Some posters of Iranian designers

In this post, I will introduce some work of Iranian designers. These pictures were download from the Icograda website, which has a big collection of artworks - mostly are posters - from various designers.

The first one is a poster of Mehdi Mohammadi named "April 27 World Graphic's Day". This one looks quite fuzzy and clean. The way objects are slanted combined with this blur also helps to create the feeling of motion. Mohammadi has used both Arabic and English language for his text. The selection of color for text is also fit with the theme of the design and it makes the world World Graphic's stand out.

This poster has a quite long name which is "The Friendship Association of Iran and Switzerland identity". It is a design of another Iranian designer, Iraj Mirza Alikhani. This poster was inspired from national flags of Iran and Switzerland. The green and red colors of the Iran's national flag looks rough like they were painted by color pencils. The way using negative space to form the cross shape is also original.

References:
http://www.icograda.org

The Scar - Peter Prabowo

This piece, entitled "The Scar", is a artwork of Peter Prabowo - an Indonesian. It is an example of CG images, a kind of images produced with the help of tools in computer software. At the beginning, this picture was just a pencil drawing. Using Photoshop, Prabowo has colored the original sketch and adding some lightning effect and shades.

The whole image looks bright and smooth. And I really like the way he adding shadows which is very detailed on the clothes and on the face. The topic of this picture is also quite fantasy.

References:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=433017

Color Theory

Color Basics

According to the definition in the worqx.com website, color is a perceptual characteristic of light. There are 3 major factors which are used in describing a color: its name, how pure it is and the value of its lightness. Hue is the value of the color (the color name), the purity of a hue is indicated by the value of saturation and the intensity value decides the brightness of a color.

A hue can has a number of variations which are created by mixing a pure hure with different colors. The 2 most important variation of a hue called shade: a variation produced by adding black color and tint: a variation produced by adding white color.

Major Color Systems

RGB Color System: this is an additive color system which is usually seen in computer screen. We call it as an additive color system because as more colors are added into it, it will produce a brighter result color. 3 primary colors of the RGB color system are Red, Green and Blue.

CMYK Color System: this system is called as a subtractive color system which is mostly used in printing. Although it only has 3 primary colors which are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, the Black color is added into this system to produce a black color (practically, there is impossible to produce a pure black color by mixing cyan, magenta and yellow).

Besides these most popular ones, there are also have other color systems which are used in more specific situations such as the HSV color system.

The Color Wheel

Traditionally, the color wheel is a color circle including 3 colors which cannot be produced by mixing any others colors. They are Red, Blue and Yellow. So, the color wheel with only these 3 primary colors is called as a primary color wheel.

Primary Color Wheel

The Secondary Color Wheel contains primary colors and colors produced by mixing primary colors.

Secondary Color Wheel

And the Tertiary Color Wheel addes colors formed by mixing primary colors and secondary.

Tertiary Color Wheel

Based on the Color Wheel, there are some terms describing the combination of colors:

Analogous Colors: the combination of colors which are located closed together on the color wheel.

Complementary Colors: the combination of colors located opposite each other on the color wheel.

Monochromatic Colors: the combination of a pure hue and its variations.

References:
http://www.worqx.com/color/color_basics.htm
http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html
http://www.worqx.com/color/complements.htm

web templates

These are my 2 other web templates

This is my first design. I started this design by experimenting to combine 3 colors: black, white and dark orange. The color combination creates a lovely contrast and makes the text stand out clearly. Since I don't use background image, this piece has a clean design which will help audiences easier to read and navigate through the contents.The text for contents is arranged in 2 columns. I hope this arrangement creates more spaces for text and.

And this is my second one, it is quite similar to the first one with the way to design banner, footer and contents text. However, the theme of this design is different: main colors of this design are blue and white. The colors are also brighter which make this design look young and more dynamic.

Website template

Here is my website template. I tried to make this layout look technological and a bit futuristic. However, I think this layout is lack of negative space because the banner (pieces of rectangle at the top) looks a bit messy.

Gelstalt exercise

This is my Gelstalt exercise. I chose purple as the major color of this layout because it creates the feeling of mysterious. This feeling is quite suitable with the content of the article.

As the background picture is big and has a bright color, there is not much choice for me in choosing position for the text. I don't think it's a good idea to put the text on top of the flower picture. Therefore, I just put the paragraph in the blank area on the right. The 2 overlaped rectangles are used to highlight the content of the article.

Just playing arround with Photoshop

This image was much easier compared to the ladybug's image. I just used the brush tool (with the vivid light mode) in Photoshop to draw the background. You can see the purple light in the background has the shape like a "D". I also draw the word BDesign but because it was drawn by the computer mouse, it's not so good. The text "Vu Thien Nguyen Phong" is my full name. I applied gradient and the liquify effect to make it looks more interesting.

Ladybug on the leaf

I drew this picture firstly on Illustrator. As I'm not good in using Pentool, I tried to make all objects from basic shapes. For example, the tree branch was actually a triangle. After distoring a bit, it became like that. And my last step was using Photoshop to paint the background and add shadows for the ladybug.

Moon symbols

These following images are symbols of the Moon. I think the first one is my favourite. It was based on the Greek mythology of Artemis - the goddess of the Moon. The stag is a hunter who was transformed by Artemis because he accidentally saw she bathing.

Sun symbols

These are my symbols of the Sun. Generally, they are symmetric through the center - this feature is very common in Sun symbols. I like the second one best because it stands out clearly from the background and the outer circle stands for perfection.