RobynRand's Blog

Testing the Movie

RobynRand — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 05:22:20 +0000

Ok, that didn’t take too long at all really, I could have spent a lot longer working on the music and mucking about but that’s just not me, I want to find out if it works before I spend a lot of time getting it just right.

Now I wonder if I can put it up here…

No I can’t, well I could if I was willing to pay wordpress $59 to do it, so I’ll just put it up on facebook.

Please visit my facebook page to find out more: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Robyn-Rand-Graphic-Designer/108364415873995

Free Music

RobynRand — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 03:05:11 +0000

Creating photo albums is a lovely job, full of other peoples memories, happy times and achievements.

Deciding to add music to these slide shows and turn them into DVD movies could really pay off for me, the only snag I hit was the lack of available music around. I did come across a couple of fantastic sites that sold the downloads for a reasonable price, the links to my favourite of these are: http://www.soundslikecafe.com/ (a wordpress site, no less) and http://www.melodyloops.com/music/ . But I really just wanted something to experiment with until I found out if it would be a popular option or not, and if I can actually put the photos to music without it all appearing a little odd.

The solution: open up garage band & make my own!

Wish me luck.

I will be posting album + music if it all turns out ok – and hopefully in not too long a time…

A day in the life of me

RobynRand — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 05:58:23 +0000

Thursday in March I carried my phone everywhere I went and took a photo anytime I did something, or rather changed what I was doing as I often did something but sometimes it took a while.

I made a quick slideshow of this, hope you enjoy……

Click to view slideshow.

A day at the pond.

RobynRand — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 10:46:53 +0000

Working with ‘the Pitman‘ as I do the office duties sometimes get a bit stretched beyond the office, but I’m not sun sensitive so I’ll have a go at whatever they throw my way.

Recently we cleaned out a fish pond, sounds easy you say? Not when the pond is bigger then the truck which is used to carry away the sludge, and certainly not when the pond hasn’t been cleaned for at least 20 years. I must admit it was two of the most fun days I’ve had for a long time and I think the knowledge of not having to do exactly the same again (unlike cleaning the shower) added to that fun.

While we were working (or should I say while everyone else was working) I took a couple of photos with my phone and thought I’d throw them together and try my hand at making a slide show, I need the practice and a slide show isn’t just something you can make from boring meaningless family snaps now is it.

Now, challenge number two; to upload the slide show to the blog. I have been able to put a few up on my web site, but that was through dreamweaver which made it super simple, wordpress is a challenge I haven’t faced yet…

Click to view slideshow.

Byron Bay Bluesfest Program

RobynRand — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 10:05:34 +0000

Continued from the other Byron Bay Bluesfest post (seen here) from August 2010, I have finished the promotional stickers and a delightful program to go with the poster.

The program contains tabulated tables with soft candy coloured divisions for the days and times of the different stages and times.

Here are a few pages from it:

From the top; the inside front page with sponsors etc then about the artists. Next down; the lift-out timetable. Next down; the cover. Bottom spread; site map, about the land, traditions and rules. The software used for this program was the Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign CS4 with some images sourced from the internet and some created by me.

The stickers are unavailable at the moment but very similar to the front cover of the program but suitable to be placed lovingly on the back of a car.

Invitation ideas for our exhibition

RobynRand — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 05:11:33 +0000

The ideas I had for the exhibition invitation are above, the robot is something we can identify with, being personalised by having a face and a personality, a little like us. Being graphic design diploma students there are occasions that we work a little like robots and certainly feel that way when we leave class. The colour pallet chosen is a sort-of retro pallet, in the 40′s apparently there was a lot of tin toys which were coloured in the orange and green – they are also fresh and inspirational colours. The blue type on the back of the postcard is to represent pen or biro. The wording on the back of the postcard is in a casual fashion to make the reader feel like they are receiving a letter from a friend. On a website the robot will be flexible enough to be able to do many things as well as be animated or have it’s own noises and sounds. Each persons button on the robot can be active and lead to that persons work samples and links.

front back

… and just for luck, a promotional poster (with logos added of course)

Vote for the book cover please

RobynRand — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 11:37:13 +0000

There is a book cover design competition on at the moment which I thought I’d enter, it is to re-design the cover for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson. We are not to have it relating in any way to any cover that has been already designed for it – which is quite a few when you google them, and they took all the easy obvious images of girls, dragon tattoos etc.

Well, I watched the movie last Tuesday and really enjoyed it – I would of liked to read the book but time restrictions & too many other things to do are putting a stop to that. The feeling I got from the movie was that of darkness, secrets, forbidden stuff & mystery and I decided to try to portray that in my cover design. I worked on it today and ended up doing three. The first was the one I had in my mind when I began but I’m not happy with it and what I ended up with doesn’t look anything like the one that was in my mind but I finished it quickly and it was a good warm – up exercise for me.

The other two are a bit more like I imagined, and I’m relatively happy with them, I thought I’d share them with the world & listen to what anyone else has to say, then after a couple of days I’ll be able to come back to it and make something I really like. Here are the other two.

2.3. (this one was largely accidental with the colours, but I did intend to make the type look like it will be foiled when printed & I think this has that look.)

Let me know what you think, either in the comments or just leave me a message – I have added many buttons to the blog now so it is easy to share too.

New web page design

RobynRand — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 07:01:48 +0000

I’ve come to a decision about what my web page might look like:

I’m still not really sure about the colour of the writing at the top, I like the contrast, I originally had a dusty sort of orange but it was just too difficult to read. Any suggestions are welcome.

Newspaper Liftout Magazine Partial Re-design

RobynRand — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:53:55 +0000

At TAFE in the past 4 weeks we have been learning basic layout and design skills (well for the past year and a half really) but just lately we’ve been applying them to real situations. Things that we might find ourselves doing in out jobs or as our jobs when we leave, in the not to distant future.

The Byron Bay free paper has a magazine lift-out called ‘Seven’, which is a considerably well designed piece of newspaper considering it’s standing in the world, it has the opportunity to look shitty, but it doesn’t and is in general a pleasant lift-out.

As I began telling you, our assignment was to re-design 5 pages of the layout of the lift-out called ‘Seven’, I enjoyed the work as I really get pleasure from sorting things out and making them look neat and tidy. I redesigned the masthead and logo, introduced a variable colour scheme which can be altered to match the mood of the week, and the rest was manipulating ads and photographs in Illustrator and Photoshop then placement and sorting in Indesign.

Here is what I came up with…

Orchestra Poster refinements

RobynRand — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:12:12 +0000

In an earlier post I mentioned I was working on a promotional set of poster, flyer, ticket & newspaper ad, for the Northern Rivers Symphony Orchestra (click here to recap). We were doing this in Harry’s class for the conductor/founder of the orchestra who was having trouble attracting new/ young people.I liked the poster, especially the colours as they are unusually bright, but the font was a bit ‘blocky’, so I have just re-designed it with a better result, I think. have a look & tell me what you think.

ticket

flyer

newspaper ad

A2/A3 poster