Poster: Alpina B7

Project: Serif Vs. Sans Serif Effectiveness in Advertising
Type: School Project
Class: ADV5503 Persuasion and the Marketplace
Photographer: Kevin Nguyen (Photos used with permission.)

Two posters designed for an experiment to determine whether serif or sans serif typefaces are more efficient and effective in eliciting positive emotions in print advertisements. The subject of these posters is one of four; only two were present in the experiment.

Each set of posters were set in both serif and sans serif type (one family each) with varying weights.

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Tutoring

What do you do when a former colleague of yours comes to you with a slight (large) career change in mind with no interest in getting a whole, brand new four-year degree, but is willing to work alongside and under you to learn your trade?

You laugh and say tough cookies, my man.

…

NO! Absolutely not. You help them and give them the tools they need. I would never encourage someone to go and get a second bachelors degree to change careers unless they were absolutely passionate about it, but I wouldn’t also turn someone away who asked for help that genuinely wanted or needed it. If I can provide, I will.

My friend, former colleague, and now pupil, has been in touch with me to see if i could teach him things about graphic design for a couple of months now. The good news is, he has a creative base to work on, especially when it comes to composition, which is what we’re working on now. I’m not an educator by any means, and honestly, I don’t want to make this boring for him. It’s crossed my mind to take what I learned in 15 years of self-education and 4 years of formal and condense it into months of learning. Some would say that’s really unfair, that I had to pay thousands of dollars and push through four years of constant judging, belitting, and the utmost drilling of information and ideas just to hand it to someone to do over, say, 8 weeks time.

Nah, it’s all good. I have knowledge and skill and if I can share it, I will. I did it at my last job, and the job before that, and the job before that.

He’s not going to become a master graphic designer under my guise. In fact, that’s a task he’s going to take on by himself. There are TONS of graphic designers who are successful, but self-taught.

I need to start by having him understand what graphic design is. I showed him the course path LinkedIn Learning has on graphic design and the first module available in the course is “What is Graphic Design?”

Today’s email, I saw he sent back his latest assignment. After a few weeks on the pen tool, with the ellipse and marquee tools peppered in, I decided he was ready to start learning about composition. Yesterday I emailed him an assignment briefly explaining depth (which should be a refresher, as his degree is in photography) and asking him to create a composition using color and shape to show me depth. He emailed back to me a correct, but very basic and boring assignment.

I didn’t specifically tell him to jump through hoops, but I also didn’t expect getting the bare minimum back, especially from someone with lots of fire. So, I emailed him back and said, “Do it again, but this time let’s think outside the box.” I showed him a couple of photographic examples of depth and two examples from design (on top of the other examples I originally sent with the assignment) that show depth and hierarchy. I also attached the image on the left. I did it in 5 minutes, but I used color, shapes, and layering to try and show something that’s not just a bunch of triangles in a size/gradient order sitting atop a box with another gradient effect.

I told him for this assignment, his piece didn’t need to make sense or have a story, though if it did (both make sense and have a story), I wouldn’t be mad because it would further prove his understanding and help define his thought process.

The piece I did to show was done in 5 minutes using about 4 layers and some doodling around to make it make sense. To me, I was thinking of a stylized galaxy, with a ringed planet. This isn’t the Mona Lisa of my portfolio, but I hope he sees it and is inspired to make something much better.

Hobbies of Quarantine

Quarantine. It’s something we associate with lepers or someone who is insanely contagious….aka lepers.

But, alas, the good lot of us in the States and around the world are in quarantine to help flatten the curve, as they say.

Things are different. I’ve more or less slowed down my job hunt, as no one is really hiring. Their postings are on auto-renew for the most part, while other are looking for cheap labor or are scraping together work to create a job. Both are good for those who are just starting, but for me? I need to pick up where I left off.

Anyway, while enjoying this newfound time at home, I was able to finish up my spring semester at Temple, thus knocking out a whole year of graduate school with only one and a half left. I was able to maintain my 4.0, so I’m looking forward to doing it again in the fall. I also picked up a new hobby, which I’m going to turn into sales in my Etsy shop: creating wax seals.

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The idea is to illustrate greeting cards and sell a card, a similarly decorated envelope and a self-adhesive wax seal as a bundle to those who enjoy buying those things. An example is the card set I made for Mother’s Day for my own mom, as shown in the photo on the left.

Tied in with the wax seals and card illustrations is embossing. I watch a lot of creative stuff on Instagram and see a lot of people who hand-letter using embossing powders and heat-transfer foils. They looked neat, so I decided to try. I’m only as far as embossing, though, I haven’t made it to foils yet, but it’s coming!

Alongside those things, I’ve been trying to read more, but being sucked into the Animal Crossing hole has sort of commandeered that extra free time I had. The good news is, I’m coming upon a duration of boredom with the game, so reading may reclaim that spot for a few days. The book I’m currently engaged in is called Eyes of the Grave, written by a high school friend of mine, Chelsea Callahan, with whom I still keep in touch. It’s an interesting fantasy about a woman, Rebekah Devereaux, who is partnered with her estranged husband on a murder case where she sees herself as the murderer in these visions she gets when she touches the skin of the other person. I’m not giving this story any justice, and I’m sure I butchered the story a bit, but it’s worth a read and is only $10 on Amazon. I’m a little over half way finished and am pretty pumped to read the rest to find out what happens.

There’s been some freelance work sprinkled in here and there. I currently have a media kit I’m working on for a friend, a new logo design for a mobile cigar business, and the usual EGD stuff.

Finally, I’ve been super interested in racking up as many certifications as I can until things “go back to normal”, or at least, as normal as they can be. I finished up my HubSpot Academy social media cert today, so that’s exciting! I totally added this onto my LinkedIn page. I also found that Harvard University is offering free courses, so I’m going to be working on one course at a time with them. I won’t get a verified certificate (though you can for a fee), so I’m just “auditing” the class. Wonder if it made more sense to pay the $90 for a certificate… Anyway, my first course will be in computer science! It was between advertising/marketing and computer science for me when I was deciding what graduate program to pursue, and in this case, ADV/MKTG won the fight. But this way, I’ll be able to learn about CS and maybe have enough background to achieve something bigger in the future!

I’ve opened up comments on this post because I want to hear what all of you have been doing this quarantine season!