Areeja's Design Journey

19th March 2022 Today, I worked on my designs for the letter M. I did a few sketches for this one but the ideas for this design came to me quite quickly. I decided that after the success of my letter J, I wanted to try something else with the 3D tools in Illustrator. I drew my letter M out using the pen tool. I then used the extrude and rotate tools in the 3D settings to make the letter 3D. After I did that, I added a material to it and then made a shadow underneath the shape by making an ellipse shape and lowering the opacity on it to make it look like a shadow. Final upload for the letter M 20th March 2022 This time, I am doing my design for the letter N. I had a few sketches drawn out but my final concept was slightly different to any of my sketches as I initially went with a circular design where the letter was inside a circle. It wasn't until I chose the colours for the letter with the radial gradient that I decided to make it look like a fire. I decided to add warp effects to

17th March 2022 Today I did the designs for the letter K. I had some sketches completed already so I had to choose one and then start designing around it. I decided to go with one of my sketches initially and kept it as a shadow in the final upload. Instead of making the sketch version the main part of the design, I used the pucker and bloat tool on the shape and bloated the shape by 20%. I also thought that it would be a good idea to add a pattern to the design as well which is why I came up with the checked pattern that I had to make myself and save to my patterns so that I could use it in the design. To finish the design, I added a gradient to the stroke for a soft lighting effect that used the colours from the pattern.  Final upload for the letter K 18th March 2022 Today, I made the designs for the letter L. As I was approaching the halfway point of the alphabet section of the challenge, I was realising that I was struggling to come up with impressive designs like I was coming up w

15th March 2022 I have decided that I don't want to do daily blog entries anymore as I feel that they are too repetitive so now I am doing these blog entries for a couple of days at a time. The letter I was a tough one to design as I feel that there is only so much that you can do with this until you make it unrecognisable. I decided to keep the shape relatively simple as well as experimenting with light and shadows. With the letter itself, I decided to use line gradients to show the light and shade to give it a 2.5D effect. I decided to also add some shapes behind the letter with the opacity lowered to make it look like a shadow.   Final upload for letter I 16th March 2022 Today was time to make the letter J. I first did some sketches and chose a version of the sketches that I liked. The initial design was made by putting thin lines together so I had to thicken them slightly and then I wanted to try out the new 3D features on Illustrator so I used the inflate tool in the 3D menu t

14th March 2022 It has now been a full week since I have started doing this challenge and today was spent designing the letter H. I did some sketches beforehand and chose the one that I liked which is what I have been doing most days since I started the challenge. Like I did with the letter A, I decided to use a flat illustration approach to colouring the letter as well as removing the outlines on the shapes I used to make the design look smoother. I also decided to use gradients to make certain parts of the illustration look smooth as well as using them to give the illusion of the design being lit.  Final upload for the letter H 1 week update/general update on my Instagram page This is the first time in a while that I have uploaded content to my Instagram page daily although I am unsure if I will commit to this for the remainder of the challenge as it is very time consuming.  Instagram is a great place for publishing posters and other design work as it has allowed me to connect and br

13th March 2022 Today, I had to rush my design process as I had designed and uploaded the final post within 4 hours to make sure it was done before the deadline as I had time constraints due to having a busy day. This meant that the drawings that I had done were very rushed and because I had an idea of using a rope style brush stroke so I wanted to spend some time trying to work out how to go about finding and using that. I eventually found a rope brush stroke online and edited it to what I needed and used it. The initial drawing on Illustrator was done by using the pencil tool and my pen for my laptop to sketch the outlines out. I then smoothed it by individually selecting points and adjusting each curve. I then put a grain texture on the outlines as well as a drop shadow to add dimension.  Final upload for the letter G My aim for tomorrow is to make sure that I have more time to plan future uploads and not let the quality of my work become inconsistent after the last 2-3 days where I

11th March 2022 Today I designed posts for both letters E and F so that I could get ahead of things. I made my letter E by using rectangles and pathfinder tools to make it look like an E. I then copied it and transformed the size of it as well as rounding the corners and changing the colour of it. I used a blend tool to combine both shapes and then I added a plastic wrap texture to make it look shiny although I clicked it accidentally when I was looking for something else but I liked it so I kept it. I had also made an early concept for the letter F as well but I was unsure about it so I waited until the next day to see if I wanted to upload it.  Final upload for the letter E 12th March 2022 The first thing I did was look at the early concepts I had already done for the letter F and I decided that I wasn't fully sure about it even after adding a shadow to it for dimension. I then re-evaluated the direction I wanted to go with for the design and I decided to keep the shape regular b