Portfolio 03

Student Portfolio Exhibit #3 - Student Choice

Instructor feedback

Anna Sadler:

Contrast: Good contrast, Anna. The only problem area is the Crest logo at the bottom - it needs to contrast more. In my feedback image, I changed the layer blending mode back to normal, and then added an outer glow layer FX to that layer.
Repetition: Not much use of repetition in this design. The repeated whites of the teeth, text, and flares work well.
Alignment: The left alignment of text, with "brighter" offset a bit, works very well..
Proximity (your use of space): I thought your placement of "brighter" by the mouth gets the message across very well.
Your choice of fonts: Two contrasting fonts - good choice!
Your choice of colors: The photo is warm and inviting. Your white text provides the most contrast.
Cropping to find the best picture: You cropped in to the best part of the photo on this one. Good work!
Focal point: The greatest area of contrast creates your focal point at the teeth and "brighter." Good job!
Message hierarchy: Top to bottom hierarchy works for this design. You just need to bring out the bottom text more.
Portfolio Exhibit description: The description is very good. Centered text is hard to read, though. I would suggest left alignment on your portfolio text. Your exhibit image has a line of garbage pixels across the bottom that you'll want to eliminate. You have a button at the bottom which reads "Edit this button." You could use the button to return to your home page, or eliminate it entirely.

Instructor feedback

Ashlee Kirby:

Contrast: I would suggest quite a bit more contrast, Ashlee. One thing I did in my feedback image was to take your background photo into the Filters-Filter Gallery-Artistic-Poster Edges. This gave it a more illustrative quality.
Repetition: Try to repeat colors you find in your image to harmonize them. Greens, yellows, and oranges. The violet text is the opposite of yellow, a good contrasting color.
Alignment: You've used center alignment, and it works well here. Some of your text wasn't perfectly centered, though.
Proximity (your use of space): Good use of proximity to separate the three messages.
Your choice of fonts: Two contrasting fonts used. Good job. Instead of the Silom font, I'd suggest choosing a less "computer" looking font, like Avenir Black.
Your choice of colors: Good color choice. Just take advantage of the more!
Focal point: Should be your text box, with the pineapples close behind in importance.
Message hierarchy: Good message hierarchy created by making the top level font large and different, the next level smaller font, and the third level at the bottom.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Excellent job on the portfolio description.

Instructor feedback

B Chau:

Contrast: Great contrast!
Repetition: Some repetition but you could do more (see fonts below)
Alignment: Center alignment works on the upper poster. I would suggest left alignment in the coupons.
Proximity (your use of space): You've done a pretty good job. You could enhance the proximity principle by putting the SALE letters a bit closer together.
Your choice of fonts: Big problem here, B. You're using four different fonts, three of which are conflicting sans serif fonts. Move to just 2 fonts at the most.
Your choice of colors
Focal point: SALE is your focal point because it is the area of greatest contrast in your image.
Message hierarchy: I believe your message hierarchy works here. SALE is the top level of information, so make it as big and bold as possible. Tommy for Tommy and Winter are your next level in the hierarchy. The smaller stuff at the bottom is the 3rd level.
Portfolio Exhibit description looks good.

Instructor feedback

Instructor feedback 2

B Wilson:

Contrast: It's good, but why stop there? Go bold!
Repetition: Good repetition of green and white.
Alignment: Think about alignment a bit more. Can you align the left and right side of the phrases?
Proximity (your use of space): Works for this design.
Your choice of fonts: Single font use works well. You might try a contrasting font in the center.
Your choice of colors: Minimalistic - monochromatic. It works.
Focal point: Is the text.
Message hierarchy: Just a single message - so this works.
Portfolio Exhibit description: This is not yet showing in your portfolio. Have you clicked "Publish" recently?

Bonnie Schenk-Darrington:

Instructor feedback

Bryan Christensen:

Bryan, I'm really pleased that you tried this direction using Photoshop. Great first effort! I would like to challenge you to take it a bit further! I did the same thing once upon a time. I've shared some of my second efforts in my feedback image. Let me share some good tutorial resources for you!

Instructor feedback

Brynne Peak:

Contrast: There's a bit too much contrast going on in the background, with interferes with readability.
Repetition: repeated fonts - looks good.
Alignment: Mostly centered, however, Dream House provides a contrast to the alignment that works well.
Proximity (your use of space): I would suggest grouping those last three text lines closer to each other, because they are a family of related information.
Your choice of fonts: 3 fonts is pushing it - but it works in this design.
Your choice of colors: Beautiful pastel colors. You might want to repeat some of them in the text, only with darker versions.
Focal point: "Dream House" is the focal point because of its size and unique text quality.
Message hierarchy is determined here by the size and boldness of text. It works well.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Good work on the description, Brynne.

