Literacy can change lives. Literally.

As a writer it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I think literacy is important. Up until I dug into the subject as research for a project for a grad school class, I didn’t realize just HOW important.

You see, up until the third grade I couldn’t read. It wasn’t until my mom, an elementary teacher, did some research and really worked with me that it was determined I had dyslexia. It took me until the fifth grade before I was reading at the same level as my peers.

I’m telling you this because I’ve lived with the gut-eating embarrassment and worry that others might see through my evasions and tell I couldn’t read. I was just guessing, playing along, hoping they wouldn’t call me out.

The sad truth is there are 36 MILLION adults out there living with those same feelings today. People who aren’t stupid, who are perfectly capable of doing amazing things – but who never learned to read. Maybe it was because no one took the time. Maybe they came from a home with parents who couldn’t read. Or maybe, like me, they had a learning disability, but unlike me, no one noticed or did anything about it. The reality is they can learn to read.

And when they do…their world will change. So will yours. How?

Students and teacher in classroom

Right now low literacy is costing our economy $225 BILLION dollars a year in lost productivity in the workforce, crime and loss of tax revenue due to unemployment according to the National Council for Adult Learning. It’s also costing us up to $238 BILLION dollars a year in health care costs linked to low literacy skills according to the American Journal of Public Health.  In the future it could cost us as much at $1.6 to $3.6 TRILLION dollars.

A staggering 43% of low literacy skill Americans live in poverty. And it’s no wonder. If you can’t read, it’s damn near impossible to fill out a job application or get a driver’s license unless the computer reads it all to you. Those who can get jobs often fill low skill-low wage positions that aren’t enough to support a family even if they work two or three of them.

Now imagine we eliminate that barrier. We give them a tool that has life-long benefits and lifts them out of poverty. One that even helps their children. They begin to be able to contribute in their communities. That, my friends, is the power of literacy. If each one of us who has reading skills taught just one other adult to read each year, we could change the tide. We could make a significant difference.

Coming up on Sept. 8, 2017 is International Literacy Day. Join together with people from around the world to raise awareness for this cause and fight for funding. Better yet, become a literacy coach now. ProLiteracy International can direct you to services and locations across the globe. You can make a difference. Volunteer now.

 

Visual Storytelling…the final draft

For our final project for our Master’s COM561 class we were tasked with creating the final version of our video project. I’d already begun planning out what I wanted when I worked with my audio project because I tend to think very visually and our semester topic has kept me keenly focused on my subject matter of our community and the transition our schools are experiencing. Since I like watching PBS and the History Channel as well as the news, I tried to use a kind of combination approach, giving a snapshot of the community and the issue and then looking at a real family in our community that represents the issue to put a face to the story – a feature news bit, if you will, for the residents of Kitsap County in a series titled Kitsap Connections Snapshot. I thought this would be the most engaging way to share the information and kept the B Roll moving as much as possible with the narrative to keep the pace quick and entertaining.

Thankfully, my critiques from classmates agreed. The edits most suggested on my draft of this project had to do more with adding additional information in the form of titles and making rolling script easier to read by slowing it down than actually editing the video segments themselves. They liked the volume levels. They liked the shots and the transitions.

To begin my project, I transferred my mental images into a paper storyboard so I could make a list for myself of the shots I would need to take. I didn’t spend a great time on it as I just needed a representation of what the shots would be and knew that once I began editing I’d likely find other shots I’d want as well. I did it by hand rather than in a word processing document because of the visual aspect of it that I couldn’t create in Microsoft Word (see end of post for a shot of the final storyboard). I also used information and research gathered the South Kitsap School District website  and from interviews with various community members to pull together the information needed for the narrative portion of my video.

All the video was shot using my iPhone 6. The audio of both the voice over and the waves used at the beginning were taken using my Voice Record Pro app (purchased for $2.99) and imported into first my master file for my Adobe Premiere project folder on my computer and then into Adobe Premiere itself. As we learned in tutorials, you are going to shoot more video than you ever use. In fact several shots that were on my original storyboard eventually got cut or replaced because some video looked better in reality than on paper and some did not. For my final draft I shot additional video.

