using.
I love photoshop. I found the images I wanted to use and then changed them using various tools to fit my needs. (including text, fading, different colors, layers, combining layers, manipulating objects within a fixed photo and manipulate them to fit my needs). An example of this was that I had to rotate one of the owl’s eyes so that it was looking right instead of down or straight forward. I chose a color scheme that would be somewhat calming, yet with energy like all writing needs.
I found a website where I created a poll to get my followers involved and created a blog post. Then, I posted links to nanowrimo and a site I’ve been using to get back into writing. I felt like they would apply to my audience and writing theme because it gets them involved- whether answering a poll that helps my writing or clicking on the other links that could inspire them to write.
Company: C. Dade Cook Words Objective: Create awareness of me as a writer by getting my followers more involved on my social media sites with “writing” and creating. Strategy: Create a new Facebook profile image, banner, and three posts that will invite the follower to do something about writing. I’ll create a poll that will help my writing, and have two other sources that will get them involved in writing in general.
Critique
For my the critique Astrid Murga told me that the smaller font in my banner was hard to see and Sister Peterson suggested that I make more unity with the photos with color. So I combined them both. I put a little orange into the photo and then made the text of .blogspot.com the color yellow. I also made the branch in the profile picture red to make it even more unified. Sister Peterson also suggested that I change the position of ‘seadade’ so that it wasn’t covered by the facebook profile picture, so I made the text smaller and moved it over. I didn’t get a second student to give me a critque, but my husband helped me in letting me put the colors in the right place.
Fonts used in profile and banner: I used a serif old style font for the bigger font because I’m promoting writing and me being an author, it reminds people of the type of font that usually is found in books or type-writer. I used a smaller sans serif font for contrast and it fit well with “C”s in the owl’s eyes and blended the two ideas together.
For my magazine project I chose to write to an audience going through trials, or preparing for trials. This proposed article for the Ensign is for generally everyone, since we know everyone is or will go through a hard time in their life. Sometimes I feel like we feel that being sad is a bad thing and we try to cover it up, so I wrote about my ongoing experience to show that we aren’t alone in our trials and there are tools to prepare and overcome them. This is relevant to my audience because it will help them when trials come.
Content: Don’t let the BLUES get you down.
We have all been a little blue sometime in our lives, especially on rainy days- metaphorically and literally.
On one rainy day in particular I saw my husband looking through our window. “I like watching the rain through a window inside,” he said. I smiled, of course he does, who really enjoys being rained on?
However, when my husband said this, other memories came to mind. You see- I live in Portland, Oregon, where it rains more than 130 days of the year. Growing up here I learned to only straighten or curl my hair with low expectations of it actually staying nice. This is because when it rained, if anything I only had a hoody to cover me. I have always considered rain to be Oregon’s sun.
One memory in particular came to mind. It was pouring outside, very different from the constant drizzle that Portland is known for. My mom was excited and said we should go run out in the rain. I remember we were apprehensive about the idea of getting wet, especially thinking about having to come back in, possibly take a shower and get a change of clothes. In that moment there were a lot of, “I’ll do it if you do it,” until two of my other siblings and I were running toward the street that had turned into a stream, and what felt like a turbo sprinkling system falling from the sky. These are the feelings I remember about running or if you will, dancing in the rain.
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s learning to dance in the rain.” I don’t know who said it first, but if the storm is our trials, then I know well what it’s like to feel like the storm will never pass. My first boyfriend cheated on me, my best friend died from an unidentified cancer and my dog died shortly after; this all happened within a three-year period. At age 21 I chose to go on a mission, where I felt like I’d learned to dance in the rain until I came home and fell into a depression.
Two things have occurred to me recently. One, I can’t ignore the tender mercies of the Lord in my life today. I was married in the temple four months ago; I am living 15 minutes away from my hometown, with a brand new puppy. We have been told that “after much tribulation…. cometh the blessing.” (D&C 103:12) and I’ve seen this in my life. There was something similar to this that I learned on my mission in São Paulo, Brazil. When a day went bad, no one would talk to us and everything canceled, there was one thing I could count on, that I could smile and tell my companion, “there’s a miracle waiting for us around the corner.” I knew the adversary would do all in his power to stop the miracle, but with hope we have the power to be God’s hands here on earth.
The other thought I had reminded me of the words of my husband looking out the window. “I like watching the rain through a window inside.” Not only must we have the hope to wait through the rain, but also we need to step inside and get another perspective of our lives. This means preparing for the attacks on our lives and understanding why the rain falls like it does and knowing where lightening will strike next. Bednar continues, “…in my latest reading of the Book of Mormon I paid particular attention to the ways the Nephites prepared for their battles against the Lamanites. I noted that the people of Nephi “were aware of the intent of [their enemy], and therefore they did prepare to meet them” (Alma 2:12; italics added). As I read and studied, I learned that understanding the intent of an enemy is a key prerequisite to effective preparation. We likewise should consider the intent of our enemy in this latter-day war.”
The storms will always come, but I’ve learned that the Lord has given us the tools to be prepared to face the storms. We dance with hope, an umbrella of protection and a window to clearly see and be prepared for the rain that will fall in our lives.
SKETCHES
Images
clouds-1920-1080-wallpaper
On the photos where the color didn’t match my color scheme, I would just take the color out, make it black and white, or I will change the color.
Personal reformation begins with a (1)change of heart.
(2)It will work out, even through trial.
For the meek and faithful, things both bad and good, will work out for the better, in the time of the Lord’s. (3)The Lord’s time.
Seek to do His Will, (4)be yoked.
(5)“Father, is there more?” Always search for more that you can do.
(6)Wait for answers. In the process of finding our answers, we open our heart up and in patience we are humbled.
Healing of the heart begins with (7)yielding to the Lord’s way. Even when it’s not what we want.
Through gratitude we can humble ourselves(8)Humble through gratitude
If we earnestly appeal to God, (9)He takes us as we are, and (10)makes us more than we ever imagined.
Processs:
This talk really hit me during conference, it was a great beginning to general conference as well. As I came up with phrases, stories of the bible started coming to mind that fit them. I love paintings, so I decided to use some of my favorite paintings as the background for each power phrase. However, knowing each had different style of painting, I thought making my scheme black and white would even the playing field and that my text would have a better chance of standing out. The audience I was aiming for were those familiar with scripture stories, and to inspire them in a similar way that the talk inspired.
Critique:
In the creation process I had some really good feedback from my husband, especially on the last slide. I had a hard time getting the letters to stand out on the boy in armor, and he suggested a glow- which usually I think of that neon obnoxious glow, but I found out a way to mute it just enough to help my words stand out. He also helped me when I wasn’t sure something looked funny or with where I put words or how. (To help one word stand out I put it in white, but it didn’t seem to flow very well)
The other critique that was very helpful was Sister Peterson’s. She helped me see and make a more unified look with my text so they all were similar in position. Also in one of my slides the smaller words were too separated and two other I had tangents with the sides of the slides. (one of these I hadn’t cropped the painting so looking at it in my work space it looked fine, but the text was actually write on the edge.) The other I moved down away from the edge to give it more space.
One Creative Cookie 
