When water droplets started falling with increasing intensity, hundreds of participants at TPRAWKS prayed it was just a passing drizzle, lasting perhaps, for all of five minutes. The rain, however, had a mind of its own, and as if in defiance to their thoughts, droned on furiously against the roof of the Sports hall where TPRAWKERS sought refuge in.

One of these hopeful hundreds was Group Leader, Serine Tan, 17.
“The dragon boating activity was supposed to take place now! This was one of the highlights of TPRAWKS!” Her voice, evident with worry.

However, not everyone was feeling as forlorn at TPRAWKS, a three-day non-residential camp held from November 17-19 for secondary school students to experience life at Temasek Polytechnic.

Inside the Sports Hall, was a sight to behold. The hall, brightly lit, was jam packed with Rawkers juggling balls of a myriad of colours while cheering loudly.

They screamed till their lungs were sore, refusing to be terrorized by the rain. “TP ROCKS TP ROCKS TP ROCKS MY SOCKS”

Their voices could be heard throughout the school as it bounced from walls to walls, to the chagrin of teachers and students alike.

With the Dragon Boating Activity pushed back, the mass dance was brought forward in its place.

The dance routine, led by the Temasek Poly Dance Ensemble(TPDE) captivated the audience. Their complex moves were broken down for the Rawker’s sake.

Swaying no further than an inch, the Rawkers attempted to execute the dance moves to no avail, resembling nothing of the dancers’ fluid movements.

Next stop. Tour round the school to learn more about the various courses offered at Temasek Polytechnic.

Media Biz was a stop for the Rawkers as a select few got a chance to experience being a news presenter.

“Good afternoon, today, we bring you the news here from Media Biz. Behind me are fans of the celebrity we are meeting today!” Nicholas boomed articulately with ease.

Secondary School leaver, Nicholas Yap, 16 was chosen at random amongst the terrified crowd of faces to try his hand at news presenting.

His voice, so clear and baritone that if you dismissed his youthful appearance, no one would fault you for mistaking him to be a real news anchor.

“News presenting seems scary at first, but it wasn’t as hard as I thought and I might consider CMM next year!” He exclaimed enthusiastically, face flushed as he bubbled from excitement.

Afterwards, TPRAWKERS were herded into the Convention Centre for MediaCorp’s Meet and Greet session.

If you had seen the celebrities at present, you would not fault these teenage girls for their hysterical screams upon sight of the handsome Darren Tan, Star of Mata Mata.
His boyish good looks paired with his charming smile were enough to make any girls swoon as he signed autographs and photographed with them compliantly.

How did the organisers gauge the success of TPRAWKS?
Serine Tan replied ,“If we were to judge by the volume of their cheers, I would say this event has been a huge success”

From my newsletter, I have learnt to create stickers. I never knew it was that easy, just adding stroke on the image gives it the sticker feel. And if I want to go the extra mile, I can use the warp tool to make the sticker have a peeling effect. But of course, it's not needed, though I did use it for my post it notes.

 real like.

Also, changed my background, because of Ms Teh's suggestions. I realised that we did not have a constant theme, and initially. the background was a roped texture in blue. In the end, we changed it to an wooden texture to match all the other backgrounds, which were either the colour

Almost completed part of my haze precaution page. Changed the font as per miss Teh's suggestions. Also, added a mask sticker. The orginal image of the mask looked like this 

Edited all parts and added a filter to give it a cartoonish look. The colours brightened everything and matches perfectly. The sticker was for our scrapbook idea

From the picture, you can see the SAY NO TO BAD AIR stamp. That was actually easy to make. All i had to do was choose a font and add a border around it. And use an eraser with different brush to give it the grainy stamp effect.
And voila, off to go.

This is an in-depth explanation of my post it. First, you have to create a rectangular shape using the marquee tool, and colouring it using the paint bucket. Next, duplicate the image and change the colour to black, and lower the opacity of the rectangle.
After, use the warp tool to drag out the rectangular black part to let it resemble a shadow and I added a gaussian blur to make it seem blurry. Then I used the warp tool on the post it tab to make it look more real like.