I started the editing process by putting my files into various bins including one for B Roll, one for interviews and another for audio, then I began to pull clips and place them into the order I’d planned on my storyboard. If I found the audio had a gap that needed a corresponding video (such as the one mentioning housing so I went and found a house with a for sale sign out front) I wrote it down on a list of additional shots I needed. I tried making sure that the shots corresponded to what was on the audio. There were only a few places where I had to use the Razor Tool to slice out bits of the interview, otherwise most of the editing was done to each clip using in and out markers to make the clips the correct length in Adobe Premiere I needed before moving the clip into the sequence. Once clips were in the sequence, for the final version I unliked almost all the video and audio and deleted the audio for all the b-roll to make sure there wasn’t any excess noise under the narrative or interviews.

Originally I tried to put transitions in between each clip, but found it very distracting. It took away from the more feature news style I was working toward. Ultimately I ended up using only transitions at the beginning after the animated title page, between the rolling clip over the school district logo, and between the voice over and the interview where I used a cross dissolve and again between the two interviews to make the transition smoother. I tried one at the end, but found no matter how I manipulated it, the fade away from Tyler before he was done speaking didn’t work properly. I wanted to see that goofy, confident grin only a fifth grader can manage. I also slowed down the final credits and added a short clip of my logo and blog url by editing out a section of the video that talked too long about the high school (which wasn’t the focus of the piece). I wanted to make sure that the entire project fit within the three minute time allotment.

For my title pages I used the Title Tool. For the entry title page there were three stacked pages in different video channels to recreate the animated appearance we learned in our tutorials. To create the animation effect I stretched out the first title (Kitsap Connection Spotlight) before the first video clip began, then staggered the starts of the other two titles so they would come in a few seconds later, then used the same cross dissolve on each of them at the end to smoothly fade them out. One suggestion I received from critique was to improve the visibility of them against the background. I had selected white lettering so I could have it appear against the black background prior to the video introduction, so I knew I couldn’t away with darker lettering. Instead I made the title easier to see by using the effects button and editing the title by adding a stroke in black of 10 and a drop shadow of 50% with an angle of 150 (which shows up as (-210 degrees).

For the information layered over the school logo and the end credits I used a rolling title to maximize the smoothness of the transition along with maximizing the information included. The school logo itself was imported from Adobe Illustrator and is a vector graphic. For the titles over the school shots (since there were several all in a row and I wanted to clearly indicate those who didn’t have a good signage shot) I used a crawling left title.

My biggest challenges, once I got the hang of Adobe Premiere, was in making sure the audio and video clips synced together once they were unlinked and I began editing on the draft of the project. Moving one by even a few frames resulted in a weird time delay for the video where they lips were just slightly off sync from the audio. It took awhile to get everything in position and then sync those sections back together.

One other challenge was in bringing in additional material to the draft. I wasn’t aware that if I slid something over, whatever was underneath it would disappear completely and I’d have to go bring it back (audio mostly) from the original clip. It was frustrating the first few times it happened, but I eventually understood what was happening and started using different audio and video channels to bring in material and manipulate the length of it to fit in the slots I needed.

Overall, it’s been a very informative process. I’ve gone from being someone who use to edit with toggle equipment to the digital version. I can definitely see how video has become so much more accessible as a medium to the general public. The only thing I think we need to look at further is now the aspect ratios and realizing that the vertical video is more than likely the wave of the future as people rely more on their hand-held devices.

Visual Storytelling…the draft

For our project this week we were tasked with creating the draft of our video project. I’d already begun planning out what I wanted when I worked with my audio project because I tend to think very visually and our semester topic has kept me keenly focused on my subject matter of our community and the transition our schools are experiencing. Since I like watching PBS and the History Channel as well as the news, I tried to use a kind of combination approach, giving a snapshot of the community and the issue and then looking at a real family in our community that represents the issue to put a face to the story – a feature news bit, if you will. I thought this would be the most engaging way to share the information and kept the B Roll moving as much as possible with the narrative to keep the pace quick and entertaining.

