Deborah Owen Fall 2016 BYU-Idaho Visual Media Portfolio

1. deborah julene owen
VISUAL MEDIA PORTFOLIO

3. deborah julene owen
VISUAL MEDIA PORTFOLIO

4. contact
Deborah Owen
253.625.6101
deborah.j.owen@gmail.com
deborahjulene.wordpress.com
Name:
Phone:
Email:
Website:

5. table of contents
Magazine Cover
Prezi Presentation
Photodesign
Montage
Business Identity
Infographic
HTML & CSS Coding
Web Design
Brochure

6. magazine cover
I had a couple of ideas in my head, both of real
magazines and made up ones. I knew which
photo I wanted, and ultimately in the process of
brainstorming titles, I wound up picking the New Era.
I sketched out some basic layouts that would
work with a couple pictures I have. I put together
my shape map in InDesign on an 8.5x11 page quickly,
making sure that the different items all aligned.
I put in my picture and titles but knew I needed to do
something with the background, which was a bunch of
grass. I opened up the picture in Photoshop and got
to work removing the background. I tried to keep
things clean and smooth, removing the grass and
hair frizz. I updated the file in Photoshop and
decided to add a subtle gradient background.
I finalized the layout of the items and
exported it as a 150 dpi JPG from InDesign.

7. NewEra
NOT A MAGAZINE OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS
THE
SEPTEMBER 2017
SCRIPTURE
CHASING
TIPS FROM A
CHAMPION
P. 44
YOUNG WOMEN
VALUE PROJECT
IDEAS FROM
DEBORAH OWEN
THE PERSONAL
PROGRESS HELPER
p. 7
A HOUSE OF
LEARNING:
HOMESCHOOLING
IN THE GOSPEL
p. 18
A FAMILY OF MISSIONARIES
WHY ONE GRANDDAUGHTER
IS CHOOSING TO SERVE
p. 36
WEIRD
SUNDAY
SCHOOL
OBJECT
LESSONS
p. 11-12, 23

8. prezi
I had no clue what I wanted to do for my how-
to Prezi initially. Gradually, I started thinking
about doing some sort of recipe, since that follows
a pretty methodical process (usually), plus food
makes for a great visual. I knew I didn’t want to
include photos, and I didn’t have the time to create a
really intricate vector, so eventually that lead me to an
ice cream sundae. It’s easy to follow, fun, and wouldn’t
take hours in Illustrator (though I did, admittedly, spend
several hours creating and tweaking this illustration).
Igotitallsketchedout,includingthegeneralflowIwanted.
I envisioned a sort of “Magic School Bus” experience of
zooming super close and being immersed in it. Then I
went into Illustrator. I stuck with a flat design, adding
each element on a new layer. Originally I exported
each individual element as a .png file, but that
both took a lot of time, and looked grainy when
zoomed in a couple thousand percent. I added
my text, and while I wasn’t super happy with
the fonts, there were only so many options.

10. photodesign
When I was taking my picture, I loved the
contrast of the blue flowers amid the green and
brown. Right away I thought about the phrase
“bloom where you are planted” and got to work
at home. I used Adobe Color to pick out a good
color scheme for my photo, and then started playing
around with things. I created a new 8.5×11 document in
Photoshop and imported the photo. I adjusted the levels
and saturation on the photo, and especially sharpened and
brightened the blue flowers so they would really stand out.
I knew I wanted to keep things really clean, but also a
little unpredictable. I placed each word in front of its
own block and intentionally misaligned them while
keeping nice flow. The text blocks went on top
of a blue rectangle on the left third that helped
organize the flow of the content. I made the
key words stand out in a bold cursive font and
paired it was a neutral sans serif for balance.
Overall I thought my design was really well
balanced,butIknewitneededmorefinesse.

12. montage
I found the quote I wanted to use for this
project, and right away drew inspiration from it.
The first layer was the rainbow photo. One patch
of sky was a lot brighter than the rest, so I filled it
with the gray sky around it and blended really well.
. The next layer was the city. I masked out the sky and
decided to gradually blend out the tops of the buildings
to make sure the montage was kept sort of dreamlike.
On the umbrella I increased the brightness a little bit more
to compensate for the fact that it was taken at nighttime.
Last, I found a grayscale image of rain against a window
and then used a screen mask to make it transparent.
For the text, I knew I wanted to use a sans serif with
a thick script font. I found a great pair to use and
decided to stagger the alignment of each line
of text for some variation. I added a soft glow
behindittohelpitstandoutonthebackground.
I aligned the text box in the left two-thirds.

