Mission: Space

My final project. *sniffle* I going to miss this class. An architectural re-imagining of a building of our choice. I chose the building for the attraction Mission: Space, located at Walt Disney World's Epcot in Florida. As with many of the ride buildings at this theme park, this one features interesting architecture that is relevant to the attraction contained within. The lines painted into the asphalt draw your eye towards the building while the large-scale model of the solar system incorporated into the architecture creates a fun and exciting wave that draws your attention up towards the night sky. Although a thrill-based, flight simulator at its core, the ride promises to entertain as well as educate guests about the possibilities of future space travel.

Type Portraits

Ugh. More self-portraits. Agonizing for someone with a low self-esteem. Never-the-less, much like the first self-portrait project, I learned a lot from this one as well. The shape image was, by far, the most fun to create. For the line image I used a picture of my sister and myself. The type used to create the lines was repeated, obvious words like shirt, hat, and hair. The value project was a little more personal. The image I used was a photograph of my wife and I at our wedding reception table. For myself I used my wedding vows and for my wife I used hers. For the balloons in the background I used a combination of the two.

Starbucks Logo Re-Design

As I’m sure you’ve all noticed, the current logo says “Starbucks Coffee”. However, we’ve decided to drop the written word “coffee” from the logo and replace with images of coffee beans. Our research shows that Starbucks has been partnering with several other companies in order to expand beyond coffee. They’ve developed ice cream that you can purchase at the local supermarket, bottle cappuccinos that you can find in most convenience store coolers, and they’ve also developed a line of tea called Tazo Tea. They are trying to reach beyond the boundaries of being known as merely a trendy coffee house and we want to support this by helping them become a name brand. To do so, we determined that it would be best to replace the word with an image of coffee beans to remind people of where this company originated and of the quality in which it has served consumers over more than three and a half decades. We also made the choice to leave the word coffee out because of Starbucks current efforts to expand internationally. We want to show that we support this growth, too. That is why we didn’t want our logo to be too English based, and we didn’t think there should be a need to translate “coffee” into whatever language the country in which you are currently marketing in speaks, but we felt to not do so would be limiting and disrespectful. So, we decided that by dropping the word and replacing it with an image would make the logo more versatile and internationally friendly. The idea was to ensure the longevity of the logo.
After additional research, we have surmised that Starbucks prides themselves on being environmentally conscious. They also see themselves as being community and industry trend-setters who lead by example.
Starbucks is “working to develop a recyclable paper cup that minimizes its environmental impact over its entire lifespan…” Although developing the perfect recyclable cup is their current main focus, they’re also currently examining the environmental impact that their packaging has. Starbucks, as members of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, is actively exploring more sustainable alternatives to conventional packaging and evaluating ways to analyze material choices. They consider the issues of recycling so important that they’re even looking into the environmental impacts of the manufacturing, what materials are used and how they’re disposed of. Over the past 3 years alone, Starbucks has saved over 300,000 trees just by incorporating 10% post-consumer fiber into their hot beverage cups.
Starbucks has set two goals to achieve by 2015. They plan to have recycling available in 100% of all the stores where they control the waste pick-up and they are working toward making both their hot and cold beverage cups either reusable or recyclable in order to ensure that each cup is 100% non-harmful to the environment.
This information led us to incorporate the recycling logo into our Starbucks logo. You’ll notice that we’ve made sure that it was emblazoned onto the cup, since this is what the company is leading their recycling change platform with. We also used an earthy color scheme because we wanted to subtly remind consumers that Starbucks is Earth conscious and that its main products of tea and coffee are derived from the ground, hence all the brown and green. In support of Starbucks efforts to go green, we’ve also made sure to print all of the stationary on paper that is acid free, processed chlorine free, and 100% recycled. Unfortunately, due to the time constraints necessitated for this class, we were unable to find recycled card stock or envelopes. However, if we were delivering a pitch to Howard Schultz, we would make a commitment to work closely with Starbucks to ensure that their marketing material would be an added goal to be fully recycled and recyclable with manufacturing conscious productions by 2015.