To begin, I transferred my mental images into a paper storyboard so I could make a list for myself of the shots I would need to take. I didn’t spend a great time on it as I just needed a representation of what the shots would be and knew that once I began editing I’d likely find other shots I’d want as well. I did it by hand rather than in a word processing document because of the visual aspect of it that I couldn’t create in Microsoft Word. I also used information and research gathered the South Kitsap School District website  and from interviews with various community members to pull together the information needed for the narrative portion of my video.

All the video was shot using my iPhone 6. The audio of both the voice over and the waves used at the beginning were taken using my Voice Record Pro app (purchased for $2.99) and imported into first my master file for my Adobe Premiere project folder on my computer and then into Adobe Premiere itself. As we learned in tutorials, you are going to shoot more video than you ever use. In fact several shots that were on my original storyboard eventually got cut or replaced because some video looked better in reality than on paper and some did not.

I started the editing process by putting my files into various bins including one for B Roll, one for interviews and another for audio, then I began to pull clips and place them into the order I’d planned on my storyboard. If I found the audio had a gap that needed a corresponding video (such as the one mentioning housing so I went and found a house with a for sale sign out front) I wrote it down on a list of additional shots I needed. I tried making sure that the shots corresponded to what was on the audio. There were only a few places where I had to use the Razor Tool to slice out bits of the interview, otherwise most of the editing was done to each clip using in and out markers to make the clips the correct length I needed before moving the clip into the sequence.

Originally I tried to put transitions in between each clip, but found it very distracting. It took away from the more feature news style I was working toward. Ultimately I ended up using only transitions at the beginning after the animated title page, between the rolling clip over the school district logo, and between the voice over and the interview where I used a cross dissolve. I tried one at the end, but found no matter how I manipulated it, the fade away from Tyler before he was done speaking didn’t work properly. I wanted to see that goofy, confident grin only a fifth grader can manage.

For my title pages I used the Title Tool. For the entry title page there were three stacked pages in different video channels to recreate the animated appearance we learned in our tutorials. For the information layered over the school logo and the end credits I used a rolling transition to maximize the smoothness of the transition along with maximizing the information included.

So here’s my draft video. Let me know what you think!

 

 

It’s Not What it Looks Like…tutorials

This week we delved into the world of Adobe Premiere. While I enjoyed working in Audition, I didn’t feel as much love for Premiere. Why? Well a video that would have taken me perhaps two hours to craft in Windows Movie Maker took me six hours in Premiere.

I know it likely has much more functionality and professional capabilities, but for a newbie, it’s almost too much. Kind of like telling a kid there’s a whole box of doughnuts and there’s lots of delicious stuff in there, really great stuff, but there’s simply no way the kid is going to be able to eat the whole box of doughnuts without getting sick first.

My biggest challenge was finding out how to create marker spots to be able to manipulate fade in and fade out on the audio tracks as well as motion effects on the static photo we were required to use. I watched the tutorial video multiple times but still didn’t see how to make the markers happen in the updated version of the program. Lots of trial and error. And perhaps that is a great learning environment when using something creative, but for someone use to working on deadline, I found it plain frustrating. Get in, get it done, get out, move on is not possible with this program. Honestly, if it weren’t required, I’d probably never use it again.

With that said, here are the tutorials required for this week.

Here’s my first tutorial in Adobe Premiere:

 

Here’s my second tutorial:

Let Me Tell You a Story…The End (Final Version)

This audio project was easier for me than the graphic work we’ve done previously in this course – probably because I tell stories all the time. So coming up with the story of our community and the challenges it’s facing with redistributing our kids and changing our school system wasn’t hard. Determining how to do it was a bit more challenging, and incorporating the changes suggested by my peers took far longer than I anticipated.