This is my 2 different cover proposals. I still find them both very plain. However I was ensure which building to use as the wood building would reflect our newsletters wood theme. However the wood building will look too Matchy with the top of the wood part. Hence We decided on the normal building. I never realised how difficult it is to design a cover page that will look professional. Also used back the word waitrose that I designed for my previous assignment as I felt I was a wasted design. I created a more sticker like effect so it would not look that awkward and also reflected the sticker scrapbook theme. 

For my newsletter, I drew out this boy so that the book can hold the achievements of the residents living in the area, which is my plan. it fits in with the scrapbook design, and gives it a cute feel. However, I am still in the process of fixing him up, using photoshop to make him appear more cartoon like. And I think his legs are too long.

During egd lessons, we drew out our template for the newsletter. We have decided to group a few of our similar topics into one page with the suggestion of Ms Teh. We also went online to free fonts to download fonts for each headings that is appropriate for our topics. Overall it was a productive lesson .

For our wednesday tutorial lesson, we learnt that an A4 size paper is 29cm by 21cm. In ratio, it meant 1.414:1 . When the paper is folded into half, it becomes an A5 and the dimensions although smaller, maintains the ratio of 1.414:1. Likewise for the A3 paper. This ratio is the international standard for papers. We had to fold our paper and unfold it until it resembled the photo above. the boxes you see are although of different sizes, maintains the same ratio of 1:414:1. I had a hard time folding it and gave up after a few attempts. 

At the end of the activity, Ms Teh explained the purpose of learning this grid system. It is to help us understand important design elements like flowlines, all to aid us while designing our newsletter and magazines.

For our EGD lesson on thursday, we were to copy a sample cover page of a newsletter on indesign. At first I felt lost as I thought indesign would be very difficult to use. However, I realised that it is really much more simple than it seems. All the borders were created with the box tool and essentially, the majority of the work was to create boxes, lines and ensure the words were where they were.

The biggest problems I faced was the words. It was difficult to space them out the way the sample cover was. However, practise makes perfect and I got the hang of the exercise pretty quickly and actually managed to complete the exercise on time.

After the exercise, Ms Teh went through with us more about the Golden triangle and the Villard's diagram. 

I learnt that the golden triangle has a spiral which indicates the place where the eye of the audience will be drawn towards when they see the advertisement. This is an essential concept as many advertisers make use of this triangle to ensure the most important points will be understood. 

I have always known there was a certain science to advertisements, however when learning it, I felt amazed. Also, I thought that this exercise could have been more engaging if Ms Teh had asked us where our eyes were drawn towards when we first looked at the picture. Then it would have been mindblowing when she explained to us the science behind the golden triangle.

The Villard's digram, as shown in the image above, is for 2 page layout.  To create it, we have to first draw lines across a 1/2 page diagonally and draw a line across the entire page diagonally and do the same for the opposing side.

This diagram acts as a guide for us to place important pictures and helps our layout look better. 

Today we learnt about columns, margins, flowline and many other technical terms to use while designing a newsletter. I did not know so much work went into it. Also, i learnt that a market is a placement indicators for running heads, folio which is a page number. There are so many terms that will take me some time to get used to, but generally the ones that really stuck with me was the marker, spatial zone, module, flowline and column.  Of course, there were a few terms that I already heard of and is used so often by the rest of the world, header.

For wednesday's EGD lesson, each student had to explain their advertisements and their difficulties in overcoming their difficulties in designing their poster. It was an enriching lesson as we get to learn from each other and even get new ideas and tips from each other's advertisement. I remembered my biggest difficulty was colouring pooh. I had to draw him out 2 times because the first time, I used the paint tool along with the pen tool. From there I learnt my mistake as the colour bucket did not recognise the paint tool.

Today for egd, we learned how to use in design to create a layout for magazine. I learnt how to use text wrap around an image. Previously I thought that writers manually edited the words around the images. Now I know it is as easy as a click of a button. The whole exercise was boring and I encountered many problems     , but I solved it eventually. 

I spent 2 hours trying to figure out how to invert selection and I was stuck there, the instructions were not very clear and were quite vague. I went onto other tutorials, but the tutorials taught me different ways to do words over images. So I eventaully gave up and did this in a simpler way.

I chose to do the beginner level for my tutorial because I had trouble doing the intermediate level. This tutorial was quite difficult and as I encountered difficulties, I had to go about in a different route. For example, the hands. I could not copy the tutorial effectively, and had no choice, but to do it my own way, which I thought was also not that bad. The hand has a very slick feel. I thought that the paper would be nicer if it was blue, to match the blue lines and the light, and it complemented the black very well.