Cherokee Jewelry.com

I would like to open by apologizing in advance to Mr. Jimmy Warnell. His jewelry designs are beautiful, however, his web design is hideous. My redesign incorporates some more recognizable Cherokee images, such as the dream catcher and bone necklace, which serves as the link bar for the remainder of the site. I've also incorporated some of Jimmy's more intricate pieces to showcase his amazing silversmithing skill. I finished the page with the seal of the Cherokee nation, reminding all of the site's visitors that Mr. Warnell is an official Cherokee jewelry crafter. You can still visit the original site at www.cherokeejewelry.com.

Starry Horizons

Oscar Wilde once said, "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life". But, what if the two were one in the same? I have attempted to do just this in my dreamscape, which I have entitled "Starry Horizons". I began with a very recognizable, and one of my favorite works of art, "Starry Night" by Vincent Van Gogh. I then began incorporating some still images from reality, such as the cliff side in the foreground, the New York City skyline, and the astronaut on the moon. Next, I added additional images from other works of art by such notable artists as Michael Parks and Salvador Dali. The image of the moon comes from a poster for the 1902 French, black and white film "A Trip to the Moon" (Le Voyage dans le lune). Some vintage images of hot air balloons fly through the wind while John F. Kennedy gives his famous "We Choose to Go to the Moon..." speech to a group of curious hikers. It's hard to find it all at first, but I assure you that it is there. Additionally, I inserted an image of myself peering through a very stylized telescope, depicting my interest in the cosmos. Finally, I blended an actual image of a star filled sky with Van Gogh's, completing the blend of art and reality. I feel that all of these images work quite well together without feeling too busy. Vincent Van Gogh's famous paint strokes help to guide your eyes throughout the work while giving, almost, a feeling of movement or life to the piece. I had a lot of fun with this project and hope you enjoy viewing it as much as I did creating it.

Time and Place Project

The Time and Place project was easily my least favorite of the projects. That being said, I feel that I was able to learn the most from this one.

For my project I selected the DVD cover art for the television series King of Queens. Although it may seem that there isn't much thought that goes into choosing a sitcom for this project, it is quite the contrary. Having recently purchased our first home, my wife and I have had to make some tough decisions regarding certain luxuries in life, forgoing a cable bill in order to ensure that the mortgage is paid on time being one of them. Whenever we come across some extra cash, we throw a portion of it into what refer to as the entertainment fund, which we will use for dining out, catching a movie, or, in this case, satisfying our lack of cable with TV on DVD. This sitcom happened to be a natural choice for us, as our lives closely reflect those of the characters in the show. Up until the economy took its unfortunate turn, I was holding down a blue-collar job while my wife worked as a secretary, much like the show. We were friends with a married couple who were going through a divorce, also like the show. Most importantly, being newlyweds ourselves, we struggled through very similar situations to those that the main characters faced, giving us the opportunity to sit back, laugh, and better cope with the pitfalls life had presented us with, making us a stronger couple in the long run. I was faced with many challenges with this project, the first being a lack of more professional equipment. A better camera and scanner would have given me higher quality images to work with. It also does not help when your computer is struck by lighting half way through your project. In the end and given the circumstances, I feel that my finished product is quite decent. I spent an exceptional amount of time trimming out my selections, so much so that my wife, who is always ridiculously supportive of my work fell asleep watching me. And she would have been there for quite a while had it not been for my snoring, not to mention the extremely annoying beep that my computer was making thanks to my holding down ctrl + T for an excessive ammount of time. The only problem that I have with this project is the graininess of the image. This is directly related to my lack of better equipment. However, given my budget, and what I had to work with, I am quite proud of what I was able to accomplish.

Galaxy Traveler

My first computer graphics project... Take an image and turn it into a magazine cover. I found an interesting image on NASA.com of two galaxies apparently coming into contact with one another. I felt that this would make for an interesting cover story. However, I did not want to do a traditional astronomy magazine, so I ran with a fictional idea that became this campy, sci-fi magazine devoted to space travel of the future.