I knew I liked the format of All Things Considered from National Public Radio. I’ve written enough scripts for radio that I knew I could do most of the voice work myself in the narration format. To begin, I wrote out the elements I thought I’d like to include: an interview for actualities, ambient sound under my voice as I narrated the piece, and perhaps music. I tried to think of it as a movie with no picture, if that makes any sense. My peers agreed that the format in the draft form was easy to listen to and engaging, but were concerned about three things: the shift in the ambient noise being too abrupt, the mechanical hum beneath the actualities that made it less clean in quality than the narration portions of the piece, and the difference in volume for the actualities from the narration.

While working on the script and story line for this piece I knew I wanted two sounds that people could identify with no matter where they live which would give them both an idea of our community and link into the basis for the story all about changes in the school district: the sound of waves lapping against the shore and children playing at school recess. Using those, I could set the tone of the story and paint a mental image to go with what was being said.

For the wave sound used in the introduction and exit, I took my iphone, with the Voice Record Pro app on it (purchased for $2.99) and went to one of the nearby parks in town located on the water’s edge and took about a 1 minute recording then emailed the recording to myself to be able to download it into Audition. Since school has been out for the summer for three weeks now, I knew it would be difficult to get the sounds of children playing on the school ground and I knew taping it at any of our local parks would leave me open to extra ambient noises since most of our parks are near waterways, roads or construction zones for the time being. I relied instead on a recording called Kids playing on school-years by Caquet found at freesound.org 

I also interviewed a member of the community committee that had worked on determining how our schools would change. Specifically I picked out one that I knew well enough to know she had public speaking skills, so the interview wouldn’t be full of ums, ahs and other assorted sounds that would have to be cut out to make the interview sound clean. I also knew she had just had a sixth grader “graduate” from our school, so she was a prime person to look at things from the prospective of a parent whose child is going to be directly impacted by the shift in our system in the next two years which would give her authenticity when talking about what concerned parents of kids moving into a middle school model. I wanted this to be an educational piece, not just about education as a subject, but actually educating listeners on how middle schools were different and why our community chose this change. The original interview went slightly over nine minutes in length and there was a mechanical hum underneath the entire interview which I suspect came from either the over head lighting or the air circulation system in the school room where I conducted the interview.

Once I had my different elements recorded and pulled into Audition, I started editing heavily. The narration and actuality recordings I did were cut into the most pieces and stitched together based on how much time I needed to cut to get the interview bits I wanted to fit in the allotted time frame for the overall piece. I also began to slice out snippets of the interview I thought would work and placed my narration, the actualities and ambient sounds all into separate tracks in a multi-track view. From there I listened to the interview and sliced it using the Razor Selected Clip Tool (R) according to natural breaks in her speech patterns so I could use the pieces I needed to still get the story across and come in under the time required then used the Move Tool (V) to position them in two final tracks one for narration and actualities and one for ambient sound. I did the same for my narration then went back again and made sure that any stutters, ums, ahs or strange pauses in both narration and actualities were cleaned up to make them both sound smooth.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t realize that I needed to use the Noise Reduction/Restoration Tool on a complete segment to make it work effectively in removing that mechanical hum, so none of the work I’d done for my draft was useable because I couldn’t use the same noise point for each. Cutting had changed them so that the program no longer recognized the hum in the cut segments. I had to return to the uncut versions of my narration and actualities and start over again, which doubled the time it took on the finished project. To remove the hum, I brought the uncut version of the interview into Audition and expanded the view of it until only the very beginning of the interview, where I had left about 5 seconds of open space that had just the mechanical hum and no one talking prior to the interview, and used Edit->Select->Select Current View Time, then used Effects->Noise Reduction/Restoration->Capture Noise Point (Shift + P) to isolate the mechanical hum I wanted to remove. I then used Effects->Noise Reduction/Restoration->Noise Reduction process (Cntrl +Shift+P) to remove the hum. Once I had a cleaned version of the actualities I spent another three hours recutting all the narration and actualities back to the clean form I’d had before to fit into the three minute segment.

