Prehistoric Soft Drink

I came up with the idea of making a soda for our prehistoric ancestors. The bottle is shaped like a bone and the drink is called Paleo Cola. It's a prehistoric coke drink loaded with plenty of sugar to help rot our teeth gracefully.

Establishing Hierarchy - What I Learned

I always figured hierarchy is very simple and basic and is just common sense. Through this reading I realized that through hierarchy the eye is led through a meaningful journey and given a message, whereas if there was no hierarchy, the eye is left wandering around the page searching for meaning and purpose. No matter what the design type or message being revealed, hierarchy plays a very important role in leading the eye in the right direction to give the viewer the message. Hierarchy is more than just typeface and font size. The visual elements that surround and lead the eye to the text play very important roles in creating proper hierarchy, even the page number and headers play a role in creating effective hierarchy design. Grouping like elements is a tactic that can be very effective in creating hierarchy that flows well. By grouping elements, the designer is able to keep consistency throughout the layout as well as applying the same treatment to all elements in the group. Contrast, scale, space, quantity, orientation, position, depth, dimension, perspective, typography, color, graphic shapes and linear elements are all the factors a designer must take into consideration. Each one has a key role in establishing proper hierarchy. If any of the mentioned elements is not applied correctly, it could have a dramatic effect on the message being delivered through the design. Through the cohesiveness of all these elements, we are able to design and also able to create proper hierarchy to lead to the eye to message we are trying to portray.

What I Learned from Intuition in Design

The reading was very interesting. It helped me confirm some thoughts I've always had about designing. Here are some key points that were very useful to me and good information that I did not consider so much in the past. Learning the essentials of deign is critical to all graphic designers because it gives us the foundation to start building from. Without a solid foundation, designers will run into problems, and as designers, we are visually trained to fix visual problems. As designers, no two designs we create will be identical, even when given the same elements to work with. Each piece is unique with a touch of the designer's style. I learned that there is a connection between conscious and subconscious mind in designing, where one influences the other. I believe that in the end rational thinking would be the main reasoning behind our creations but I was wrong. Rational thinking sometimes contains and holds back our creative intuition and can ultimately leave us searching for new and innovative designs. Intuition is one of our strongest tools to creating successful designs. Our intuition builds our imagination which in turn gives us the ability to think outside of the box and come up with fresh ideas to create new and different designs. Intuition should not be contained. Ideas that come to our mind should not be neglected because that initial idea is usually a strong idea and should be processed and worked on by the designer. Trusting our intuition gives us designers the confidence t o take chances and risks in our designs without worrying that it may be "wrong." Sometimes its good to just sit down and put whats on our mind onto paper or into an illustration. This is not to say that we should not use the rational aspect of our mind but it is encouraging us to not worry so much and just do what we feel and think may work, even if it's radical and wild. Intuition is a great tool and it should be used but not solely relied on to complete an idea or design project. It is the combination of learned knowledge, intuition, and rational thinking that will help a designer become more well rounded.