I think the best way for me to gauge what I’ve learned is to go back and look at the scratch projects I created in the first lab of the term. I had never used Photoshop, I really had no idea what I was doing and yet, I was quite proud of those little projects. They were the foundation on which all of my following projects would build on. Fill in color, rotate shape, erase; that was about the extent of my knowledge.
Layers brought in a whole new style of working. There is so much freedom in layers, whereas before every mark was so permanent unless you wanted to press undo a hundred times and then lose the rest of your work. Messing around with the free transform tool, opacity, curves, hue, and saturation all expanded my knowledge and increased my skills as a Photoshop artist. These all came together when I was working on my book, enabling me to create something beautiful. And like those first scratch projects which I felt proud of for my level of Photoshop competence, I also feel proud of this book I’ve created through my gained experience and new found competence.
When I finished my first dummy I knew it wasn’t what I had envisioned but I assumed it was just the lack of pictures that made it seem so dry. The next day in class, Professor Arellano said something that made me realize what the problem was. He said that this wasn’t a report; it was our very own book. It shouldn’t have “the title”, and “the text”, and “the picture” and you’re done. It was a design project and I needed a better design. I trashed my old book design and started afresh; same concept; new look.
I made my book square to start, it seemed like the thing to do, and then made every page have common theme with basically the same layout. This helped but there was still something that made it feel rather dull. I figured it out after about 2 hours of trying to find a more lively color to make it come alive. It didn’t need a new color, it needed the same color stretched out from dark to light. For this I used the gradient tool and I used it a lot! Once I got that, the whole book fell into place.
These recipes are mainly my roommate’s recipes (the man on the right on the cover) and once we complete all seven days and take our own photographs of the food (all of the photos were taken from Google Images and are cited in the bibliography) we hope to be published and sell. Until then I think we will continue to make delicious meals and perhaps distribute the cookbooks as Zines in Ashland and Portland.
By Sam Hoiland