For my ambient sounds I used the FX Pre-Fader/Post-Fader Tool (last little button on the individual track in multi-track which looks rather like a microphone and turns a dark red when used), which took some getting use to. I realized by moving my cursor up while bending the Fade Tool I could determine if the fade came from the lower end of the sound spectrum or the upper end. Bending it to the upper end gave the softer fade in sound. Bending it from the lower end of the spectrum made it seem more abrupt. I adjusted the background sounds of the waves and children playing and adjusted their volume levels to make them fit around the commentary and interview like bookends, bringing the story around full circle in sound. I deliberately transitioned the sounds, fading from the waves and fading into the school children, at the point where I stop talking about the community and start talking specifically about the schools. I worked to increase this fade and to bend it to the higher end of the spectrum to make it seem less abrupt in transition. I also faded out the background sounds further using click points on the sound line to manipulate the sound level with the Move Tool (V) once we get to the interview, partially because I had to kick up her vocals more since my phone was further away from her than me and recording her voice more faintly. I didn’t want background sound to compete with what she had to say (which I couldn’t control with the hum until editing). Initially I had the sound level for the ambient sound adjusted to -5.7db but reduced it further to -9.7db in the final version once the narration begins. To kick up the actualities I increased Tiffany’s voice to +14.7db which leveled out the volume between the narration and the actualities.

I listened to the tracks multiple times with my eyes closed just to focus in on the audio more clearly and pick out any jumps, skips, weird blips in the conversation where there’s a breath or pause that seemed unnatural, etc. And after all of that, here’s the finished draft. Listen in and tell me what you think. 

Let me tell you a story…draft edition

This week’s project was easier for me than the graphic work we’ve done previously – probably because I tell stories all the time. So coming up with the story of our community and the challenges it’s facing with redistributing our kids and changing our school system wasn’t hard. Determining how to do it was a bit more challenging.

I knew I liked the format of All Things Considered from National Public Radio. I’ve written enough scripts for radio that I knew I could do most of the voice work myself. To begin, I wrote out the elements I thought I’d like to include: an interview, sound B roll under my voice as I explained things and perhaps music. I tried to think of it as a movie with no picture, if that makes any sense.

While working on the script and story line for this piece I knew I wanted two sounds that people could identify with no matter where they live which would give them both an idea of our community and link into the basis for the story all about changes in the school district: the sound of waves lapping against the shore and children playing at school recess. Using those I could set the tone of the story and paint a mental image to go with what was being said.

For the wave sound used in the introduction and exit, I took my iphone, with the Voice Record Pro app on it (purchased for $2.99) and went to one of the nearby parks in town located on the water’s edge and took about a 1 minute recording then emailed the recording to myself to be able to download it into Audition. Since school has been out for the summer for two weeks now, I knew it would be difficult to get the sounds of children playing on the school ground and I knew taping it at any of our local parks would leave me open to extra ambient noises since most of our parks are near waterways, roads or construction zones for the time being. I relied instead on a recording called Kids playing on school-years by Caquet found at freesound.org 

I also interviewed a member of the community committee that had worked on determining how our schools would change. Specifically I picked out what that I knew well enough to know she had public speaking skills, so the interview wouldn’t be full of ums, ahs and other assorted sounds that would have to be cut out to make the interview sound clean. I also knew she had just had a sixth grader “graduate” from our school, so she was a prime person to look at things from the prospective of a parent who’s child is going to be directly impacted by the shift in our system in the next two years which would give her authenticity when talking about what concerned parents of kids moving into a middle school model. I wanted this to be an educational piece , not just about education as a subject, but actually educating listeners on how middle schools were different and why our community chose this change. The original interview went slightly over nine minutes in length.

