Weekly Design #14 - 404

Sorry for the late post, but I ended up being a little busier than I had hoped.  Since emotional design can apply to just about everything, I wanted to share a small example from a project I am working on.  I have been in the process of re-writing my website and as part of that I have had to ensure that everything looks and feels as professional as I can, while still portraying the messages and feelings that I hope to get across.  One of the pages I have built is designed around the 'Error 404' message that is given when you browse to a page that doesn't exist.  Normally this page is plain and doesn't have any real ties to the website you were looking for.  The goal of designing a new site is to give my users a better experience when they hit this page.

The design is plain and clean, keeping consistent with the overall look I hope to achieve for the site.  The text is straightforward, but also much friendlier than the computer generated text that is normally displayed.  Finally, it offers the users a chance to go the the main page of the site, or to let me know if there might be a problem.  All of these factors will hopefully lead to better experiences for those who see the page.

So here is a look at the error 404 page content.  Let me know what you think.

No Post Today

Just letting everyone know that there will be no post today, so check back next week for post 14.

Weekly Design #13 - I Love Design

One of the more powerful aspects of a good design is the emotional connection that is formed between the design and the viewer.  The ability to effectively incorporate emotional design into any work not only makes the design more memorable, but also changes the way we view it.  It also is an aspect of design that can be extremely broad in its implementation, giving the designer more freedom.

For the rest of July, and possibly August, I am going to be focusing on including emotional design principles into the weekly posts.  To start things off I thought it would be fun to do a post about how I love design, using the classic "I Love *insert topic here*".

Let me know what you think.

Weekly Design #12 - Star Spangled Banner

Because it is the Fourth of July this weekend, I wanted to do something a little different.  I threw this image together, and while I know it is not finished yet I wanted to post what I had done.

Since it is a little rough, it looks a little better when zoomed out.  You can get the gist of what I was going for though.

Enjoy!

Watchtower - Update

I spent a little more time playing with the drawing, and made some changes based on feedback I got.  This change was done to help make the perspective better, and to help the overall composition.

Weekly Design #11 - Watchtower

I'm sorry that this is the first (and probably last post) for June, but life has been keeping me busy.  I have been working on a drawing for the last week or so, but I never got around to posting anything.

This drawing is unfinished but is turning out pretty nicely so far (I think).  It still has a long ways to go, but you should be able to get the gist of it.  It is supposed to be some kind of a watch tower.  I used various asian buildings as reference to give it a slightly different look than I might normally do.

Anyways, let me know what you think.

June's Design Theme - Concept Sketches

Since I have been doing typography(ish) designs for the last two months, I have been feeling that it is time to change things up and do something a little different.  When I started this project at the beginning of the year, the goal was to help motivate me to 'design' things.  Since the word design is so broad, I have tried exploring some of the different things that I believe the word encompasses.  In that though, for this month I want to work on concept sketches, or the idea of doing a quick sketch of something and then elaborating on it.  While I don't consider myself to be a great artist, and these works will probably be very basic, I think that this will be a fun change from what I have done so far.

Look for the first of these sketches this weekend (probably tomorrow).

Weekly Design #10 - Fear

For the last of the May Typography designs I wanted to do do do a negative emotion.  I played around with a few different ideas and ended up going with Fear.  Fear is an emotion that has a lot of 'faces'.  It can refer to uncertainty, distress, apprehension, or the fact that we are just plain scared.  I tried to approach this design with these thoughts in mind.

Let me know what you think.

Weekly Design #9 - Peace

I know it has been a while since I posted a design, but now that my life is starting to return to normal I wanted to start posting again.  Since I only posted one design last month, I am going to continue doing the Typography designs for this month as well.

The word I used for today's design is 'Peace'.  In this design I wanted to use brighter colors, and also play with how the text is displayed more than I did on the last design.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Almost Done...

