Exercises

As we began to delve into the projects for the course and work with the software, it was a bit daunting. I have some experience with Photoshop from my photography classes, minimal experience with InDesign from working on the yearbook in high school and no experience with Illustrator.

The exercises from the textbook really helped to refresh my memory and I also learned about tools and tricks that I wasn't aware of in the past. It made it much easier to accomplish the technical portion of the projects and it provided an opportunity to play around with the programs.

The first exercise, Dynamic Composition, was a bit challenging at first because it was difficult to see where the blocks needed to go to form the design. It would seem as though I had everything the right size and shape and in the right postion, but then I would get to the other side of the page and realize that I was completely off. It was just a matter of going back and tweaking the shapes over and over until it looked like the painting. It was frustrating, but the end result was worthwhile, which is probably a lesson to keep in mind for future projects.

Exercises 2 and 4 were both fairly self-explanatory and focused on the tools of each of the programs. Exercise 3, as shown in the picture, did the same, but at the end we created an attractive layout that I can use for other projects. Making changes to individual letters was something that I always wanted to learn and I hope that I will be able to utilize this tool in the future.