Once I had my different elements recorded on my phone or located on the Freesound.org site I pulled them into Audition. The commentary recordings I did were cut into the most pieces and stitched together based on how much time I needed to cut to get the interview bits I wanted to fit in the allotted time frame for the overall piece. I also began to slice out snippets of the interview I thought would work and placed my commentary, her interview, and the background sounds all into separate tracks in a multi-track view. From there I listened to the interview and sliced it according to natural breaks in her speech patterns so I could use the pieces I needed to still get the story across and come in under the time required. I did the same for my commentary. Then using the fade tool, I adjusted the background sounds of the waves and children playing and adjusted their volume levels to make them fit around the commentary and interview like bookends, bringing the story around full circle in sound. I deliberately transitioned the sounds from the waves to the school children at the point where I stop talking about the community and start talking specifically about the schools. I also faded out the background sounds once we get to the interview, partially because I had to kick up her vocals more since my phone was further away from her than me and recording her voice more faintly. I didn’t want background sound to compete with what she had to say.

I listened to the tracks multiple times with my eyes closed just to focus in on the audio more clearly. I’ve included all the clips that went into the piece, the last track is the finished draft. Listen and let me know what you think. 

Make Some Noise – Audition Tutorials

This week we took another facet of Adobe for a spin – Audition. The sound editing software that took me right back to broadcasting editing with Professor Lingle in the 90’s. Only we didn’t have anything this easy to use. We had digital editing equipment that had dials to key in to places where you wanted to cut and splice tracks together. Then again, I also used a hot wax machine at my first job in the newspaper industry to paste together the pages, so there you go. Things change. Fortunately sound stays the same.

In keeping with my subject matter for this semester I chose to interview one of the community members who participated in the reconfiguration committee. These folks spent over a year looking at the idea of transitioning our district from the current junior high and 10-12 high school to middle schools and a 9-12 high school. After delving into all the research, best practices and so forth, they decided it was the best idea for our students in the South Kitsap School District. 

On a side note, the woman I interview just had her 6th grader graduate from elementary a week ago, so she’s knee deep in how this all plays out because it will directly impact her children. Having some skin in the game really does make you think of things differently.

I did an interview with her, which ended up being audio only (because my phone didn’t have enough storage after my daughter going to Prom and graduating from high school the same week because I hadn’t downloaded all the pictures and video yet). From that interview I selected a clip I thought followed many of the guidelines given to us in our tutorial readings. It tells a short story. It has a definite point. And more importantly, it’s kind of fun. You can tell she’s a real person dealing with this whole tween thing so common among kids in the middle school age group.

For our 30-45 second tutorial clip I did have to edit some of her natural pauses down a bit to get it to come under the length requirement. I also had to edit my own introduction and restructure it a bit when I found I talked too much! It was more important to showcase her story in this case.

The counting tutorial was interesting too. It was so much easier to move around audio using this program, and far more intuitive than using the programs and equipment I’ve had to previously to accomplish the same thing. Finally, an Adobe program that is actually fun to use!

So, without further ado, here are the four tutorial audio clips including both raw material and the finished product for each tutorial.

SoundCloud Files

 

Tinkering with AI – final logo

Because our school district introduced a newly redesigned logo just this year, and I was looking at only one aspect of the school district – specifically middle schools, which all have independent logos of their own based on their mascots—it seemed like spinning in circles to come up with a logo that would work for the narrow specifics of my project. Instead, I chose to go bigger. I worked on a logo that would enfold not just the projects from this semester, but focus rather on the blog showcasing my entire master’s program at WSU.

Of all the readings and links we had this week, one stood out for me in terms of research and understanding the true meaning of being a storyteller by trade: Peter Gruber, CEO of Mandalay Entertainment, wrote this exquisite article for the Harvard Business Review, The Four Truths of the Storyteller  For more graphical inspiration I used a Google search for writer logos and the results were awesome.

