"Ruff Bully"

SKI BUMS

Crop Exercises

This picture was taken last summer. I love the look on the look on the little girl's face as she lays on her dad's chest in the sunlight. She is showing a part sadness and part relief to be with her dad after not seeing him for three weeks. The first shop is slightly cropped to show the dad using a stuffed animal as his pillow. The dad is equally as sad/relieved. The close up of the little girl shows her vulnerability and sweetness. The last cropped shot, I wanted to focus on the dad's hand on the little girl's chin.  Cropping it this way enlarges the hand and conveys sensitivity between the two. 

Border Variations

Will you be my Valentine?

Fontolicious

Mini Compositions (page 71).. take 2

Then and Now

Part of my job responsibilities at Rutgers is providing professional development workshops for teachers.  Since we are a self-supporting center, there is no budget for a marketing person.  I was the one responsible for creating flyers to advertise events.  The first one you see at the top is an advertisement for behavior modification workshops, offered by a child psychologist which I created last year. I now wonder if we did not have a big turnout because the flyer was utterly unattractive and sent NO message to the audience! The all white paper with tight black wordy font would make a graphic designer cringe upon first look!
Not even a second color anywhere! It is difficult to read cluttered with too much information. Perhaps text boxes would have been more appealing since it was necessary to include the workshop descriptions on the flyer.

The second flyer I created is for a workshop this year (next week, actually) where I think (I hope) I improved with my graphic design. Based on what I have read so far, I incorporated contrasting color and simple font.  The logo of the back to back kids reading is synonymous with the literacy center and the bold font highlights the event is from the Graduate School of Education (which attracts a certain audience).
The margins are centered all around and the red on black color pops out when read. Although, I think that i can improve, I see a huge improvement from last year's to this year's.

Who would like this?

Mistake # 1:Know your audience- This website is designed for people interested in the science field. I am not sure the design is intended to attract the right people.

Mistake #2: Font Faces- There are too many font faces on this site. It is distracting to the user.

Mistake #3: Use of Colors- As our readings suggest, too many colors is not recommended. Stick to a few basic colors to create a more attractive design.

Mistake #4: The site's goal: While perusing this site, it was not clear at all what the goal of the site is. I spent time in utter confusion trying to figure out what the academy is and who should be a part of it.

Mistake #5: Navigation: Navigating a site should be a simple process. Here, you notice navigational links on both sides, vertically and horizontally.

Mistake #6: Design is well planned- NOT! This site looks like it was thrown together from a million different directions and hardly updated

Mistake # 7: Design Communicates- The only message this site communicates is confusion! 


Mistake #7: Make pictures and words work in the space- No comment necessary!

Mistake #8: Keep it short- Web users tend to be lazy readers (Golombisky and Hagen, 22). Keep get short, this site falls short of that very important rule

Mistake #9: Visual- Keep a key visual at eye level. This will attract the users to your site and message.... not so much with this site.

Mistake #10: Keep it simple!- This site goes against any form of attractive simplicity.