Autumn Schreiber Creative

Tag: design

  • layout project progress: poster edition

    As I wrote in my last post, I am designing a 10 piece campaign for a music festival. I have finished the logo and stage banner. The current work in progress is the poster. I wanted the poster to be artsy, and be able to be hung on a wall. There’s the easy route of including all of the head liners, but I wanted a more fun approach.

    I started with a bunch of small sketches. Nothing really stood out to me. I really wanted to capture the atmosphere of the festival. It’s set in a small Iowa town with mainly indie and alternative artists. The past festival themes have been kinda folksy and hippie ish, or trendy. I wanted to have a ren faire adjacent theme. Something that felt homey, backroads, fun, and comforting.

    Initial poster ideas (as well as my dream lineup lol)
    More sketches!

    After a bunch of sketching and scouring Pinterest, I came across a cool frame/medieval banner template.

    After looking online for similar frames and borders, I had an idea. I wanted to include snapshots of the festival (the hinter tree, guitar, and a lineup) but in a framed way.

    This was my more finalized ROUGH sketch
    This is the current work in progress

    Right now, I’m in the process of editing the sketched snapshots, and finalizing color combos. The tree sketch isn’t my own work, it’s from the public domain. I found it on public.works. That’s a really cool site for images in the public domain.

    Thoughts? Concerns? Questions? Until next time!

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  • fun packaging scavenger hunt

    I’ve been on the lookout for fun packaging. When I’m out running errands or to my favorite coffee shop, I’m looking. Below is what I’ve found so far!

    Boxed mac and cheese from Aldi

    I thought the boxed mac packaging was soo cool! The bright, bold colors stood out and I noticed it right away. The names (cheddy mac and shella good) were also really fun and clever. The box that holds all of the mac is even a bright blue. Overall, it was a fun design that seemed trendy and modern.

    The Breaks’ bulk bean bags! Perfect for a cuppa joe

    The simplicity of this bag is top notch. I like the use of red for details and the logo. Also, the skeleton riding a bike is always gonna be a win in my book. The design is seamless with a dash of whimsy.

    That’s all I’ve found for now! Once I get out and find more cool packaging designs I will report back to the masses. Enjoy the weather!

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  • making mixed media animation (both ways)

    When you start mixed media animation, there are two ways to go about it. There’s a longer way, and a shorter way.

    The more arduous way entails taking a video frame by frame, printing it out, adding the mixed media aspect, scanning it back in, and then lining up each frame in post. It’s very lengthy, but it’s more customizable than the shorter way.

    The colored frames for the long mixed media animation pro

    The easier way, is to take a video, import it in Photoshop as video frames to layers, make your edits in photoshop, and export, then arrange it in post.

    I did both and have some videos and thoughts below!

    The long process pros and cons

    Pros

    • It was easier to customize the animations with crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc
    • More freedom

    Cons

    • harder to line up scanned in images
    • took a long time to line up said scanned images (very frustrating)

    The short process pros and cons

    Pros

    • saved time
    • was easier to export (create frames, line up in post, etc)

    Cons

    • not as much creative freedom
    • dependent on Photoshop brushes/photoshop manipulation for mixed media effect

    Resources

    Have you tried this? What did you think? Keep creating!

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  • engraving leatherette ornaments

    Today in my Production Lab class, we got to engrave tree shaped leatherette ornaments. It was a bit scary, but I think that’s because I didn’t want to mess with the engraver. I made up my designs below in Adobe Illustrator.

    The front (v1)
    The front (v2)
    The back design

    I ended up going with the second front design.

    The front
    The back

    My takeaways

    • When printing on this type of leather, bold letters show up better
    • If I would do this again, I would thicken the stroke of “Ethel Cain”
      • I had to do this on the fly and engrave the back twice because I could barely see the engraving the first time
    • It was a lot easier to use the engraver than I thought! Now I’m not as hesitant to use it.

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  • mixed media animation

    My teacher introduced a new project. Yay! We have to make self promo videos. Honestly, videos aren’t my strongest skill, but this is a great opportunity to learn. I wasn’t too sure what I wanted to do for my video or how to make it stand out.

    The more I thought about it, I wanted to do something fun and artsy. Something collage/craft like. So I started looking up “multi media animation tutorials”. There are so many cool ways to add to your videos! (Find a cool example here) It seems like there are two ways to go about multi media animation: using plugins/editing effects or the more lengthy process. The plug ins are not free by any means, so I think I’ll experiment with the more time consuming process. The idea is to take a video you’ve shot, bring it into software and save it frame by frame, print your frames out, and then bring out the markers and start drawing, etc. Most people seem to use Adobe software, but I’ve seen others use Canva and Capcut.

