Class Projects - KDMalinski

Pringles Can Project

This was the first official Graphic Design project I completed, which was for my Communication Design class. The premise of this project was to design a label for a custom, and completely made up, Pringles chip flavor. However, the catch of the project was that the illustration for the label had to be drawn traditionally using colored pencils as the medium. The drawn illustration was then scanned and added to a Photoshop file, along with the addition of added typography for the flavor title. The file was printed out once everything was in place, and applied to an empty Pringles Can as a mock up. I took part of this project a step further by hand drawing the typography for the flavor: Noodles & Curry.

Google Doodle Project

The final project for my Communication Design class was to design a custom Google Doodle that could possibly appear for some sort of important date. The design I made was inspired after Splatoon, a video game franchise created by Nintendo, and could possibly appear on the anniversary date of the franchise itself. The doodle itself uses smaller elements that I drew and rendered in Photoshop, which are objects that appear in the game’s singleplayer campaigns. The “centerpiece” of the project is Little Buddy, the little fish companion the protagonist has in game, stuck in one of the o’s in the word Google. The word Google is actually in one of the typefaces taken from the game as well, and were kept simple in contrast to the other rendered elements.

Granny's Candies: Logo Project

The first project for my Digital Design and Presentation class was to create logos for two separate businesses or companies, whether they were actual companies or they were entirely made up. Each company’s logo had to have three variations: A black variant, a white variant, and a full color variant. One of the two companies that I worked with is Granny’s Candies, a (fictional) small business that specializes in making hard candies that are reminiscent of the ones that could be found at a grandparent’s house.

The initial three variations of the Granny’s Candies logo were made in Illustrator using golden ratio circles to make up the little grandma. The full color version stuck to a majority pink color scheme with purple, peach, and a few gray tones for accent colors. I later on changed the full color version of the logo by tweaking some of the colors used, as well as hand drawing all of the lines in Photoshop. The outline of the logo was kept black; however, the lines on the were colored so they weren’t so the glasses could stand out a bit more against the granny.

Advertisement Campaign Project

This group of designs were created for another project in my Digital Design and Presentation class, which was to create a set of advertisements for one of the two companies used in the logo design project. I chose to go with the Granny’s Candies company for this project, since I likes the warm color palette of the logo and felt that it would work well to create a set of four different types of ads: A billboard (top), an 8 1/2 by 11-inch poster (left), a digital leaderboard ad (bottom right), and a 250 by 250 pixel square ad (right).

For the theme of the advertisements, I drew inspiration from old school candy advertisements that were seen during the late 1900’s. I went with simple typography across all four advertisement designs, wanting the focus on the graphics. All of the graphics were drawn by hand, starting out as sketches and then rendered using Photoshop.

Album Cover Project

This was one of the projects that was made for my Typography I class, which was to create and front and back cover design for an album. The album cover design could be one for an already existing album, though after talking with my professor, I ended up designing my cover after a short playlist that had a mix of songs that I personally listen to. The focus on the project was on typographic hierarchy, which is better seen on the back cover (bottom) since that side has a majority of the text for the cover’s design. Along with the song lists for both sides of the record, I added a disclaimer off to the side stating that the songs listed belonged to the original artists of the songs and that they were simply included, which was done to mimic disclaimers seen on actual album covers.

The graphics for the cover were kept simple, especially for the back cover and the label on the record so that the text was still readable and did not blend in with the graphics. The bar code on the back of album cover was completely made from scratch as well, rather than just taking a random barcode found online.

Motivational Poster Project

This was one of the projects I did for my Print Technology class. The premise was to create some sort of motivational poster, which would be printed out for the final product. Part of the project was getting the final version of the file print ready in InDesign, including having the content fit inside the file’s bleed lines, as well as learning how to use trim marks to cut off the bleed form the printed poster.

While the final version of the poster was assembled in InDesign, the graphics of the poster were drawn by hand in Photoshop. Each chain link was rendered on its own, then assembled together with the shadow behind it. Once the graphics were done, they were transferred over to InDesign to be placed with the background and the typography.

Sticker Project

This sticker design was part of another project for my Print Technology class, which was to create a custom graphic that would be turned into a sticker using RGB colors, but would be converted into CMYK colors for printing. The graphic would then be recreated in two other styles: One using a maximum of eight Pantone spot colors, and another using one singular color.

For the sticker, a cut line had to be created for the sticker to be printed out and had to be labeled and created on a separate layer to differentiate it from the actual graphics. These stickers were then printed out, and sadly they were cut out a little wonky. However, the actual graphics were not cut off.

For the spot color graphic, the challenge was to choose spot colors from Pantone that were at least similar if not identical matches to the RGB colors I had initially chosen. I removed the hot pink from this version of the graphic to meet the eight-color limit, and it was mocked up as if it was a graphic on a T-shirt.

For the solid color version of the graphic, I decided to go with the hot pink that I had removed from the spot color version so that it didn’t feel like an out of place color that just appeared once. This graphic was then mocked up on a metal water bottle, specifically to look like a laser engraved design.

Random Noun Icon Sets Project

This project was for my Typography II class, with the premise of the project being to create two sets of digital icons. One set had to be at a 64 pixel by 64 pixel grid, while the other set had to be at a 512 pixel by 512 pixel set. The catch of this project was that each of the ten icons in both sets had to be based off of a randomly generated list of nouns. The list I ended up with was Rake, Fish, Sink, Train, Use, Condition, Tent, Drop, Shoes, and Drink.

For my 64-pixel by 64-pixel set, I went with a simple design for each icon using a mix of filled shapes, and black outlines. Each icon was made to be pixel perfect, and they were given a light grey background so that they would feel like a set of simple, system icons.

For my 512-pixel by 512-pixel set, I illustrated the icons in my own style, keeping the designs simple but using color nd shading to give them more depth. The designs were more detailed with the extra space, and each was given a simple gradient background so that the illustrations would stand out a bit more.