Here are a couple of my favorites. I love how they transformed the pen nib into something completely unique reflecting their specific niche.  Smart Pen Nib Logos  These were equally awesome More Black and White Logos

But how does a person translate an oral or written expression such as storytelling into a visual representation? I started with sketches of pen nibs and books, campfires and computer keys – anything I related to the art of getting the story told. In the end I was torn between doing a Rorschach-style inkblot with a stylized version of an S in it for Storyteller, a pair of reflected crescent moons to create an “s”, and the actual title of the blog with the stylized ink font called MoonlightShadow  (which I liked because it mimicked the way an old-fashioned pen might write with the splattering). In the final draft of the logo I retained only the S in MoonlightShadow, because it was just too unique to give up despite the level of detail it had. I put the rest of the word in Viner Hand because it was a more simplistic font that still looked very much like it had been inked using a pen. Some kerning was required to get the letters to fit neatly around the ink-drop “o” in Storyteller. This was done using Control M, then using Alt and the arrow keys to move the individual letters around until it looked right.

I created a very simplified pen nib with the “o” in Storyteller being turned into a drop of ink. Trying all three, the wording won, especially since what I saw in the inkblot videos I researched didn’t work nearly as well when I tried it myself and the crescent moon idea didn’t seem nearly as interesting in AI as it had on paper (probably due to my lack of skills to pull it off).

To create the ink drop I used an ellipse shape and a radial gradient. I then used two more ellipse shapes to mimic the first that I applied a linear gradient and lightened the opacity. Finally, I shape blended them to make the “highlights” on the drop and remove the portions I didn’t want to see, then moved some of the points around on the highlight and rotated it until it fit at the edge of the drop.

The By Trade was Segoe font, and selected because the letters are nicely balanced, the san serif font clean and offsetting the messier font of Storyteller. The balance of the letters made it easier to space them apart with kerning to create a shelf of sorts to support the storytelling. I tried using various stroke colors on the letters to see if it might make it better. In the end I decided I liked the way By Trade seemed to blend a little into the background of color making it more subtle and letting Storyteller take the floor visually.

The pen nib was created by first creating a triangle, then using an ellipse to “carve out” the rounded scoop-like shape using the shape blending tool again to cut away what I wanted. A white 3 pt. line segment was added to give the stylistic allusion to the pen nib. The clean lines of the vector image (for the pen nib and lettering beneath) disappeared when I turned it into a jpg file for the blog. In the final version I also used a thin black stroke to make the pen visually sharper. It’s a subtle thing, but I think it helps.

I tried all black versions of this, white on a reversed background with gray lettering for by trade, and the color version you see below in small and larger sizes.

In the final version I selected the reversed version to focus on. It seemed to pop the most for me. Most comments I received on the draft focused on how the font for Storyteller was too detailed to make it neat and clean in smaller versions. They liked the hand inked feel of it, but wanted to see something a little cleaner with the same feeling. I agreed. They also liked the reversed version most. I did too, but I didn’t like losing all color, because it can be such a powerful subliminal message. I tried putting Storyteller in blue on the black background and it simply fizzled. There wasn’t enough contrast to make it work well. So, I tried the opposite and used a fill that was one of my favorite colors (a Tanzanite blue 3c3d98). Not only did it retain the pop of the original draft reverse in black and white, but it gave it a little something extra. Blue subliminally speaks of truth and dependability. Great things to have associated with your storytelling, especially when it’s for a client.

Not having any experience with Adobe Illustrator prior to this class I can tell I am way out of my depth when trying to manipulate tools and use effects. Frankly it’s kind of like asking a kid who’s just taken off the training wheels on their bicycle to hop on a motorcycle and drive it around a timed course. It’s not going to turn out well. What you see took HOURS. Honestly in my mind I would have been better off drawing it by hand, painting it with a paintbrush clutched between my teeth and then just scanning the thing in, but then I wouldn’t have been doing the assignment correctly. So there you go. Hopefully it gets the idea across. Storytelling isn’t always neat and clean. Sometimes it’s messy, but the artistic effort created in ink is supported by the more sturdy, balanced business aspect beneath it.

 

Wrestling with AI – draft logo

Because our school district introduced a newly redesigned logo just this year, and I was looking at only one aspect of the school district – specifically middle schools, which all have independent logos of their own based on their mascots—it seemed like spinning in circles to come up with a logo that would work for the narrow specifics of my project. Instead, I chose to go bigger and work on a logo that would enfold not just the projects from this semester, but focus rather on the blog showcasing my entire master’s program at WSU.

