DesignAssignments371 – Assignment Bank

DS106 Post Secret

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As a lover and avid reader of PostSecret.com I was excited to see this as one of the design assignments.

The assignment, worth 2 stars tells us to create a DS106 Post Secret card. Knowing the typical style of Post Secret cards, I started with two separate photos and I used Pixlr to merge the two photos into one.

After coming up with an idea for my postcard I found an image of a psychology textbook on Google and opened that in Pixlr as my background layer.

I then physically wrote out my ‘secret’ on a note card and took a picture of it on my IPhone and saved it to my computer. The next step was for me to open the image of the note card in Pixlr and merge the two photos together. This is the part where I ran into some trouble so I went to Google to get help. This is the video tutorial I used to create a single image out of the two photos.

After solving the problem, I used the crop tool to clean everything up and I saved my image as a JPEG. Here is the final product:

The problem I had when doing this assignment was that I couldn’t figure out how to re-size just a single layer of the photo and not the two layers together. The video tutorial I watched was very helpful and I realized that all I had to do was use the Free Transform tool to change the size of the active layer.

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My Friday Nights

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For 2 stars this week, I completed the ds106 Post Secret assignment.

It’s time to get real! Design your own ds106 themed Post Secret postcard. Use photo editing software to experiment with different fonts and layering images.

My life thus far has consisted of Friday nights spent on my computer. Since classes have started, I have not gone out on a Friday or do anything else “fun” until after about 11 pm. Why you ask, do I spend my Fridays doing homework? BECAUSE I HAVE TO FINISH ALL OF THE WORK FOR DS106!! I have no life. I have no free time. What little time I do have is consumed by ds106. I guess my secret is out.. When Friday night rolls around, you’ll know where to find me. With my nose in a computer, finishing that week’s weekly summary post…

In order to create this assignment, I first found the base image on a Google search for “Friday Night”. I then opened it in Photoshop and used the brush tool and the text tool to create the final product. I will continue to have no life until the semester is over. DS106, you are a soul-sucking machine.

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DS106 Post Secret

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One of the assignments I chose to do was create a DS106 Post Secret (2 stars): It’s time to get real! Design your own ds106 themed Post Secret postcard. Use photo editing software to experiment with different fonts and layering images.

This course has definitely been a lot more difficult and time-consuming than I expected – or hoped for, really – but the majority of the time, the reason I spend so much time on these assignments is because I enjoy it so much and want the finished product to be the best in can be. A lot of that time is also spent trying and failing and trying and failing numerous times. However, once the end product is something I’m happy with and looks great, I get so excited… so excited, in fact, that I show them to all of my friends…

I found this picture just by googling “old photos of friends” and found this vintage-y looking one. I uploaded it onto Gimp and then added a text box with my secret in the font “Edwardian Script ITC Semi-Expanded”. I then blurred the image out so the text stood more, and started trying out different filters. I ended up going with the filter “Canvas” which was underneath “Filters” and then “Artistic”. I thought it made the image look cooler and, again, accentuated the text.

Credit for the photo.

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A Secret from Stringer

For my second design assignment this week I went with “DS106 Post Secret” (2 stars). I thought about doing this for myself, but I would rather make an assumption about something that happened in Epsiode 11. So in Episode 11 Stringer meets with Omar because Avon’s crew has been trying to get Omar to come out of the wood work and talk to him. Well he finally agrees to it and what Stringer says is that Brother–the guy Avon brought in from NY to protect their property (the towers, the low rises, etc)–is the one that killed Brandon. What I assume is that Stringer told Omar this so that Omar could sneak up on an unsuspecting Brother and kill him. If this happened then Stringer wouldn’t have to deal with Brother messing up his deal with Proposition Joe. Well there is his problem, Omar didn’t kill Brother immediately, he wanted to make him suffer like Brandon did. So Omar shot Brother and then proceeded to ask him questions and Brother told Omar that he wasn’t the one that killed Brandon; that it wasn’t his style. For some reason Omar believed him (maybe because of what he had heard about Brother previously or encounters that he had with him). So Stringer’s plan (or what I assume his plan was) backfired. But I made this Post Secret for Season 2, Episode 11 of The Wire from Stringer’s point of view.

I am extremely happy with how this turned out. I feel like it could actually be a PostSecret.

How I did it:

Like the rest of my visual/design assignments, I used GIMP to create this. I found the picture of the gun and imported it into GIMP. Then I found the picture of the paper and imported it into GIMP as a layer on top of the gun. Rather than use one of the boring fonts that I already have on my computer, I decided to get a little creative. I went on dafont.com and went in the handwriting section and found one that I thought would look similar to Stringer’s handwriting. The one that I chose was Colors of Autumn. So once I had all of that, I created an Alpha Channel for the top picture (the paper). I then proceeded to erase all but a few lines of the paper so all I had was enough room to write the secret on. Then I moved it to where I thought it would fit best on the picture of the gun. Then I went to type and the Colors of Autumn hadn’t shown up in my fonts. So I saved the project, closed out of GIMP and reopened it. When I did this, the font showed up (it hadn’t loaded because I had GIMP opened before I downloaded the font from the internet). So then I typed the secret and changed the size so it fit right on the paper (or at least it looked right to me). Then I exported it and uploaded it to Flickr, Twitter, and the Hub via Known.

Design Assignment #4

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This was one of my favorites of the week. I love a good post-secret. (it was also worth 2 stars)

So, ever since a friend had showed me post secrets, I became mildly obsessed. The blue screen is so dreaded; and I am more than paranoid about losing assignments the night before they are due. After some searching, I found the perfect blue screen image. I put the image into photoshop and added a text box where I typed my secret. Then I saved it and put the image into the flickr. I think it resembles the post-secret style.

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Design Assignment: Complete Silence

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DS106 Post Secret: It’s time to get real! Design your own ds106 themed Post Secret postcard. Use photo editing software to experiment with different fonts and layering images.

Wordless instrumentals are okay, though.

Click here to see it on Flickr.

It turns out this photo (here is the original) was taken by another DS106 person, Jess McCulloch. I had no idea until I clicked on the picture during my search for an appropriate pic to use for this project! how funny and cool is that?

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DS 106 Post Secret

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Two Star Assignment

Process

This assignment was fairly straightforward and simple. I got a photo from my trip to new york and I put it into photoshop. From then I painted a portion of the picture black so I could put in text into a sort of note box. One thing I did learn from this assignment is you can edit the background of a picture, which for some reason I had difficulty doing before this picture. On previous pictures I just put layer upon layer of new material to mask the original layer. Now that I know I can edit the background of a picture it should make my future assignments easier.

Motivation

As soon as I saw this assignment I knew the exact picture I had to use. For New Years I went to New York City with my friends and I found a Yu-Gi-Oh sweater at a thrift store. As soon as I bought it I began wearing it around the city. It takes commitment to wear a Yu-Gi-Oh sweater and I thought it would make a good picture to show the higher dedication I have towards DS106. Despite my nerdy desires, digital storytelling must take precedent over fighting over the Egyptian god cards.

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DS106 Post Secret

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So far 7 people have completed this assignment.
It has 2805 views.

Submitted by: MC

It’s time to get real! Design your own ds106 themed Post Secret postcard. Use photo editing software to experiment with different fonts and layering images.