This week we were asked to complete a project from the DS106 Design Assignment bank. I spent a lot of time looking through these assignments (I even started last week), and really had trouble finding one that spoke to me in the right way – the right way being that I could accomplish it within a week and fit my theme of “the future” into my final product. I was really tempted by a couple of book cover assignments, but the ones that appealed the most didn’t really inspire me in regards to my theme.

I finally decided on the PSA Billboard. I liked that the design aspects were clear and a bit different than some of the other things I’ve worked on, and that it was a pretty simple matter to include a topic of my choice.

In last week’s Digital Story Critique, I discussed how the anticipation of the future might affect the present. Voting is a great larger-scale example of people taking agency in building a societal future. How we vote is both individual expression and, presumably, commentary on how will think things will/should go. In elections, we also tend to see those fears about the future pop up a lot – for better or worse, it seems to be a large part of how campaigns seek support from voters.

The process of creating my billboard started with creating a simple slogan: “Take charge of your future. Vote today!” Part of my decision to go with that slogan also involved art that might go along with it. I immediately thought about including a photograph of a rhinoceros. Along the way, I adjusted the plan and drew my own rhino using Autodesk Sketchbook with the Bamboo Digital Drawing Tablet. I then imported a photo of a billboard (from Denver!) and layered in the text, drawing and background. All finishing work was done in Autodesk Sketchbook.

I tested my billboard out on a few different people for readability and general feedback. I then gave my design two days of rest and then came back and made one change: I italicized “charge.” I got a couple of, “Ooooh, that makes more sense,” comments from my feedback group. From this reaction, I discovered that the relationship between the words and the image was’t apparent without the italics (and that no one had said anything about it). This experience showed me that I need to ask questions when I’m having people look my work over as they won’t necessarily think to mention these things themselves. Good to keep in mind!

One thing that really rubs me the wrong way is when girls show up to class wearing crop tops. Crop tops are party going outfits, not classroom attire. Wearing a crop top to class makes you look unprofessional. Professors do not care to see your stomach and lower back. Other students should not care either. We are in class for an education, not a fashion show. While I am all for expressing yourself with the clothes you wear, you should still cover up while in class. That is all.

I made this billboard using GIMP. It was really difficult to figure out at first. I googled “crop top” and found the picture. I decided to cover up the model’s face first. I was going to just blur it, but it didn’t look at good. Then I decided to cover it completely with a black box. This is supposed to look like the pictures where people hold up signs with their secrets on it. I made the rectangle black and took pigments from the shirt to color the word “ladies.” Finally, I added the text at the bottom. I made all the lettering large and bold to make it easier to read. Then all I had to do was merge down the layers!

The ultimate merger assignment worth 3.5 stars is where you have to merge two different business logos. I decided to go with two very competitive companies Coke and Pepsi. Using Paint, I took the circle logo from Pepsi, erased the word Pepsi, and then inserted the Coca-Cola logo. I then decided it was way to plain so I added the blue color from the word “Pepsi” and put it inside the two “c”s of Coca-Cola.

This is perhaps one of my greatest pet peeves on the road – people who don’t use their turn signals. I’ve been driving for 5 years without any sort of accident happening to me or because of me, and I think at least 10% of that 100% success rate is because I LET PEOPLE KNOW WHEN I’M CHANGING LANES OR TURNING OFF MY CURRENT ROAD. Not much to the story behind this PSA besides that. The alternating red letters in the last part of the PSA is supposed to represent a turn signal blinking on and off, even though I know it looks tacky. It’s my hope that people will remember the text because of that same tackiness. Was also neat that I could align “Signal” with the drifting smoke to make “Signals”.

The making of this was actually pretty minimalistic – I used two different fonts for the text and stuck bold/italics on the words I thought should be remembered the most, to reinforce the idea that using turn signals is a good thing. After the multiple experiences I’ve now had using the text insertion function in GIMP, that was relatively simple. Same for the photo of two cars – the photo I placed in the background came from Dreamstime, I simply cropped it to the 680 x 300 pixel workspace recommended in the assignment prompt.