Of all the readings and links we had this week, one stood out for me in terms of research and understanding the true meaning of being a storyteller by trade: Peter Gruber, CEO of Mandalay Entertainment, wrote this exquisite article for the Harvard Business Review, The Four Truths of the Storyteller  For more graphical inspiration I used a Google search for writer logos and the results were awesome.

Here are a couple of my favorites. I love how they transformed the pen nib into something completely unique reflecting their specific niche.  Smart Pen Nib Logos  More Black and White Logos

But how does a person translate an oral or written expression such as storytelling into a visual representation? I started with sketches of pen nibs and books, campfires and computer keys – anything I related to the art of getting the story told. In the end I was torn between doing a Rorschach-style inkblot with a stylized version of an S in it for Storyteller, a pair of reflected crescent moons to create an “s”, and the actual title of the blog with the stylized ink font called MoonlightShadow  (which I liked because it mimicked the way an old-fashioned pen might write with the splattering). I created a very simplified pen nib with the “o” in Storyteller being turned into a drop of ink. Trying all three, the wording won, especially since what I saw in the inkblot videos I researched didn’t work nearly as well when I tried it myself and the crescent moon idea didn’t seem nearly as interesting in AI as it had on paper (probably due to my lack of skills to pull it off).

To create the ink drop I used an ellipse shape, filled that with one of my favorite colors (a Tanzanite blue 3c3d98) and a radial gradient. I then used two more ellipse shapes to mimic the first that I applied a linear gradient and lightened the opacity to. Finally, I shape blended them to make the “highlights” on the drop and remove the portions I didn’t want to see, then moved some of the points around on the highlight and rotated it until it fit at the edge of the drop.

The By Trade was Segoe font, and selected because the letters are nicely balanced, the san serif font clean and offsetting the messier font of Storyteller. The balance of the letters made it easier to space them apart with kerning to create a shelf of sorts to support the storytelling.

The pen nib was created by first creating a triangle, then using an ellipse to “carve out” the rounded scoop-like shape using the shape blending tool again to cut away what I wanted. A white 3 pt. line segment was added to give the stylistic allusion to the pen nib. The clean lines of the vector image (for the pen nib and lettering beneath) disappeared when I turned it into a gif for the blog.

I tried all black versions of this, white on a reversed background with gray lettering for by trade, and the color version you see below in small and larger sizes.

Not having any experience with Adobe Illustrator prior to this class I can tell I am way out of my depth when trying to manipulate tools and use effects. Frankly it’s kind of like asking a kid who’s just taken off the training wheels on their bicycle to hop on a motorcycle and drive it around a timed course. It’s not going to turn out well. What you see took HOURS. Honestly in my mind I would have been better off drawing it by hand, painting it with a paintbrush clutched between my teeth and then just scanning the thing in, but then I wouldn’t have been doing the assignment correctly. So there you go. Hopefully it gets the idea across. Storytelling isn’t always neat and clean. Sometimes it’s messy, but the artistic effort created in ink is supported by the more sturdy, balanced business aspect beneath it.

 

The Mind is Like a Rubber Band

If the mind is like a rubber band, then mine, dear reader, has snapped. This week’s work in Adobe Illustrator reminded me why I chose to work in the PR side of agency and not the Advertising and Art side. While I’m not a creative klutz ( I can paint and draw using my hands and not a computer), these kinds of programs are so unnatural to me that I sincerely struggled with recreating the tutorials.

In the end, no matter how often I re-watched the online video tutorial I couldn’t make the program do what the video said it would do. Watch. Do the steps. Get a warning that it wouldn’t make a clipping mask. After a half hour of repeating this process I figured the computer was more stubborn than I was.

It makes me concerned, and not a little bit anxious, to consider how I will use this tool to create a logo next week. Hopefully I can get a new rubber band by then.