For the last two weeks, my senior project group and I have been getting ready to present our senior project.  We did an initial presentation last week, and were selected to present at the UVU DGM Senior Project Showcase, which was last night.  Because of the work that we needed to do on our project in order to make improvements, as well prepare for the presentation, I did not have the time to create a design for last weeks and this weeks posts.  I am going to have one done for next week, so that there can at least be two design posts for this month.  In the meantime, I thought some of you might enjoy seeing our senior project.

It is a Flex based interactive map / virtual tour that we created for the UVU Web Resources department, and you can find it at www.uvu.edu/tour.

I hope you like it, and let us know what you think!

Note: You will need the Flash Player installed or enabled in order to view it.

Weekly Design #8 - Hope

While this was supposed to be last weeks post, I decided to post it this week because of how busy things were last week with school and my getting ready for the "An Event Apart" conference.

So here is the first of my typographic designs.  As I am still very much experimenting with typography and how to do it well, this is a much harder project for me than the last two design themes.  That said, I am looking forward to learning from the experience, and the feedback that is given.

So here is hope.

April's Design Theme

When I started thinking about doing some kind of weekly post / design / drawing / ect, one of the things I wanted to do with it was to explore the different areas of design that interested me.  I especially wanted to use it as a way of exploring the aspects of design and art that I was not as familiar with; things like character design, typography, interaction (or user experience) design, and other topics along those lines.

Because of how my life was at the beginning of the year, and how school usually tends to go, I wanted to make sure that the first few monthly themes were fairly simple and familiar, mostly so that I could get into the habit of doing it.  Now that school is starting to wind down for the semester, and I am more in the habit of creating the designs, I wanted to start moving into some of the more unfamiliar areas.

For April, I decided that it would be a fun challenge to have the emphasis be on Typography, and the use of text.  I have never done a great deal with Typography, but have always been fascinated by the many ways it has been used.  One of the other aspects I want to start incorporating into the designs, wherever possible, is some kind of message or story.  Often times it is the emotional connection to a particular design or work of art that causes people to really like it, and I think this is true regardless of the medium used.

So, in addition to using typography as the primary medium for April's posts, every design will have an underlying theme based on a basic emotion or feeling (such as fear, hope, love, and so on).  While I haven't completely decided on what the theme of each week will be, the theme for the first post will be "Hope".

Check back on Friday for the first of April's posts!

Weekly Design #7 - Triangles

This week my goal was to use a triangle as the focus of the design.  I wanted to keep it simple, but use more color than in the previous one.  Because of this, I thought it would be fun to create a stained glass object in the shape of a triangle and use that as the primary element in the image.

Let me know what you think.

Triangle Man Will Just Have To Wait...

Due to the many things going on right now, I am postponing todays post of until next week.

Weekly Design #6 - Square

To continue with the use of shapes for this months theme, I have used a square as the focus of this weeks design.  I also wanted to do something different than what I did last week, so I focused on keeping it simple and used color and texture to make the image more interesting.

I hope you enjoy this weeks design, and as always I appreciate any feedback.

Weekly Design #5 - Circle

As promised, here is the first of the March weekly designs.  The theme for this week was to use a circle as the central part of the design.  I also decided to go with a metallic / glassy look for the overall look because I wanted to play with reflections, lighting, and color.

I hope you enjoy this weeks design.

Update: jryanhamilton.com v1

I have started the process of uploading the content for the first version of jryanhamilton.com if anyone is interested in checking it out and giving me feedback.  So far only the main / initial page up, but different parts should be uploaded over the next week or so if all goes well.

Almost There...

So I have some good news.  With the way things are going I should have time to start doing my weekly designs, so stay tuned this next month for those to start up again.  I still want to do the basic shapes as I think I could have lots of fun with those designs, so check back next week for the first of those.

Priorities...

Due to school work and a few other things, I have decided that I am going to postpone posting any of the designs for February until next week.  Once this week is finished, I should have time to do everything I need to be doing and will be able to start posting stuff regularly again.