    Here are some cool videos I found!

    So after getting some inspiration, I got to work. I combed through my email, phone, and my mom’s facebook account to find clips of myself. I brought the clips into Premiere Pro and edited them. It took me a minute, but I started to get the hang of it again. I kept my editing simple. I made a lil montage. I think I’ll try mixed media animation soon!

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  • revising past projects

    I’ll be the first to admit, I wish I could do all of my projects to 210% of my ability. But with multiple school projects, working twenty hours a week, and trying to adult, it gets to be a lot sometimes. Because of my busy school and work life, sometimes my projects aren’t to the caliber that I try to uphold. So with some extra time this week, I wanted to revise some past projects.

    Victim number one, I mean project number one, was my packaging design from last semester. I love the idea of it, but it just felt a little flat to me. The back seemed too plain.

    The original packaging design

    I made some minor adjustments, by increasing the size of the tagline above the rainbow, and keeping the rectangle motif. I think that helped it feel a bit more streamlined and professional feeling.

    slightly tweaked packaging design
    new logo type w/tweaked packaging design

    I wanted to play around with the logo design as well. It just felt a bit rushed. In the future, I’ll take my revised versions to my teacher to get some feedback. The new logo design is growing on me. What do you think?

    Hopefully I’ll post some more revised projects. Until then!

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  • quick library flyer design

    After the exhausting saga of calling my local legislators, I wanted to draft up a quick library flyer design. I’m not looking to print them en mass from another site, so I want to print them on a 11 x 8.5″ sheet of paper.

    The Process

    1. I opened up InDesign and started with a 11 x 8.5” size file. I snapped guides to divide it into four even sections.
    2. I looked at my original poster design. I wanted to take the elements of the big poster and condense it into a small flyer.
    3. After looking at the previous poster, I decided I wanted: a headline, short summary, and a qr code with resources.

    The Final Flyer Design

    Side by Side Comparison

    The Flyer
    The Original Poster

    I can’t decide if I need the black outline or not. It might make the flyers easier to cut (or at least, that was the idea).

    How do you design flyers? I’m off to finish some homework. Ciao!

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  • how do you even contact your reps?

    I’ve been wanting to make an informative social media post about contacting reps for my library awareness campaign. So, the only way I could give a lot of helpful information was to do it myself.

    The Process

    I didn’t want to go in completely blind so I found some articles. Here’s one on calling reps. Here’s another one on emailing/writing reps.

    I found my legislators and called the first one. There was only one number listed, so I called and got an intern. I was expecting a robot to direct me to my legislator’s phone (can you tell I’ve never contacted my reps before?!). I explained to the intern that I wanted to contact my legislator about library funding.  I was given the option to either let the intern leave a message or to give my name and number so my legislator could call me back. I went with the latter. I didn’t get a call back from that legislator that day. (I plan to follow up with an email or call again if I don’t get a response in a few days)

    I went on to call my next rep, but I called his personal phone. It went to voicemail, and I started reading off my script, but I got cut off after two minutes. I’d suggest keeping your messages concise and/or giving a summary with a request for a callback. My second rep called me a few hours later and left me a voicemail the same day. In his voicemail, he mentioned that he would try to restore some funding, but that cuts would have to be made and might make other people unhappy. I suggest maybe having some compromises in your back pocket (ex: I understand budget cuts need to be made. I suggest cutting the four million expenditure for private school vouchers to restore the SD library budget.)

    For my third rep, I ended up emailing him. I found the email along with his phone number. I went back and edited my phone script before sending my email. I got a response later that night. 

    The Social Media Plan

    I wanted to share my experience and tips on contacting my legislators on Instagram and Facebook. I used a Canva template. It’s a lot of information to share! I tried keeping my post simple and then linked a detailed experience in my linktree. I really hope this helps people contact their reps!

    Have you ever contacted your local rep? Let me know below. Until next time!

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  • managing library social media efforts

    Well team, figuring out how to find your legislators has been a hassle. It’s what I’m working on currently for my library awareness social media campaign. Right now I’m in the midst of finding out how to contact legislators about library funding. I’ll update yall on that later.

    Right now, I try to post every other day on my Instagram and Facebook accounts. I primarily repost SD Library Association updates, resources, and legislature updates.

    I usually make Instagram posts using Canva templates. Ideally, I’d like to hand craft each post in Adobe programs, but I don’t have that time with school and work.

    A recent post
    The second post image

    I’ve also started hanging up flyers in my spare time. I don’t have as many hung up around town, but I’m trying when I have time.

    One of my posters I hung up

    In the meantime, I’ll be starting up school and going to work. I’ll keep you updated!

    XOXO

    gossip girl (jk, it’s me, Autumn)

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