This was my first “real world” graphic design work. Commissioned through ADS Media Group to do a poster for the Saucy September Evening. Which was also converted into a flyer and an ad  for Valley Voice.  I was just happy to have an actual paying job and put it in my portfolio. I finished the poster over a week ago but made the ad this morning. Let me know if  you see any of these posters around town so I can go check it out for myself!

As a side note, I’m working on the photo and (soon to come) graphic design portion of my website. Please be patient while I get everything set up, nice and pretty.

PS If anyone needs any graphic work done let me know, I can help you out!

Renewable Energy Content Map 11×17″

Renewable Energy Poster 15×20″

Here are my final versions for the first project in graphic design 105 this semester. I don’t mean to brag but I got an A on both! This will be the last time you see these two, promise. Now its time to work on project 2: brochure.

Tonight I was messing around with photoshop and illustrator and I thought I’d share what I was up to. Above is the final result of tonight and I’m quite pleased with it. I’ve never done any illustrations like this, I always try to make the images look too realistic when working from a photo. Maybe this was easier because I was working with a photo of my self. The closest I got to the flat illustration look it this.

Here’s the progression of experiments that I worked on tonight:

Original photo: heavily rotated and a bit cropped (mostly on the sides)

Version 1: messing around with cropping and filters in photoshop. The main things I wanted for this image was to get the color in the scarf to come out, get the green in my eyes to pop and the color of my glasses to be more prominent.

Version 2: About the same as above but in black with a background color, still experimenting. Tim called this on a Andy Warhol Megan. It’s interesting, but I wasn’t content with it.

New cropped photo: it’s still from the original photo, but it has been edited a bit more. I like the highly saturated and contrasting look to this photo. I changed to crop because I felt like the scarf was working in the illustrations and I liked emphasizing the curls on the left.

Version 3: The more I look at this version, the more I like it. Out of all the photoshop experiments I like this on the best. I made the previous photo black and white; messed with the dodging and burning to get the hair the way I want it; and messed with filters.

Now you know what I do with my “college Friday night” a but dorky, I know. But once I get a streak of inspiration to do something I need to use it as much as I can, you never know when another will come your way. I love the result I got tonight (first image)! I find it interesting that I worked with photos of myself and not someone else. I’m such a narcissist!

I hope you enjoyed the blog post, sorry its a bit long at least there are pretty pictures.

This is the second part of project one, a poster on renewable energy. I was trying a different approach and concept, we’ll see if the prof will like it tomorrow.  Is it too strong?  Oh, and this is a rough too, not done yet. I’m willing to take suggestions on this, or options for different text. Thanks!

I have been thinking about getting a flash for my canon rebel xti, and I just happen to mention this to my dad and he says he has a couple that we can see if they will work. So he hands me five different flashes! My dad uses mostly film cameras and  equipment, but luckily most of the equipment from film can be transferred over to digital, like the flashes. Some of the flashes he gave me work and some not so much.

Vivitar auto 200, when placed upon the camera, it makes my xti look like a unicorn. Uses a 9 volt battery, and it works! This flash has a automatic and manual setting, which I have yet to learn how to use the manual setting yet. The only bad thing is that it takes about 12 seconds to recharge its self and be ready to take another photo. I have the manual and original leather case for this one. Sorry for the eaby pic, it was the only one I could find of it.

Rollei 100 xl, love the name of this one, its cute sounding. I have the one on the left, I believe the one on the right is a newer model. This one also works, it doesn’t have any setting, but it only takes about 5 seconds to recharge its self. Works just as nice.

Vivitar zoom thyristor 285, this flash has a lot of bells and whistles to it. Unfortunately I have not been able to get this one to work yet, but thats what I have Tim for! I will definable have to look up how to use all the setting on this flash if we can get it to work. The head of the flash moves at an angle and extends for telephoto images.

Sunpak auto 433 D, my favorite to use so far, it doesn’t have as many dials but it is adjustable on how bright the flash is, which is what I really wanted. On a good charge it can take 3 flashes/photos in a row, and it also depends on the setting, if the flash is on full (the brightest) it takes a while to recharges, but if its on a low setting that it doesn’t take too long at all to charge. This flash is actually faster to use than the stock flash on my camera. This one swivel and rotates as well.

(no image available)

JC penny Electronic Strobe, importantly I don’t think this one will work again, they batteries we left in it and they corroded, it pretty bad. I know this little guy was well love by my dad, he was angry that this happened.

Messing with the flashes for the fist time, this one is done with the sunpak flash, with the flash shooting straight up at the ceiling and the light bouncing back down on to Flower. I’m sure she’s happy not to have a flash in her eyes for once. Made for interesting light in the image.

Recently Tim and I have been leaning in to teas. . . more Tim than I. He has always had an interested in them due to Kevin Rose on Digg. For our 5 year anniversary I went to Teavana in the mall and got him the perfect tea maker along with some flavored tea. A mix of Hazelnut Dolce rooibos tea and MartVana herbal tea, its a good mix but I recommend it on a cold rainy day.  We got burned out the tea fast in the middle of summer. We liked the “perfect tea maker” even though the easy cleaning is not so easy.

We got up the courage to buy something at Lupica, also a lose tea store in the mall . We had been in many times but never got anything, we would just stand in aww at it all, with the occasional droll showing.

To say the least we can’t seem to stop drink tea. There is no such thing as coffee anymore. We even picked up an electrical water kettle and we go through 5 gallons of water so fast!

Our first purchases from Lupicia were:

Matcha Kirara Rice Tea – perfect breakfast tea, matcha give an extra boost, the rice give it nice favor, good hot or cold. A fav! We are already on our 3rd bag.

Strawberry – made with black tea, just recently found out it is much better cold than hot, not a favorite, but we’ll drink it

Golden Honey Dew- with rooibos (red tea), sweet , decaffeinated (evening tea). My personal favorite so far. Smells oh so good.

I’ve been working on the first project of the semester for my graphic design class. There are 3 parts to it 1 a) hand sketching of the object, b) rendering of the same object c) taking the object a step farther exploring the possibilities with the object. This couldn’t just any ol’ object we could choose from a tomatillo, yo-yo, clothes pin (wooden) or an adjustable wrench. I did the tomatillo- upside down.

I’m not going to show my drawing because it looks like crap next to the vectorized images, even though the teacher likes it. First image is part of b (actually made this morning!) and the other 2 are for part b, I need to decide which one I want to develop a little more. Which one do you like better?

All works are copyrighted and all rights go to Megan Berry

Pieces of my hand by meg

So I had a little creative juice after work today, and this is what I made. There are 8 photos all together, wow I though there was more, maybe I should ad more photos.  It’s probably a bit cliche, but hey, I made it! Let me know what you guys think.

Flower on the street

This is my first testing post,  actually I’m editing this one post that was already here. I have given it a theme, and plan on adding more pages in the future, tell me what you guys think =)