14. business identity
Right away I knew what I wanted to do, I just
didn’t have a clear vision of it. I started sketching
logos like crazy, but nothing seemed to work. I knew
that I wanted something minimalistic and abstract.
After a lot of sketching, I still hadn’t come up with
anything I really loved, and so I opened up Illustrator
and started playing around with shapes. I figured if I have
the shape of a saxophone and the shape of a piano, I’d be
able to play around with it more freely. Pretty quickly I
was able to come up with a concept design that I loved.
I then incorporated my logo into a letterhead and
business card design. In addition to the logo, I used
repeating elements of piano keys and bold lines.

16. infographic
I had a couple ideas for the layout, including using
theframeworkofahouse,adeskinSanta’sworkshop,
a Christmas tree, or the North Pole as the setting on
my infographic. Ultimately I settled on a Christmas
tree. I sketched out different basic illustrations to use as
inspiration based off of the statistics I had gathered. Then
I played around with the layout some more, with placing
differentgraphsindifferentlayoutsIcoulduse.Whilesketching
usually helps me out a lot, in this case it really wasn’t helpful.
I got started in Illustrator once I’d finished sketching. I was
able to quickly figure out my layout once I was in the
software, and from there I was able to quickly figure
out the flow of everything. I knew I wanted it to be
pretty flat and minimal, but still playful. I used a lot
of different shades of red and green for contrast
I also wanted to play with different ways to use
the illustration to demonstrate the statistics
instead of just bar graphs, so I used a cookie pie
chart, and stacked presents of different sizes.

17. the
NORTH
POLLwhat people actually believe about
Santa Claus
yes
no
not
sure
43%
50%
7%
Yes
72%
No
12%
are you on
Santa’s
Nice
List?
Not
sure
16%
DEMOCRAT
33% REPUBLICAN
20%
OTHER/NOT SURE
47%
do you believe in the
WAR ON
Christmas?
not
sure
no
yes41%
47%
12%
Christmas
YES
NO
NOT SURE
Kwanzaa
YES
NO
NOT SURE
Hanukkah
YES
NO
NOT SURE
what is your holiday greeting of choice?
Merry
Christmas
51%
41%
8%
yes
15%
no
76%
not
sure
9%
Source: "Polling the Holidays."Public Policy Polling.'December 19, 2013<
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/12/polling-the-holidays.html>.
Created by Deborah Julene Owen
deborahjulene.wordpress.com

18. html coding
Before even starting the coding, I wrote all the
content for the webpage. From there, I glanced
through the premade files and got to work in
Notepad++. I decided I wanted to challenge myself and
actually code the entire site without the premade files,
and then check my files against the premade once and
reconciled a couple differences for the sake of continuity. It
was more challenging than just going through the template,
but I’m glad I did it. I was able to leave out some things I
didn’t want in the first place (like the rounded corners on
the body) and add in some new things that I may not have
thought of including otherwise (like the link colors).
As far as the design goes, I stuck to the monochromatic
scheme of the logo, incorporating different shades
of the same hue. I wanted to make sure there
was plenty of white space in the margins, and
good leading between lines to make it easy
on the eyes. And as much as I love system
fonts (not really), I opted to use Google
Fonts to make the design stand out.

20. web design
I’ve created website mockups before in Illustrator,
but never in Photoshop before, so this was a new,
exciting challenge for me. I went into this without a
clear idea of what I wanted to do beyond the brand
itself. I found some photos which would work, and
that gave me a better idea of where I was going with it.
I sketched out a couple potential layouts, but there was
only one I really wanted to pursue further. I opened up
the grid template in Photoshop and started arranging
elements like on my sketch. I ended up adjust things a
little bit, but the concept was still mostly the same.
From there, I started adding to the elements.
In general, I was pretty happy with the final
layout. I did several different layer comps
to demonstrate how things would change
when you’d hover, but kept it pretty basic.

22. brochure
I wanted to take this opportunity to do
something creative and create a fake brochure
that could serve as publicity material for the event.
I wanted to go beyond a traditional tri-fold, and
so through trial and error I eventually wound
up doing mine cut at an angle as a 4 fold, which
would create triangles on the front when folded.
I wanted it’s primary goal to be to tell the nativity story,
with the secondary purpose of advertising the festival, so
I had each element on the front tell a different part of
the story. Once I had solidified my vision as a sketch, I
was able to quickly assemble it in InDesign on an 8×12
page. I created each icon in Illustrator, as well as the
triangularbackgroundlayout.Iusedaclippingmask
to trim the picture of the wisemen in Photoshop.
The printing and trimming process was luckily
pretty quick and easy, and then I tried to
make my folds as precise as possible.