Bulletin Board Makeover for 446th ASTS

Talk about a large-format project! Lt. Col. Jennifer McCleve of the 446th Aeromedical Staging Squadron at JBLM wanted "makeovers" for all the bulletin boards in her department. After consultation with her, I designed the basic format, adjusting the content and images according to the differing needs for each board. They were printed on 4 x 8' foamcore and trimmed to size, then attached to the existing cork bulletin boards. Lt. Col. McCleve was so thrilled with the results that she talked me into an "honor ceremony" during training for her squadron. It does feel good when your client is happy with the end result.

Poster Design in Action

This is a nice image of a set of posters I designed, in action! The border and shields/logo is a previously-designed template that is used for the 62nd Air Wing hallway posters. They periodically provide a series of images that they want placed into the template; we then output 18x24 posters and mount them on black foamcore. I was surprised to see that one of the recent images featured the largest of a series of "Resilience" posters I designed, being used during "Wingman Day" at McChord! This was the master poster, with their "Bounce Back" tennis ball theme, listing various resilience strategies they teach. There were 12-13 in total, each illustrating one of the strategies. A fun project, allowing me to flex some design muscles!

JBLM Recycling Program Logo

I had a great opportunity recently to design a logo for a new recycling program at JBLM. The customer had some ideas about the look, but was also very open to other concepts, so it was an exciting and fun challenge. I had a strong feeling for the leaf shape, from an environmental perspective, and to make it stand out from a standard and expected round or elliptical logo shape. Interestingly, the captain who had the final say did not appreciate the leaf logo at first, but ultimately returned to it after the next round of ideas. He also did not initially want the recycle logo combined with the sun image, but I felt it was the most effective way of incorporating it and persisted in including it as an option, and, as you see above, it was the winner! The top version will be used as a sticker; it was originally an alternate logo option, and they liked it enough to include it for other uses in their program.

New Job Projects!

Yes, folks, I have found gainful employment! I've been working as a graphic artist for a military contractor (!) since August. Much of the work is routine signage, but these two are examples of having to re-create logos for a brigade or division. Often, all they have is a low-res jpg and they want to output a 2-foot logo to be mounted on foamcore and cut out so they can put it up for a wall display. That was the case for these, so I had to completely redraw both, and in Corel, no less! Challenging, but it definitely honed my drawing skills. Corel is actually very similar to Illustrator, at least in how the drawing tools work, and it does have a few nifty features. I was very glad for the Help feature, though! I had to "translate" several functions that Corel just processes differently.

Magazine Cover Mockup

My final assignment for Illustrator class--a mock magazine cover. I enjoyed doing this, because I like creating layouts and working with text; designing the logo was fun as well. Oftentimes it seems I do a lot of the work in my head, because I don't usually sketch out a lot of different ideas. I did use an image for the earth, and found some fantastic Photoshop brushes for the constellations (I wasn't really looking forward to drawing all of those by hand!) I drew the zodiac symbols and the center circles, then added a stroke of my star scatter brush at the bottom.

Depth and Blur

I rather like this little outer space scene, it was fun to put together the various layers and then add blurs and drop shadows where appropriate. I'm really liking the inner glow effect on the star and planet; I used that in the last assignment and decided to repeat it here. I also created a "moonboots" brush to add the footprints from the spaceship. I tried using the Width tool to widen them as they got closer, but I don't think it was working the way I imagined it. The astronauts took some time to create--it reminded me of building the puppet animation in Flash, piecing them together with shapes. I did the same thing with the alien. To me, it's a lot easier than drawing it all out!

Depth and Dynamics

So the object of this assignment was...depth and dynamics! I tried to create depth by using the Perspective tool and drawing primitive buildings along the planes, adding the road and sun/sky. Then I created some dynamics by drawing curved lines for the road dashes, using the Width tool to widen them out a bit at the bottom, and adding drop shadows so they kind of "snake" along the road. I don't really like the ovals; I guess they're supposed to be some kind of vehicle? Whatever..it's abstract, right? Not one of my favorites!