Student Portfolio Exhibit #2
This week, students could choose what they wanted to create, with the optional real world project to create a conference poster for UCET 2019. It always makes me excited (and blown away) to see the creativity expressed in these exhibits. You're doing great!
Again, please realize my feedback suggestions are just that - suggestions. There are thousands of ways you could revise your exhibits, and I hope to have given some ideas here. If any of you have questions about how I did the feedback images in Photoshop, contact me. I'll be happy to show you.
Again, please realize my feedback suggestions are just that - suggestions. There are thousands of ways you could revise your exhibits, and I hope to have given some ideas here. If any of you have questions about how I did the feedback images in Photoshop, contact me. I'll be happy to show you.
Tessa E:
My Critique: First of all, this is lovely, and designed well. The colorful pencils immediately draw you in and point to the main message - Parent Teacher Conferences. You have created a good message hierarchy for your three messages - What, when, and no school - by both size and color of text. You've used a single font - Bradley Hand - so the text looks harmonious and school-like.
Let's talk size. Your image is 960x450 pixels at 72 DPI. That will work just fine if you're putting this on a webpage. If you are printing it, however, you'd want it to be around 5100x2391 pixels at 300 DPI (for a 17 inch wide sheet of paper).
My Critique: First of all, this is lovely, and designed well. The colorful pencils immediately draw you in and point to the main message - Parent Teacher Conferences. You have created a good message hierarchy for your three messages - What, when, and no school - by both size and color of text. You've used a single font - Bradley Hand - so the text looks harmonious and school-like.
Let's talk size. Your image is 960x450 pixels at 72 DPI. That will work just fine if you're putting this on a webpage. If you are printing it, however, you'd want it to be around 5100x2391 pixels at 300 DPI (for a 17 inch wide sheet of paper).
Tessa C:
My Critique: What an eye-catching baby announcement. Well designed. You've used two contrasting fonts that work well together. The Naira decorative font feels a bit on the wild side, like a forest. The colors harmonize well. Yellows and greens are analogous colors - and that brown is just a darker yellow. Very well done! |

Taylor:
My Critique: This photo you've taken - wow! What a beautiful spot. The Photoshop processing looks good - the photo reached out and grabbed me. The message works well too. You may want to try making your message more bold. Make it a shout instead of a whisper - something that echoes through that canyon!
My Critique: This photo you've taken - wow! What a beautiful spot. The Photoshop processing looks good - the photo reached out and grabbed me. The message works well too. You may want to try making your message more bold. Make it a shout instead of a whisper - something that echoes through that canyon!
Nathan:
My idea: I found two free images on Pexels.com - the young girl and the desktop with technology devices. I made a selection of the computer laptop screen and then copied the girl and and went to the EDIT menu - PASTE SPECIAL - and PASTE INTO. This creates a mask, and I can resize the girl to fit exactly the way I want into the screen. I put a color layer over the background images and reduced the opacity - that way the text and logo stand out much better. I've used an analogous color scheme - warm reds, oranges and yellows - that match well with the logo. I've given a strong left alignment and used proximity (space) to keep families of information together, but separated from other families. |

Mason:
My Critique: Looks good, Mason. "Pop" sounds like a word that needs to have more emphasis. Think about alignment, too. I would increase the size of the logo a bit, too.
My Critique: Looks good, Mason. "Pop" sounds like a word that needs to have more emphasis. Think about alignment, too. I would increase the size of the logo a bit, too.

Mark:
My Critique: It is a beautiful sunset, Mark. I have a couple of suggestions. First, take it into camera raw and get the best photo you can out of it. I clicked "auto" to begin with, and then pushed the vibrance up a bit more. Then in Photoshop, I used the content aware patch tool to get rid of the poles sticking up into the sky.
My Critique: It is a beautiful sunset, Mark. I have a couple of suggestions. First, take it into camera raw and get the best photo you can out of it. I clicked "auto" to begin with, and then pushed the vibrance up a bit more. Then in Photoshop, I used the content aware patch tool to get rid of the poles sticking up into the sky.
Makayla:
My Critique: What a beautiful image, Makayla! And so many possibilities with this one. Below at left, I've taken your image into camera raw and enhanced it more. In the center image below, I've cropped down to the foreground, and darkened the bushes underneath the text. In the image below at right, I've gone to a vertical, or portrait format, and then used the Burn Tool to darken the trees in the background. |
Kyle:
My Critique: I love to see my students experiment with various ideas! Kyle, it has been fun to watch this evolve. Your final four are well designed.
My Critique: I love to see my students experiment with various ideas! Kyle, it has been fun to watch this evolve. Your final four are well designed.

