Author Archives: Dana Taddeo

And I think the worst is over

Posted on by at 12:48 pm
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On the first day of Jrn 381 I thought to myself, “what have I gotten into.” Before this class I had miniscule experience with code, and it was not something I saw myself picking up right away or enjoying doing. Well, I was right about one thing, it took me a while to grasp, but I actually enjoyed coding. I’m not crazy, I swear! What I enjoyed was figuring out how to make my website work and how to get it to look the way I wanted. There is no greater feeling than finally realizing what you’ve been doing wrong for the past hour and seeing your website work the way you imagined. Continue reading →

Album Cover

Posted on by at 7:39 pm
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My band name came from a battle during a war in China, and my title came from a Marilyn Monroe quote. It was kind of lucky that my album art is a bride. Seems fitting seeing where the title came from. So, I wanted to make the image a little distorted and shadowy looking to go with the name and title, so I used the shades of gray filter and it gave it that effect. For the font and colors, I wanted to choose a font that was easy to read, because the name of my band was a little complicated, but I also still wanted to make the font interesting to look at. I chose gray and red for the colors. Gray to go with the picture and dark feel, and I thought of red because the word “battle” is in my band name and that made me think of blood. To make the design a little more interesting I chose red for the outline color of the song title and made the letters gray on the inside. For the band name, I inverted the colors so it would look interesting, but uniform.

Three Examples of Gestalt’s Theory and My Attempt at a Self Portrait

Posted on by at 9:32 pm
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This was my first attempt at actually tying to draw something on Illustrator. Don’t judge too harshly.

Real life example of Gestalt theory of visual perception:

Continuation:

According to Gestalt’s theory, a design that shows continuation controls the way your eye moves on the page. The Ulta logo uses this principle because of the line that swoops down from the beginning of the word ‘Ulta’ to the beginning of the word beauty.

Closure:

According to the theory, the closure principle is the way your eye sees things, like your eyes finishing an unfinished shape or, as the Petco dog and cat logo shows, the way your eyes interpret lines and shapes to form a familiar object, such as a dog and a cat.

Figure/Ground:

The Gestalt theory describes this principle as the differentiation between an object and the background. Stony Brook University’s South Entrance sign displays the school’s old logo, which features three colored circles as the background and a series of white lines and dots as the objects that the eye differentiates from the background.

Examples of good portfolio and project sites

Posted on by at 10:12 pm
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In my search for examples of what I think are good portfolio sites, I came across two that I thought were worth sharing. While the sites showcase very different journalists who specialize in different areas, they are similar because of their usability, simplicity and eye catching design.

The first is the photography portfolio of journalist Kelly West.
I like how easy the site is to use. Her menu is straight forward and easy to navigate. I also like that her photos take center stage, which makes sense because that is what she is trying to advertise.

The other site I liked was WSJ reporter Lam Thuy Vo.

Once again, her menu is easy to navigate, simple, but her design is interesting enough to catch your eye.

The project site that I found is a News21 project done by 10 fellows at UC Berkeley. The project is called Behind Bars: California’s Convict Cycle.
The project explored California’s prison system population, the largest in the country,and tried to give a first hand look at what jail is like for its prisoners, as well as why 70 percent of the nearly 170,000 people in that system return to prison each year. They chose to explore the system using different aspects including death behind bars, desegregation, victims of violence behind bars and the history of California’s prison system. Overall the site is easy to use, find information, and provides its visitors with thorough reporting.