Category: Com210
For this Graphic Design Project I decided to do a poster for Washington State Volleyball. The reason behind choosing this as the subject of my project is because volleyball and this program here at Washington State is a great passion for me. I chose the picture of the cougar head because it represents Washington State. When I first visited here at Washington State, I went up to the volleyball coaches’s office and found the school logo, along with five words. The five words appear at the bottom of this poster spelling, passion, humility, unity, servanthood, and thankfulness. The coaches explained to me that these are the five words that they base the program off of. When I heard them explain each word to me, it made me realize how much I wanted to be a part of the volleyball team here at Washington State. The other two photos are pictures of my friend McKenna Woodford and I blocking at the net. McKenna Woodford’s dad took those two photos at a game and told me I could use them for my poster. What made me want to put those photos on there was because our team is known for being a good blocking team. In the PAC 12, Washington State was ranked number one for most blocks last year.
The five words I decided to put on the bottom of the page because it represents that those words are the base foundation of the program where we base our decisions on those words. I put the cougar head in the middle of the page because it is the logo of the school and is what we wear on our jerseys, as well as who we play for. The two volleyball action shots I placed to be facing each other on opposite sides of the page. The reason behind this is to have some unity in the fact that the block is facing towards the volleyball on top of the poster.
I received feedback from a few of my peers and I incorporated some changes to my final draft of the graphic design project. One of the first changes I made was with the cougar logo, I cleaned up the image. I selected the layer and used “select” “color range” and increased fuzziness to grab the visible logo, then after it was selected, I filled it with the background color that was white.The next edit I made was with the bottom text in making it stand out more. It was pointed out to me that since those words mean so much to our program they needed to stand out more. I did that by turning the opacity up and changing the text to the bold setting. Along with making the text bolder, I also fixed a grammatical error pointed out by one of my class mates. The grammar mistake I fixed was spelling the word servanthood the correct spelling. One of the last edits I made was to clean up the erasing I did in the first draft with the background. I used the blur tool to make the eraser lines less streaky and more smooth so it would also look cleaner on the screen. It was a slight challenge doing the blur tool because I had to go back a few times in the history because I would accidentally blur out the letters from “volleyball”. A good tip to know for using this tool is making sure you are aware of those mistakes early on because other wise you may have to search far back in history to find that one mistake.
For the final draft of the project, I still kept the same edits/tools I used the first time which included using the paint bucket for the background color to fill the page with the crimson back drop. Then adding a text box on the top of the page to spell out Washington Sate Volleyball, and then played around with the different fonts. I tried to find a font that would look professional and clean up at the top of the page. Next I used the magic wand tool to select the cougar head out of the picture I took in the coaches office and dragged it over to the crimson color page. The next step I took was writing the five words on the bottom by making a text box and typing them out. For the fading of the pictures I put them underneath a red layer, and used an erase brush with a reduced opacity and flow to scrub away the red. I scrubbed the picture with the eraser until the image was just clear enough to see.
For this Graphic Design Project I decided to do a poster for Washington State Volleyball. The reason behind choosing this as the subject of my project is because volleyball and this program here at Washington State is a passion for me. I chose the picture of the cougar head because when I first visited here at Washington State, I went up to the volleyball coaches’s office and found the school logo, along with five words. The five words appear at the bottom of this poster spelling, passion, humility, unity, servanthood, and thankfulness. The coaches explained to me that these are the five words that they base the program off of. When I heard them explain each word to me, it made me realize how much I wanted to be a part of the volleyball team here at Washington State. The other two photos are pictures of my friend McKenna Woodford and I blocking at the net. McKenna Woodford’s dad took those two photos at a game and told me I could use em. What made me want to put those photos on there was because our team is known for being a good blocking team. In the PAC 12, Washington State was ranked number one for most blocks, but another reason why I chose those specific two is because I met my best friend McKenna Woodford playing volleyball here for Washington State. She helps me to aspire to be the best I can be and encourages me whenever I am feeling down.
The five words I decided to put on the bottom of the page because it represents that those words are the base foundation of the program. I put the cougar head in the middle of the page because the whole poster is based around the university and the logo is the best identifier. The two volleyball action shots are put on both sides of the page because the blocks are both facing inward towards the cougar head and the volleyball text showing the support of blocking.
For the background color I used the paint bucket to fill the page with that crimson looking color as the back drop. I then added a text box on the top of the page to spell out Washington Sate volleyball, and then played around with different fonts. Next I used the magic wand tool to select the cougar head out of the picture I took in the coaches office and dragged it over to the crimson color page. The next step I took was the writing of the five words on the bottom by making a text box and typing them out. Next I made a text layer and changed the layer opacity to fifty percent. For the fading of the pictures I put them underneath a red layer, and used an erase brush with a reduced opacity and flow to scrub away the red until I saw what I wanted to see. That is how I was able to create this Washington State volleyball poster.
My idea for the Graphic Design Project is to create a poster that shows the multiple aspects of the Washington State Volleyball team. Give people more of an idea of what it looks like being on the volleyball team and what happens during games.
I chose each of these images because each photo explains what it is like being a WSU volleyball player. The sisterhood/friends you make, the gear you are given, the facility, the fans who ask to take photos, and some volleyball skills are shown in the second photo.
1st jumping with cougar head was taken by: Taylor Mims
2nd jumping taken by: Mckenna Woodford’s Dad
The group of volleyball players holding up a team mate was taken by: Hailey Bethune
The fans jumping with the players was taken by: Kathleen Lajos
The Mikasa volleyballs: http://www.freeimages.com/photo/volleyball-1559100
Here are my completed photoshop tutorials:
The topic I chose for this assignment is the journey that Washington State Volleyball players have to go through to become better athletes. The reason why I chose this topic is because volleyball is my favorite activity to do and gives me a sense of purpose in my life. Playing volleyball also lets me have an escape from the stresses of life and just get to go play with my team mates whom I love spending time with/playing with. Another reason why I chose this topic is because I have access to the inside scoop of what goes on in training and am able to ask the players personally what it is like being an athlete for Washington State University. How I plan on collecting the materials I need for this project is by using a camera and being able to record/take photos of some practices of the girls playing volleyball. I can also use my phone to record a few of my teammates in interviews of their stories as volleyball player at Washington State University. I have an idea for about three of the four unit project sections on what I am going to do for them. For the unit 1 project section I plan on making a collage of different photos I will take of practices, weight room, the players, the coaches, and some photos of the locker room. For unit 3 of the project, I plan on recording some of the players on their stories of the daily routines they go through weekly, ask about what goes through their head during games/how they deal with the big crowds and ask some how it is like being an athlete at the university. For the video story portion that is in unit 4, I planned on showing videos of a few practices and show some of the warm up to see what it looks like to be a Washington State volleyball player.
http://www.wsucougars.com/news/2016/8/31/womens-volleyball-meet-the-volleyball-newcomers.aspx My first inspirational video I saw that inspired my project was the footage of a few interviews with the volleyball players on why they chose WSU as their school to play.
This second link I found was of the head coach Jen Greeny talking about her players and how much the team is coming along; showing this past weekend’s success shows that the team is going to do great things this year.
This last inspirational link was a sneak peak preview of the volleyball players playing some volleyball with very intense lighting and suspenseful music that gets me excited for the season to begin.
Com 210 