Paradicing

Design Process

During the creation of my draft graphic design piece, I allowed for the images themselves to direct me in how I wanted to present the message of “Let’s take the road less traveled.” While my singular design consists of multiple layers, images, and text, as a whole, it brings the viewer to a road of uncertainty and adventure.  If we were to dismantle my graphic design it would consist of three photographs that I took on a trip to the Pacific Palisades in Oregon; one captures a majestic sand wall and all its natural textures, the other a winding, bare, almost ghostly road, and finally, a photograph of mountains that sit above water with a beautiful clear sky. Combined, I’d like to think the image is that of a majestic road beyond and through the mountains, leading my viewer to our next destination of uncertainty and adventure. I tried to align my design’s intention with the Gestalt theory in mind, which our readings describe as “…an image consisting of numerous elements, that “while we form impressions “…derived from the individual objects, but “has a separate meaning based on the unified whole.” 

Elemental Significance

While different images completely, the three photographs I chose to include in the draft project share visual similarities of warmth in tones that I found visually pleasing when blended together. The combined warmth of the photographs provided an intentional invitation to a particular place in time: a warm, dry, silenced, unventured land. Paradicing.com’s purpose is to expose and invite my viewers/readers on a journey of uncertainty, discovery, and excitement through food, travel, and wellness, which brings me to the text included in my graphic design: “Let’s take the road less traveled.” For the purposes of advertising, my website is aligned with the core of adventure. This idea of taking “the road less traveled,” has been my guiding light in life and has aligned with the lifestyle that I lead as a flight attendant and mother. So, it only made sense that my draft design includes this saying, which pays tribute to Robert Frost’s, The Road Less Traveled.

Technical Execution of the Design

          I started this design with three photographs as described above: Mountains, Sand wall, and winding road. The mountains have this boldness in color, which immediately led me to have in the foreground. Using what I have learned from our previous tutorials, I placed the three images in the order that I wanted them to be layered. Removing the sky from above the mountains with the magnetic lasso tool, I placed the mountains in the front. I then cropped each photo so that they were aligned to where I wanted them to be layered. I used the sand wall photograph as a texturing layer to the image to give it a blending and dreamy effect. However, I wanted the railing of the road to take precedence in the completed design to move the viewer’s eyes toward the dreamy road. To accomplish this, I selected my sand wall layer (while having the road layer visible) and used the magnetic lasso to trace the road rail and removed that selected portion from the sand wall layer. This brought the road rail forward for the viewer while keeping the road textured and dreamy. During the layering process, I lowered the opacity of the sand wall over the road to have it melt into the image to create a more seamless transition between both photographs. I intentionally, left the opacity of the mountains to 100% so that it remained a bold element to my design. While the design includes a lot of intentional placements and editing, the overall product is seemingly simple, clean, and in tune, which is why I decided to keep the text as simple as possible. While the text includes great meaning and pulls the elements of design together, I really wanted the photographs to speak for themselves. Additionally, the format of my website is that of a clean, minimalistic design and I wanted my design to align with the website.