Caleb Barton:

Instructor feedback

Caleigh Hales:

Contrast: Bring contrast up more between the words and background.
Repetition: You've repeated fonts creatively. Nice work.
Alignment: I would suggest aligning phrases better. And a stronger left alignment makes it more readable.
Proximity (your use of space): Pull lines together that are family - phrases.
Your choice of fonts: Good use of two contrasting fonts. I would pull the cursive font back together so letters connect like they're supposed to.
Your choice of colors: was good, but I think a photo of intentionally helping another person works better with this quote.
Focal point: There's not really a focal point in your image, Caleigh. Consider this one as you revise.
Message hierarchy
Portfolio Exhibit description: You've got a good start - just go into more detail.

Instructor feedback

Cameron Draper:

Contrast: Good job - but I think you can push it more with a bolder font. I've used Avenir Next Bold in the orange fonts.
Repetition: Repetition of colors - they harmonize well!
Alignment: Good alignments happening. Well done.
Proximity (your use of space): You've done well here. You could push it even a bit more.
Your choice of fonts: You have two conflicting sans serif fonts. Go with one font family, or use two very contrasting fonts.
Your choice of colors: Well done, Cameron. I think you've got a great color scheme working here.
Cropping to find the best picture: Crop in on the dog more since he's the star of this show.
Focal point: Should be the dog. I'd remove the leaf and zoom in on the dog.
Message hierarchy: I think you can strengthen this by making the two most important messages the most bold and contrasty.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Good job on this. I'd suggest going into more detail about the different design principles.

Instructor feedback

Chelsea Gunther:

Your design looks very professional, Chelsea. Nice work. My only suggestion would be to bring up the contrast between the background greys and the greens.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Good job!

Dani Lawrence:

Instructor feedback

Eric Price:

Contrast: Go for more contrast, Eric.
Repetition: Look for ways you can repeat colors, fonts, etc.
Alignment: Good job. The left and right alignments work well on this business card.
Proximity (your use of space): Look for ways you can pull families of information together.
Your choice of fonts: I think this part needs work. Choose a clear, readable font.
Your choice of colors: Except for the orange, you've got a good color scheme going.
Focal point: The dancing man is clearly the focal point. I'd suggest strengthening that. Since choreography is all about movement, you should incorporate shapes and lines that look moving and active.
Message hierarchy: Your name is most important on a business card. All the rest is secondary. You can use font size to distinguish between the levels of importance.
Portfolio Exhibit description: I don't see this exhibit in your portfolio yet, Eric.

Erin Amundsen:
Your photoshop file won't open, so I can't give you a visual feedback here.

Contrast: The smaller texts are a bit difficult to read against the background.
Repetition: You've repeated colors from the image into texts. Are there other ways you can strengthen this?
Alignment: Left alignments throughout - good job.
Proximity (your use of space): Excellent
Your choice of fonts: You've used two fonts - both sans serif. I would suggest changing the center text to a serif font. There is a bit of conflict going on between the two.
Your choice of colors: Excellent.
Cropping to find the best picture: Excellent
Focal point: Stuff the Stocking Fund is the first things that gets my gaze. Then the stocking. The Utah Kids Foundation logo is also competing strongly - you might want to make it a bit smaller.
Message hierarchy: Good message hierarchy - going from top to bottom. I would suggest giving a bit more margin to the text blocks.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Good job on that.

Instructor feedback

Holly Hudson:

Contrast: Good contrast, Holly. In fact, I think the black mountain is too much contrast. It creates a dark hole that kind of sucks your message in.
Repetition: Good repetition of your color scheme and font choice.
Alignment: Good. For even better alignment, align the text letter, and let the punctuation hang out.
Proximity (your use of space): Excellent.
Your choice of fonts: Good choice of two contrasting fonts.
Your choice of colors: Analogous color scheme - very nice. I would suggest including the mountains in that scheme.
Focal point: Right now, the mountains are the focal point because they are the area of greatest contrast in the image. If you want your text to be the focal point, you'll need to reduce the contrast in the mountains a bit.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Excellent!

Justina Adams:.

Kaitlyn Faraone:

Kate Sargent:

Instructor feedback

Kate Stefanakos:

Kate, you done a great job on this! Replacing the sky (in the glasses, too!) - excellent! My only concern is that your tag line is a bit weak. In my feedback image, I cropped some of the sky to focus more on the product, and then added a tag line that was a bit bolder. Tried to find a Hawaiian font that matched the bottle's font, but the closest I could get was Tribeca.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Excellent!

Instructor feedback

Katy Dollahite:

Katy, what a fun idea! I like it. In my feedback image, I just toyed with the layer blend modes on the crown and text.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Excellent!

