M4 Book Cover

            I began this project with a few set ideas for book covers (my favorites being the Chipmunks & Jazz Singer ideas). However, as I was working through using some new functions in Photoshop I found myself staring at an image I wanted to use. After a little thought, I settled on doing a tribute book to the history of the NYS Philharmonic Orchestra.

            The image of the birds flying into the sunset (obtained originally from Pixabay.com), I arrived at by altering the pictures color saturation slightly as well as a hue change. I then added a 3x3 selected overlay of the blue color to create a background. From there I added a gradient overlay, choosing to use a linear light, and arrived with my Books background picture. From this picture, the project seemed to drive itself.

            I added my barcode and a Penguin Publishing logo, along with a New York logo, and a silhouette of an orchestra. In adding the words to the cover, I used five separate fonts in the lettering, at various locations, specific to phrasing or institutions.

            I think my book cover has an appealing image to draw the eye, sophisticated lettering and advertising-like wording to attract a varied audience. Persons browsing for a new read, whether they are a fan of NYS, the Philharmonic, or even history, may well be drawn to purchase a copy.

Barcode

https://edgarsavill.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/7.jpg

New York State Symbol

https://www.childsupport.ny.gov/dcse/images/countymap/nycounty.gif

Penguin Publishing Group

http://blog.booktopia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/logopenguin.gif

Orchestra Silhouette

http://www.scuolaelmas.it/index_file/orchestra.gif

M4 Book Cover Sketches

M4 Book Cover Images

Pixabay.com

                                         https://edgarsavill.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/7.jpg

                            https://www.childsupport.ny.gov/dcse/images/countymap/nycounty.gif

   http://www.scuolaelmas.it/index_file/orchestra.gif

                     http://blog.booktopia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/logopenguin.gif

M3 Awareness Poster - Sketches

M3 Awareness Poster - Images Used

M3 Awareness Poster - Landfills (Pollution)

             Being a little older, I remembered the iconic images of the 70’s and 80’s for awareness programs, campaigns, and commercials. This was the era of the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign, R.I.F. (Reading is Fundamental), Schoolhouse Rock, and the likes of Smokey the Bear’s “Only you can prevent forest fires… only you.” Initially, I narrowed my ideas to the ‘Crying Indian’ anti-pollution commercials and Smokey the Bear's campaign against forest fires.

            I ran starter searches on Pixabay.com (a free-to-use image site) for Smokey the Bear, forests, woodlands, landscapes, lakes, rivers, fire, forest fires, garbage, trash, pollution, & landfills to find some inspirational images that might fit my sketched ideas. I found the image of the deer with the dirty cup in its mouth and I was sold. I narrowed my searches on Pixabay, finding all but one of my images used from the site. I had to do a Google search to get an image o the ‘Crying Indian’ character ( http://www.longisland70skid.com/tag/crying-indian/ ).

            I deliberately decided to use some contrast in my poster, taking the prettiest landscape I found, with a beautiful sunset in the distance, and adding a landfill atop it. Besides the obvious refuse, garbage trucks, bulldozer, & scrap metal, I put the deer image to the forefront, deciding that since it is 30+ years removed from the original commercials, I would use the ‘Crying Indian’ image as a ghostly background. For the final changes, I added better tears on the Indian image (using icicle images) and then a flock of birds flying off into the sunset. I thought the last part would add a bit of irony, since normally a trash-heap is a meeting spot for hungry flying folk. It is almost as if the image says that our landfills have become so horrendous that even the scavengers do not want any part of them.

            I remember as a child, how drawn I was to the image of the Native-American crying over the polluting of his ancestral home. The original commercials would show the Indian in from of a polluted area, he would turn with a tear in his eye, and a narrator would say, “People start pollution, people can stop it.” I decided to bring this concept into the present, updating the social comment by advancing the problem from just pollution to full-scale landfills. Beyond the power in the single image of the ‘Crying Indian’, I feel the combination of the beautiful landscape with the environmental effect on animals, creates an overall effective awareness campaign image about the effects of our increasingly wasteful lives on the world environment.