Thanks for your patience!

Time passes...

So I have been really busy with school assignments and I haven't been able to finish the weekly design for last week.  My apologies to any who are eagerly anticipating the latest images.

To tide you over, here is the latest assignment for my Digital Storyboarding class.

February Weekly Design Theme - Basic Shape Backgrounds

With the onset of February I knew that I needed to choose the next theme for my weekly design project.  After going over the list of ideas I have compiled I have decided to go back to the basics.  Basic Shapes that is.

Shapes are everywhere and are used in a myriad of different ways.  My goal for this months theme is to use a different shape each week to make some kind of interesting background that only uses that one shape.  The shapes I am going to use are the Circle, Square, and Triangle with the fourth shape announced later.  Also, I will probably utilize the modifications of these shapes, such as the Oval, Rectangle, and the various forms of triangles in these designs, but I am going to use those as little as possible.

Check back this friday for the first of the February themed images!

Weekly Design #4 - Gas

I think out of all of the designs so far, this one was the most difficult.  Mostly because I wanted to make it look as gaseous and fluid as possible, while still having a good mix of color and depth.  I think the end result turned out fairly well, although I am sure some tweaking will be needed.  This design was also heavily influenced on Jupiter, as I think it is visually one of the most interesting gas giants in our solar system.

So here is design number 4.  Gas.

Change For This Week...

The post for this upcoming friday is supposed to be water, but I have decided to change the theme instead to a gas planet as it is something different.  Just a heads up to anyone interested.  :D

Weekly Design #3 - Earth

So its a few days late, but here is the third weekly design.  The thing I wanted to portray in this design is a world that is visibly interesting and had lots of greenery.  I used our planet as a base, and tried to push the color so that it was vibrant, while still looked like it could be 'real'.

I hope you like Earth.

Weekly Design #2 - Ice

For the second weekly design post, I thought it would be interesting to contrast a hot fiery planet with an ice covered one.

One of the things I wanted to do with the design was to make the planet feel very cold and ice covered.  At first I wasn't sure how I would go about doing this beyond what colors I wanted to use, but I found some really abstract ice images and based the basic design off of those.  From there it was just a matter of adding detail, color, and character while also trying to make the image to seem believable.

So here is Ice.

Weekly Design #1 - Fire

Here is the first post for the weekly design project.  As the theme for January is Planets I decided to use the  basic underlying themes of Fire, Ice, Earth, and Water as the basis for each post.

For the first post, Fire, I wanted to create a planet that visually represented what I would imagine of a planet engulfed in fire, lava, or a combination of the two.  Since the planet would visually be on fire, I wanted to show that it would look and feel hot and bright.  I also wanted to show that it would be semi lit on the dark side of the planet, as well as trying to show that there would be clouds and smoke in the atmosphere.

So here is Fire.

To make a planet...

As this weeks upcoming post will be the first in the Planet category, I wanted to post two tutorials that helped me tremendously when I first started playing around with this stuff several years ago.  They are two excellent tutorials by the renowned artist Greg Martin.  I have loved his work for a while and it was a real treat when I stumbled on these.

So here they are.

Planets
http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_planet.html

Star fields
http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_star_field.html

Enjoy, and check back on Friday for the first design post.

January Weekly Design Theme - Planets

To kick off my weekly design initiative, I wanted to start with something fun.  Ever since I was young I have been fascinated by outer space (something that was most likely fueled by watching Star Wars over and over again).  One of the most fascinating things about space movies and drawings are the many exotic planets that are depicted.  Because of this, the theme for January is planets and other planetary bodies.

Check back on the 8th for the first completed design!

A New Beginning...

In conjunction with the upcoming launch of my new website, jryanhamilton.com, I have decided to 'remodel' my old blog and use it as an extension of the new site.  In addition to being a place where I post my thoughts and ramblings on a variety of topics, each month I am going to do weekly designs based on a different topic.

Stay tuned for more information in the future!