Kam:
My Critique: Well done, Kam! My only suggestion is to continue angling the text as you did with the high school and Karson's name. The repetition helps to unify the design.
My Critique: Well done, Kam! My only suggestion is to continue angling the text as you did with the high school and Karson's name. The repetition helps to unify the design.

Jennifer P.:
My Critique: Jennifer, this is very nicely designed, except that "Holiday Social" gets lost in the background. Select that text layer, go down to the FX panel, and add a stroke. That should fix that.
My Critique: Jennifer, this is very nicely designed, except that "Holiday Social" gets lost in the background. Select that text layer, go down to the FX panel, and add a stroke. That should fix that.
Jeremy:
My Critique: Excellent work on masking the earth and the baby, Jeremy. Once you've masked the baby, then you can adjust the background, like making it a touch darker to bring out the foreground subjects more. The green text didn't appeal to me (probably my personal preference) - I think it just needs to pop out more. |
Isabel:
Great idea, Isabel. I've found through long experience that designs look better if you don't use FX on them. I would suggest inverting the temple in the background to make it light (more than one meaning in that) instead of darker. Then darken the background. Here's my idea... What do you think? |
Chris:
My Critique: What a fun image you've created, Chris. I can tell you have some past experience in Photoshop. Well done. The bright, beautiful sky is balanced by the dark section at the bottom - which gives the image weight and solidity. The small figures are on a rule of thirds cross-section, and their silhouette stands out agains a bright portion of the sky. There is just enough light in the foreground to give some detail to your landscape.
My Critique: What a fun image you've created, Chris. I can tell you have some past experience in Photoshop. Well done. The bright, beautiful sky is balanced by the dark section at the bottom - which gives the image weight and solidity. The small figures are on a rule of thirds cross-section, and their silhouette stands out agains a bright portion of the sky. There is just enough light in the foreground to give some detail to your landscape.
Charley:
My Critique: Nice work, Charley. This design works well. You have a good message hierarchy going here. Main message on the top is the bold, decorative font. Secondary level of information is next - slightly smaller font - lower down the image. Tertiary level is at the bottom in the smallest font.
My Critique: Nice work, Charley. This design works well. You have a good message hierarchy going here. Main message on the top is the bold, decorative font. Secondary level of information is next - slightly smaller font - lower down the image. Tertiary level is at the bottom in the smallest font.

Brittani:
My Critique: You've done very well with this, Brittani. Nice work! I have a slightly different idea - let me know what you think. I copied the lake on to a new layer and set that layer to "multiply" blend mode. That made it quite a bit darker. I turned your USU logo white, and moved it over into the darker area so it would stand out more.
My Critique: You've done very well with this, Brittani. Nice work! I have a slightly different idea - let me know what you think. I copied the lake on to a new layer and set that layer to "multiply" blend mode. That made it quite a bit darker. I turned your USU logo white, and moved it over into the darker area so it would stand out more.
Bentlee:
My Critique: Well done, Bentlee! The warm face and cooler leaf shapes divide the image in half, but in a curved, natural line. Those curves lead your eyes through the image after the smiling face first draws you in. Well balanced. Interesting. Perfectly exposed.
My Critique: Well done, Bentlee! The warm face and cooler leaf shapes divide the image in half, but in a curved, natural line. Those curves lead your eyes through the image after the smiling face first draws you in. Well balanced. Interesting. Perfectly exposed.
Becca:
My Critique: This is fun! Becca, I enjoyed playing around with this. I found a lovely font called Torta Ornaments. I added a drop shadow FX to the text to help it pop out more. I took the saturation a bit higher - it looks kind of like an abstract stained glass window, doesn't it? I created a gradient using colors in your image. |
Amber:
My Critique: Amber, this is a great design in every respect! Well done. Good use of the principle of proximity - using space to separate families of information. And pulling elements that go together - close together. You have a consistent color scheme that harmonizes well - black, white, and red. You go a good, strong left alignment that visually lines up with the typewriter return handle. |