Pantones

                           Pantone Color of the Year 2025                                                     Pantone Color of the Year 2026

Pantone color (aka spot color) is a premixed color that can be accessed by people from across the world. What I've learned about Pantones is that you don't have as much flexibility with them, as with CMYK or RGB colors. Due to them being premixed they have a limited color range to them. Which can be quite expensive to correct if the person wanted a different color. But when printing with Pantone colors the best file would be PDFs, EPS’ (Adobe Illustrator) and TIFFs (Photoshop). I believe I am able to design with Pantones since it uses a limited color palette, it's much more simpler to design with. I would like to work with them again.

Logos and Touch Ups

 

Before                                                                    After

In order to touch up a logo from a low resolution to a high resolution, go into Photoshop, go to image and click on image size. In this panel, you would have to unclick resample to link resolution to width and height. Then, in resolution, you put in 300 to see how big the image is and then click resample to unlink resolution to width and height. Then you can increase the size by 2 inches or more if possible. Then click Preserve Details and reduce noise to 100. After that, make a grayscale vision and a colored vision of the image and download it as a TIFF. Then open your TIFFs in Illustrator in an artboard to imagetrace the image and make it as close to the original as possible, and to make necessary adjustments when needed. Each application uses Photoshop to increase the image’s resolution, and Illustrator is used to image-trace and to edit the image.

Design Art Movements: Constuctivism

    Alexander Rodchenko, Books (Please)!            |         Lorena Recinos, Self Help Graphics & Art:  

    In all Branches of Knowledge, 1924                             Día De Los Muertos event, 2025 

 

During class, I learned about several art movements throughout history, some of them being the Victorian era (1837-1901), where they used symmetry in their designs to make them legible to the masses with beautifully intricate designs. There is also De Stijl (1917-1931), a Dutch style that uses rectangles, primary colors (true colors), with black and white colors. Added with the straight lines, it forms a geometric, slick, and structured design. For me, my favorite design movement was introduced to me by Professor Lepe, which was Constructivism (1915-1930), a Russian art movement that uses bold, dark colors and big text that typically uses black, red, and a cream-colored white. Historically, this movement was used for militarism but later shifted to resistance. What I liked about this art movement is that it uses angular lines that force the eye to move. It's big and bold by design, practically shouting at the viewer for attention. This is reflected in my design by having bold colors and bold text with perspective. Not only that, but within my design, I have arrows that lead the eye around the poster that has all the information needed to advertise the event, which is reflective of the movement. Although I wished I played more with the font on the side of the poster, making it wider than tall. Overall, I captured what this movement was about: being energetic and bold.

Elements and Principles of Design: How I use them

The elements and principles of design are a set of guidelines that artists use to structure their work, to look clean and pristine. The way I use the elements and principles in my own work is by using them to structure my work to flow into each other. Meaning my main goal is to use color, shape, line and other elements or principles to help guide the viewer's eyes to where I want them to go, subconsciously. In particular, I used the Gestalt Principle of design for my final project for my Viscom 100 class to add continuity to add movement to my piece. I also used figure and ground to make the viewer's eyes look at the text (figure) by using the shapes around to guide them to it (ground). This one caught the viewer's attention and two, informed them of the exhibition happening at MOCA, which was the goal of the mailer cards.

 

VC 112: As an Artist

 

Hello, my name is Lorena Recinos, and as an artist, I am entranced by the world of art. I love all forms of art, whether it’s traditional, digital, fashion, carpentry, welding, glass work, etc. I love it all. To describe myself, I am an artist down to the atom; there is nothing else in the world I would rather do more than make art, and I hold myself to a standard. If I don’t like the result, I will start again. Everything I do has an intent behind it, no matter how big or small; I work deliberately in a  timely manner. I always make sure that my work is turned in on time at its highest quality; even if I’m late, my work never is. The project I did above is an album cover and CD I did for my Photoshop class. I had a vision, made a sketch, and made it happen, no matter what. I worked from Monday, 10 am (took a 2-hour break) to 6 am the next morning to get this project done for class. Mainly because the mask was giving me a hard time and took me several days to get right. I did miss most of the Zoom call, but my work was turned in before class; I apologize for missing class. But I am proud of the result, and it truly captures the artist it was made for. As for Desktop Publish, I know absolutely nothing about it but I’m guessing it’s about printing finished work to get it out to a wider audience.

Mailer Card

My design project is a MOCA mailer card to inform patrons about Andreas Gursky; a German photographer who captures human, corporate, creation. I wanted to capture the essence of the artist while also keeping MOCA’s branding intact. Making sure the design looked corporate since Gursky is known for capitalistic photographs and contemporary to match MOCA. I also wanted to have some continuity in the design which is why there are the three black bands in the composition, Andreas Gursky, MOCA’s logo, and the MCACHICAGO.org website. I believe I was successful with my design because nothing screams more corporate than geometric shapes, coupled with the liner direction, and color picked from Gursky’s photographic makes for an eye-catching design. Although, some challenges were choosing the background color, and the tracking of the lettering. I overcame this by limiting the photograph I was referencing to two, choosing a color that would tie the colors together and be inviting. Which is why I chose the color yellow, a warm color, that is both inviting and ties everything together. As for the tracking of the lettering, I knew that I was going to have a hyphen in the paragraph regardless of how I track the lettering. In the beginning I left the hyphen at the top of the paragraph however with the help of Professor Lepe, we decided it was best to have the hyphen be in the middle of the text because it was more visually appealing.

Monogram

Personal Monogram

In my time of making graphic designs, I have learned many things, from knowing how to make an effective yet simple design that captures the viewer's attention for my monogram. Some of the techniques I’ve learned to do this are emphasis, emotion, use of color, movement, contrast, and hierarchy. Emphasis, quickly grab the viewer's eye; emotion, to influence the viewer; color, to make the graphic pop; it can also add emotion to the piece. Movement, to help guide the viewer's eyes to where I’d want them to go; contrast helps separate the individual figures, it also helps with emphasis, and hierarchy to show the viewer which is the most important, and also leads the eyes. My biggest challenge was trying not to have unappealing tension in the piece, especially when the figure hit the edge of the box, leaving a white line or a touching-not-touching sensation. I had to start training my eyes to see every detail of my graphic to make sure there wasn’t unnecessary tension that could distract the viewer. In my personal monogram, I emphasized the L and made the R smaller and flipped it, creating a sense of movement and hierarchy. The kind of font I used creates a sense of prestige, while the yellow color creates contrast that frames the monogram.