The last of the 8 star design assignments relating to The Wire I completed with the “Barcode Transformation” assignment. I chose the scene where the surveillance team was tailing Spiros because there was a good clip of a silhouette of The Greek walking in the parking garage. This was a perfect pic to embed a barcode into.

Doing this assignment worked best by layering the clip of The Greek on to the barcode which I lifted from Google. These assignments become easier as you think of the most simplistic way to approach executing the task necessary.

I was rather intrigued by the idea of cookie cutting a shape out of a barcode. The use of vertical lines along with the implied lines that make up the shape in question work very well together and I don’t have a problem identifying the image in any of the examples I’ve looked at.

I decided to make my barcode in the shape of good ol’ American freedom. I carried one of these for 20 years in the finest fighting force the world has ever seen. The M-16A2, M16-A4, M4 were all variants of this shape and I have been fortunate enough to be skilled in the accurate employment of each and every one of them. Since I am no longer active, I do not have a government issue thunder stick anymore, but my gun vault does house the commercial version of the most tactical rifle ever devised.

Don’t hate guns, hate those that use them for evil. Demand that they be prosecuted appropriately, but step up to protect your rights. Become knowledgeable on the subject of firearms and you’ll see that the media is blowing a lot of smoke in your general direction.

I used a solid black image which I downloaded of the web, and then copied some lines onto it to give the barcode effect. It’s a little skinny to be able to add the numbers at the bottom, but I feel it works pretty well.

MADE IN THE USA

The “Barcode Transformation” design assignment took me a little longer than I expected but yet again that was because I am too stubborn to google how to do something. Instead I just click all the different buttons until I figure out a way to complete the assignment. Basically for this assignment you were to take a random barcode and turn it into something interesting.

My Process:

1. I Googled “random barcode” and selected one. I also Googled silhouettes to determine the picture I wanted to create.

2. Using the magnetic lasso I traced Mickey’s head.

3. Once it was completely lassoed I right clicked in the area and chose “Layer via cut.” Then deleted the background lay and dragged the cut out Mickey Mouse head onto the barcode picture.

4. I lassoed Mickey’s head again but this time I right clicked and selected “Select Inverse” This selected everything around Mickey’s head. I chose to “layer via cut” which you can see in the bottom right of my screen shot. I then just hid the 2 layers I didn’t want. Leaving just the barcode as Mickey’s head.

5. Finally, I created a duplicate layer of the barcode which allowed me to create a black background around the image. There is probably an easier way to do it but I just used the pencil to create it .

And here is my final image.

It was listed as 2 stars but I think it should be a little higher so I voted it to 3 and now is at 2.5 stars which I think is more fair. It definitely takes some patience to do. Maybe there is an easier way that I could have done it but my way worked as well.

Recently while feeding my Pinterest addiction, I discovered some images of designs people made out of barcodes. For this assignment, turn something simple into something great by using an image of a barcode and forming a different object or design. For examples, look here.

Here are some of my own designs that I made in Photoshop and Paint: