13A Final Portfolio

 

Comm 125 portfolio diamonds from Nancy Wells

I enjoyed preparing this slide show. I created it in PowerPoint. I know how to do so much in there now! I re-worked five of my slides to prepare them for my portfolio. I remade my “Eye of the Tiger” to make the text more visible. I had to remake the whole thing, because I hadn’t saved the Word document; I thought a JPEG was all I needed. I created a somewhat transparent background rectangle the same color as the leaves in the image. I softened the edges so it wouldn’t detract from the image. It is a great match, doesn’t show up, and the text is crystal clear. I also had to recreate my event flier. I had placed some text too close to the margin in the original version. It was fun creating it from scratch again, knowing what I was doing this time. I had to work on my movie poster. There was that problem with the shadow on the roof looking like it was sky. I got Brent to help me and we made it the same color as the shingles on the roof. We removed both trees from the image. I didn’t like how bare it looked, so I went back and used a photo that I had taken the previous day while it was snowing. I like the white it adds to the project. It still has the trees, and now it doesn’t look so bland. I like my new movie poster much better. I also had to make changes to my pie Web Site page. Sister Larson suggested I change the logo from a white background to a red one, to match the rest of the heading. I had a cute pie clip art image I wanted to keep in the logo, but it had a white square background to it. Because it was so small, it lost its shape when I tried to cut it out. I worked on it for quite some time before I called “uncle” and went to a tutor. Brent knew a way to use the magic wand to accomplish what I needed to do, so we did it, and it worked! The solid red heading looks much better. My last change was to my magazine spread in InDesign. I removed an image, removed a box outline, then corrected some text to remove an orphan. I like the white space those changes added to my spread. To finish making this slide show, I had to choose my layout for the portfolio. I vacillated between using color in my background or making them all a neutral gray. I finally opted for the grays. I also decided to center each project on the page.

My message is: Look at the amazing things I have learned to do in COMM 125!
My audience is: Everyone! I hope there’s something for everyone to enjoy.

Critiques:
Margery Bailey Sabolsky: Nancy, brilliant idea to say what software you used to create your designs. My critique from Sis. Larson encouraged me to do the same. Great job on the ‘bars’ with titles in them; great use of color. Not sure I like the font on First slide; the cursive one.
Like · Reply · 21 hrs
Kristen Larson Wayne (aka Nancy) here you go: http://screencast.com/t/d5CnQztm0p0
Like · Reply · 21 hrs
Shelley Guthrie Tiffany: The label bar on Slide #2 is a little difficult to read. Perhaps a darker background?
Like · Reply · 14 hrs
Nancy Wells: Shelley Guthrie Tiffany It’s black and it’s not been coming through. I don’t know why slideshare kept dropping it. It saved right in the pdf. I just redid the whole thing. It worked and all the bars came through. I changed the look of it in several ways. Could you look at it again, Shelley, and tell me what you think? Thanks! Nancy
Like · Reply · 39 mins
Shelley Guthrie Tiffany: Nancy, this revision looks really nice. I like the black/white gradient in the backgrounds. The new diamond design works well. I like the placement of your images for the slide design page better on this newer version. You have good color variations in your labels. Nice work!
Like · Reply · 25 mins

All of my critiques were from Facebook, with a Jing included from Sister Larson. All were given on the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday the project was due. Neither Margery nor Sister Larson liked the decorative font I used, so I changed it to something a little easier to read, made all the fonts the right size, and corrected the leading. The new font adds some variety, but is tasteful. Shelley noticed that SlideShare was dropping the black bar from one of my slides. I worked to correct it and couldn’t get it to work with SlideShare. So I re-did my whole portfolio. I needed to redo it anyway, because Sister Larson pointed out that my pictures were too small, since I had the bar that labeled each slide at the bottom of the slide. I moved the bar to the left side and made it wider. I removed the colored background and decided to go with a gray background. I wasn’t happy with it until I made it gradient. That made the slides look much better. I also added a diamond design to connect each slide to the others. I listened to all of the critiques and appreciated all of the great ideas for improving my portfolio. I’m pleased with the final product.

Fonts: Roboto/sans serif, Gabriola/serif