Instructor feedback

Kaylee Rowley:

Resolution: Kaylee, your image is only 408x488 pixels at 100 DPI. You need to work larger in order to get crisp, clear images. I would suggest tripling the size - at least to 1225x1465 at 100 dpi.
Contrast: Pretty good. I would suggest darkening the background a bit more so the white text contrasts even better. I used a gradient on the background.
Repetition: Nice repetition of the green in the photo.
Alignment: You've tried to align your text around the oval photo - I would unbox the time and continue that design idea.In lesson 11 you'll learn how to use the pen tool to make a shape path, in which text will follow the curve without having to make bunches of text boxes.
Proximity (your use of space): Pretty good. I would use the crop tool and add a bit more margin for your design.
Your choice of fonts: You have two decorative fonts going on here - they conflict. I would change one of the fonts to sans serif or serif for better readability.
Your choice of colors: You've got a nice complimentary color scheme going here! Good job.
Focal point: Definitely the contrasting color of the floral image.
Message hierarchy: Good job on this. Font size is one of the best indicator of which message is most important, then next, and so on.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Pretty good. Think about some of the things I shared here in my feedback to add to your description.

Keslie Packer:
Keslie, get this submitted as soon as possible!

Contrast: Excellent
Repetition: Not much in this design
Alignment: Good. I would move the text up a bit to give it more margin from the bottom.
Proximity (your use of space): No families of information in this design.
Your choice of fonts: Single font. No problems
Your choice of colors: Nice background image using the golden hour light of evening.
Cropping to find the best picture: Can't tell if this has been cropped. Need to finish your portfolio description for this.
Focal point: Old main
Message hierarchy: Just one line.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Still needs to be completed

Kole Nielsen:

Instructor feedback

Landon Peay:

Contrast: Contrast is good
Repetition: I would repeat one of the photo colors in the text, Landon. Look for ways you can use the principle of repetition in your designs.
Alignment Good alignment used.
Proximity (your use of space) along with cropping to find the best picture: Rather than try to block out the background with a vignette, which the public domain image already had from its photographer, why not crop in on the subject?
Your choice of fonts: Good choice - goes well with the concept of dragons.
Focal point: Cropping in will enhance your focal point
Portfolio Exhibit description: Needs to be added!

Lei Mobley:
Lei, I only have the jpg image for your exhibit file. Would you send me the Photoshop file?

Contrast: Good contrast.
Repetition: Good repetition between fonts. I would repeat "True Blooded Aggie" in the same size as the "Show Me".
Alignment: Strong left alignment. Good job!
Proximity (your use of space): I would put just a little more space between each Show Me and accompanying phrase. Separate the families of text just a bit more. Give the text just a bit more margin from the edges.
Your choice of fonts: The script font is really hard to read. I'd suggest a different contrasting font. Keep your text out of the tree on the right. In fact, you could use content aware fill and get rid of the tree all together and solve some design issues you were struggling with.
Your choice of colors: Black and white except for the true blooded Aggie. Works well.
Portfolio Exhibit description: you've got a start, but need to finish it.

Instructor feedback

Lesya Feinstein:

Contrast - Good contrast in the image, Lesya. However, the text needs to pop more. You could use camera raw to darken the sky just a bit so the text stands out more.
Repetition: none yet. You could repeat the color of the temple wall in your text to harmonize it even more.
Alignment: You can use the free transform to reduce the steep angle of the left and right edges of the temple.
Your choice of fonts: It's a beautiful font, but very light. You might try some other script fonts that are a bit bolder.
Cropping to find the best picture: Since the temple itself is the subject, focus in on that. Crop out the wall and gate, and some of the sky.
Focal point: The temple is the focal point.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Go into more detail about your design. Look at some of the others here that I've marked as "excellent".

Instructor feedback

Lisa Balling:

Contrast: Excellent contrast
Alignment: Centered. The swimmer's hands pointing at the message is a very strong way to lead the eye!
Your choice of fonts: Serif and sans serif - they work pretty well together. To contrast even more, you might choose a sans serif font that doesn't go thick/thin like your serif font does.
Your choice of colors: Triadic color scheme: Red, Yellow, Blue
Focal point: The swimming man catches my eye first.
Message hierarchy: Well done. Font size is one of the best indicators of message importance.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Excellent

Lisa Hopkins:

Instructor feedback

Liz Pickrell:

Contrast: Good work. I'd bring up the background in value just a bit, though. That will let you more clearly see all the tree layers you've created.
Repetition: Repeated colors from the pikachu
Alignment: N/A
Proximity (your use of space): Since "Happy" and "Halloween" are part of the same family - why not bring them closer together?
Your choice of fonts: Single font. Very Halloween!
Your choice of colors: Good Halloween colors throughout. Good balance between warm and cooler colors.
Focal point: The pikachu is the area of greatest contrast (well, the moon, too). My eyes first looked at the moon, and then down to the pikachu figure, then to the text.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Good job. Be sure to credit anything in your design that is not your own creation.