Here are my different designs for the the brand logo design. I designed the sun for waitrose in the hopes of bringing across a bright a cheery vibe for my advertisement. However I thought the rose would be apt for the brand since it contains the word "rose" and it blends beautifully. I'm still at the initialising stage and have troubles deciding where to put my logo into and how to put it.

I don't think the picture of pooh above does justice to how bad pooh looks in illustrator when I placed him into the background from photoshop after giving him filters. The background with him in it in my last post was in photoshop, hence pooh's quality was still good. Now, he looks grainy upon closer inspection and the lines of his eyes are crooked. So, I decided to return to my previous unedited version of pooh I drew in illustrator. I found a solution to my previous pooh problems of him holding the honey and finally figured out how to use the gradient to give him more difference in colours, and making him look more realistic. 

I finally found solutions to my previous problem. I made pooh more cartoon like through the use of a filter. It made him more "bubbly" looking and 3d, solving my problems. It made him blend more with the background and not look so out of place.
I found out how to make him a shadow by magic wand to select all of him and make a drop shadow. Then, i edited the shadow to be less opaque and more natural looking. One of my biggest problem was separating the shadow from pooh. However, after a search online, all I had to do was create a new layer out of his shadow, and voila! i can now move it around.
Then, I adjusted the shadow accordingly.

I faced a big problem while trying to combine pooh and the background. Upon putting pooh into the background, I realised he looked too "fake" and didn't fit in. He didn't have the 3d effect and I still have no idea how to change it. Will try to resolve this problem by the end of this week. I think I will try to improve on it by making the honey even more "fake" and adding more gradient to Pooh and add a shadow behind him.

This is my model for the project. I faced some problems with winnie the pooh. Although drawing him out by tracing was a breeze, it was difficult to give him different colours through gradient. I finally did it, though the effect was subtle and not obvious. He still looked too "cartoonish" and not realistic enough to blend off with the background. However, that was the least of my worries.

Making Pooh get hold the honey was the hardest part. I had to redraw his hand, which was difficult because I didn't want to ruin the slight gradient effect and it would not be too natural. So instead, I found another way to go about my problem by outlining the Jar using quick selection and 'new layer via copy' to get the shape of the jar without the hands blocking.

I also changed the honey jar as I feel the design of the new jar fits more with the advertisement. I also outlined him to fit more with his background.

The picture on the top is the original which I took off the internet for Pooh's background.
I made it more whimsical and brighter looking to suit Pooh's bright features. I added the grain filter and made the blues and greens stand out more, and sharpened the image.

Achieving the overall look. Though the difference not obvious.

The bottle on the left is the original honey. The bottle on the right is the edited honey. I first used quick selection to get just the bottle of honey, so as to remove the background for future use. Then, I copied via layer and deleted the original bottle.

Then, I edited it using a filter to make it "brighter" and more attractive. I made the yellows stand out even more, and this resulted in the sticker on the bottle to take on a more ivory colour, which was to my advantage as the look became even better.

For egd lesson, we learnt puppet wrap where we can manipulate our image's actions. I manipulated his hands up to look like he was jumping for joy and his legs up to kick the floor. I added the trampoline for his background and the overall effect was a middle aged man acting like a child.

 I went onto google to find an unedited image of a scenery, and found the above, which was dull and the colours didn't "pop". 

I played around with the brightness, exposure and colours. I increased the blues and greens and darkened the colours for a more magical look.

Applying the ganossian blur,which I learnt last week, I unblurred everything but the reflection of the river. 

Applying what we learn last week for photoshop, i decided to use the same cloth used for the man's jacket to change the model's yellow dress into that pattern. I first traced the model's outfit using quick selection, then copied via new layer before clicking on the pattern and using clipping mask. I used hard light to have a more natural look to the dress's pattern. I enlarged her chest area for a more balanced look overall. 

This is my idea for the advertisement. I chose the honey brand Waitrose. I find the design of their jars very classic and simplistic. It is able to match the layout of my design, which I plan for it to be minimalistic and simple with lots of white space. 

The final product with the label 4 is a mesh up of a bee hive and the Honey Jar. It is done to show the freshness of the honey from Waitrose.