Instructor feedback

Luke Barton:

Contrast: Luke you need more contrast to help your text show.
Repetition: Except for "Summit", you've repeated colors found in the image.
Alignment: Center aligned. I think that works best for this image. Left or Right alignments have more mountain to interfere with the text.
Proximity (your use of space): Good job!
Your choice of fonts: Because it's hard to place text over a busy background, I would suggest bolder fonts.
Your choice of colors: Good job. For "Summit" I'd choose a color from the summit of the mountain.
Focal point: The text.
Portfolio Exhibit description: This exhibit hasn't been added to your portfolio yet. Have you added it and not published?

Instructor feedback

Megan Garn:

Resolution: Megan, your image is only 396x612 pixels at 72 DPI. You need to work larger in order to get crisp, clear images. I would suggest tripling the size - at least to 1200x1800 at 72 dpi.
Contrast: You got pretty good contrast going on. I'd strengthen it more with the 5 points.
Repetition: You could strengthen this aspect by repeating colors in the dog's image
Alignment: Excellent.
Proximity (your use of space): Excellent
Your choice of fonts: Excellent - two contrasting fonts.
Your choice of colors: Seems a bit wild - but works. You might want to try a more monochromatic color scheme using colors from the dog's fur.
Cropping to find the best picture: Good work! Having the dog just peeking in makes a great focal point!
Message hierarchy: Excellent. You've used font size to delineate heirarchy.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Excellent!

Instructor feedback

Melissa Johnson:

Contrast: Go for greater contrast, Melissa.
Repetition: The ball is repeated - emphasize that element.
Alignment: I think a strong left alignment will be more powerful. What do you think?
Proximity (your use of space): You've used the principle of proximity well.
Your choice of fonts: Two contrasting fonts - works well. In fact, I don't think you even need to color "Trying" because of the contrast working so well.
Your choice of colors: Basically a black and white image.
Cropping to find the best picture: I think you can emphasize the ball more to provide unity through repetition.
Focal point: The message in the center. Increase contrast to bring that forward even more.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Excellent!

Instructor feedback

Mynth Carter

Contrast: You've reduced the contrast of the background to provide a contrast with the face. Nice work! The text contrasts nicely against the background.
Repetition: Used same font throughout. You've tried to match the color schemes between the face and background.
Alignment: Although your left alignment works very well, here's a case where the staggered alignment leads toward the face, and also would work well in your design.
Proximity (your use of space): You have two families of text. I would bring the "Happy Trails" and "Afghanistan" closer together.
Your choice of fonts: Single font family - works well.
Your choice of colors: Kept to the cooler side of the color spectrum purposely. Good job.
Cropping to find the best picture: None needed.
Focal point: The face is the primary focal point because of its size.
Message hierarchy: Two levels - indicated by font size.
Portfolio Exhibit description: I don't have a link to a portfolio from you yet, Mynth.

Sabrina Satterthwaite:

Sophia May:

Instructor feedback

Sydney Chapman:

Contrast: This is the only issue I see in this design, Sydney. Either turn the text white and keep the darker purple background, or make the background lighter to help the text contrast more.
Repetition: Good repetition of color and fonts.
Alignment: Strong left alignment works well!
Proximity (your use of space): I'd suggest giving the text a big more margin.
Your choice of fonts: Two contrasting fonts - good job. Even though both are sans serif, they are enough different not to conflict.
Your choice of colors: Orange and violet are nearly complimentary colors - these work well together.
Focal point: The hands and brain are your focal point, because of the strong contrasting colors.
Message hierarchy: My eyes go first to the graphic, then to the large title, and then work downward. Good job on message hierarchy!
Portfolio Exhibit description: Excellent.

Tanner Castro:
Design: The work here is on the arms - the bright disintegration effect. Good job!
Portfolio Exhibit: This exhibit isn't in your portfolio yet, Tanner. Let me know when you have it up.

Tia Kime:

Tori Strong:

Whitney Drollette:

Instructor feedback

Zak Osgood:

Contrast: Excellent. However the blue text needs to become more readable. Bring up its value a bit so it pops more.
Repetition: Excellent
Alignment: Centered. The image and text form an inverted triangle - a strong composition
Proximity (your use of space): Excellent
Your choice of fonts: Two contrasting fonts. Even though they are both sans serif, they are different enough to work well together.
Your choice of colors: Used colors from the photo. Good choice because they harmonize well.
Cropping to find the best picture: Not applicable here.
Focal point: The image and three icons.
Message hierarchy: Works well. You can emphasize this more by making the 2nd tier of information just a bit bigger than the third.
Portfolio Exhibit description: Excellent

Beginning Photoshop & Graphic Design

Student Portfolio Exhibit #3 - Student Choice