In the advertisement, I either plan to have Winnie the Pooh to be the model for the product, and show that he prefers Waitrose's honey over the bee hive's honey. This will show that waitrose honey's quality matches that of beehive's honey in terms of quality. Furthermore, with the addition of bees around both the beehive and Waitrose's honey, it shows that even bees are confused as to which is the "real" honey.

The second idea for my advertisement will replace Pooh with a table. The final product sits on the table with a beehive nearby in the background. The bees will be stuck in the middle, confused as to which honey to go to. 

Both idea will show Waitrose Honey's quality.

This is a very creative and interesting advertisement. It successfully shows that Heinz's ketchup contains real tomatoes. The whole bottle is made of tomato from top to bottom, even with the leafs of tomato. It gives off the impression that Heinz's ketchup is 100% tomato and not artificial like so many products these days which can even appeal to the health conscious and would choose Heinz over other brands.
It's slogan is very creative too as it successfully interchanges the word tomato and ketchup. It demonstrates that Heinz's ketchup is all natural just like tomatoes.
I like the colour background usage of ketchup red. The darker shade of red does not take away the focal of the ketchup bottle, but instead, brings more attention to it. I like that they did not use a white background which although simplistic, would be quite boring.
Overall, the red draws attention to the eye.

2 weeks ago for essential graphics design, we did typography. We wrote a word on text and were to transform it into an image using outline. I initially wrote the word illuminate as I wanted to play around with the words using the anchor point tools. I eventually shortened the word to Nate as illuminate was too long. I got the idea Date from the letter E. The middle stem of the E resembles an arrow. 

Hence, I changed the N to a D so that I could make D look like a bow and add an arrow. 

The whole text was to reflect a victorian feel, hence the letter T, looks like a sword.

Worksheet- Elements of Advertisements

The above picture contains the slogan "be colourful" which related to the image of these schoolgirls , the distinct logo of Vera Bradley . I like the visuals of the schoolgirls as it give off a very preppy feeling. The main school girl adds a nice pop of colour to the dull beige background, letting her stand out and showing the relation of the slogan "be colourful". This allows the audience to know that Vera Bradley's clothing are all bright and allows you to stand out in the crowd. The brand name is printed very big, unlike other logos, it draws emphasis to the brand and it is more likely for others to remember it.  The above picture contains the Logo of macy's, both the star and the font, vibrant images and a copy.  It contains the headline 'Find your magic' and the slogan 'at macy's where it all comes together' The image uses a darker background and overall colour scheme. It gives off a mysterious feeling which relates to the headline "find your magic". The slogan "at Macy's where it all comes together" shows how at macy's there are many choices of clothes where the customer will find whatever style they need.

BAD ADVERTISING EXAMPLE Reasons: This advertisement is not visually appealing and is a sight for sore eyes. The colour scheme does not blend nicely and the grainy "cartoony" effect is makes this ad seems very old and is off putting to it's audiences. There is too much text squeezed into one information, all trying to stand out that the dominance is lost on the advertisement. It confuses my mind and I find it hard to concentrate on it. There is no dominance in this picture. The name of the website, potlawyer.com sounds very shady and it is very tacky. The pun "Ease your mind" does not match a typical law advertisement and it is a bad joke. Overall, no client in their right mind would want to solicit this lawyer if they were to see this advertisement as he does not come across as a very professional lawyer.

The mandarin caption translates to, your hurt yourself and you hurt the others around you.

The two pictures above are from different advertisements, however, they relate to each other.

I do not like the layout, and design of the first advertisement. The fonts and the word alignments seem very amateurish, although there is a contrast with the white words against the black background. However, it's one redeeming factor is the picture of the woman, it is impactful and is about to fulfil it's intention of having people to not or stop smoke. This is because, the picture scares people and is enough to prevent them from ever wanting to end up like her. Overall this advertisement does not appeal to me although it does get its general message out. It can improve on its background design and perhaps change its font to a different typography. 

The second picture is a better advertisement in terms of layout and the single picture of the hand is more impactful as it directs the attention to it. The ombre background is easier on the eyes and  matches the skin tone of the hands. I like how the words are smaller and is still able to get its message across because the picture would intrigue the audience's attention. 

This is an example of how two advertisements with the same intention can look different just with the background and typography. 

This is a very innovative idea. It is able to fulfil its purpose with the use of the vending machine as a prop to appeal to its audience.

People who see this vending machine would instantly be surprised to see a vending machine with guns in it. The oddity of this immediately strikes them and would engage them to stay on and examine the poster, whereby their eyes would land on the phrase, "This is how easy it is to get hold of a gun in South Africa." 

This allows the poster to get its point across in an effective and powerful way. The designer uses a solemn font type for the phrase to match its message. Along with the guns in the machine is shown to be as easily obtained as a bag of chips, it is able to give the perception of the relaxed gun laws in South Africa. Once the readers understand the message, they would first be horrified, and then sympathetic to the plight of South Africans. Finally, donating to this good cause.

The poster also makes use of dull colours like brown and black to emphasise the mood and seriousness of the poster. Furthermore, the colours do not take away the attention of the guns, and instead play a complementary background role. The guns are able to remain in attention and it is clear to the audience that the whole dominance of this poster is centered around the gun.

The clever use of vending machines to ask for donations is sure to attract people to donate.

This advertisement makes use of its brand name in this poster, allowing it to achieve the desired result of making the brand name "palm" stick. It does so with the clever usage of literally using a real palm beside the smartphone palm. The vibrant colour of the real palm immediately brings attention to it, showing contrast between the two palms right away. The poster is able to demonstrate one of the main functions of the smart phone, on the real palm by the writings on the hand. It shows the inefficiency of the hand, and encourages people to buy the smartphone instead as it looks clean and organised. This contrast is further shown with a white background behind the smartphone, versus the palm in a busy and messy city.

The alignment of this poster is done in careful manner. The two words on the top "Chaos" and "Order" are the two most important words in this advertisement as it highlights the main difference between the two. Next, on the bottom of the poster with the tagline "organize your life with palm", again making sense to the audience as the smartphone palm is associated with "Order". Bringing a positive connotation to the phone. Finally, the eyes will land on the different colours of the phone model at the bottom. Although the brand too wants to advertise that the phone has many other colours besides black, it is printed tinier at the bottom so as not to compromise the poster's main purpose. Which is the phone's real functions instead of the aesthetics.

The colour of the real palm is saturated to match the brand logo of "palm" which is orange. The colours of the whole poster matches both the font and the pictures, allowing for a much smoother and neater look.

I like the use of white space in this design, it shows the minimalistic side of coke and places all emphasis on the coke bottle. The picture of the bottle also matches the tagline , "live on the Coke side of life" where the coke in the bottle is defying gravity. Which would mean to have fun and living without boundaries as there are people having fun and doing whatever they like at the top of the coke bottle. It shows that the living on the "coke side of life" is to relax and hang loose, appealing to their target audiences of youths. 

There is a contrast in the font of the tagline where "Coke" is both bolded and made larger. Again, emphasising the brand name. The colour of the tagline also matches the colour of the coke, making it aesthetically pleasing to the eye. The bottom of the poster has the ever iconic Coco Cola in both a different font and colour. The red is able to capture the audience's attention and again, emphasize the brand name.

Furthermore, the colours used in the poster complement each other and gives a whimsical feeling to it, making it easy on the eyes.Overall, the whole poster is symmetrically balanced, with its weight in the picture evenly distributed in the poster. This gives the whole poster a neater look yet at the same time it has a light and fun feel, with the emphasis of the poster still being on the coke bottle. Which accomplishes its purpose of selling the coke to its audience right away.

This poster is balanced symmetrically, with both sides having equal emphasis. Which makes it easier for the audience to comprehend and get the main idea of this poster.

The font used for the wording "Retro Ice Cream", and the colours used for the ice cream reflects the overall theme of retro. The colours are slightly dull and muted, matching the dull grey background. The colour of the "raspberry cherry" is not a vibrant shade of red, but a slightly toned down version to match the overall theme, hence the poster appears more visually appealing.

The alignment and constant rhythm of the flavours of each ice cream being placed consistently and equally above each ice cream makes for a more neater and cleaner poster, again allowing the audience to easily maneuver across the poster for each flavour.  The colours of the ice cream match the colouring of the flavour, again, providing a balance to the poster.

Overall, I like the simplistic design of the poster, where there is equal dominance in both the image and the main text. Although there is no main dominance, it does not matter as the ice cream is able to speak for itself in this design.