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PortfolioOmar gOnzalez|VIC 6310

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Portfolio Omar Gonzalez

ad submIssIOn Video games were being targeted by the media earlier this year, so I used them as the subject of my first assignment to create an anti-stereotyping campaign ad with original images.

This was my first time using Photoshop. The idea was to use the video game concept of “achievements”, with one “achievement” out of alignment from the others and with a highlight effect, representing that reality and virtual world accomplishments don’t correlate. This was based on the Gestalt principle.

COlOr prOfIle

The first part of my second assignment was to create a color profile using an original picture of an iconic part of my hometown.

After capturing the image above, from the East Tohopekaliga Lake in Saint Cloud, FL and making a color profile with it, I incorporated the colors into a newsletter, shown left, for the second part of the assignment. The green was used as the accent color because it is less prominent, overall, in the picture.

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Portfolio Omar Gonzalez

pOster Unfortunately the drafts ended up looking boring, with little design for the text other than uninteresting centralized alignment to the page. I needed to embolden the main text while staying true to the principles I wanted to represent for this assignment: incorporating the official “Magic The Gathering” game font for the phrase “Friday Night Magic”, and give “magic” a texture that conveys a wooden “table-like” texture.

Above is the final version. Gone is the all-centralized text alignment, while the main message is in a bigger font size and the effect has been enhanced.

pOster - drafts

The most difficult assignment proved to be one that required a poster made entirely of type, without images.

The image on top shows the first draft. Note how the text is not properly aligned.

The image on the bottom shows better alignment and an attempt to give the phrase “Friday Night” an accent that made the poster more appealing.

The word “Magic” uses the actual font of the Magic: The Gathering trading card game. Since it is a tabletop game, I wanted to give the letters a “table-like” wooden texture while still giving it an ethereal feel since we are talking, after all, of the word “magic”.

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Portfolio Omar Gonzalez

typesettIng I created a magazine for our Typesetting assignment with a theme of “vacations”. As usual, the content, including pictures and text, was original. The sample page above shows the first page of my third and final spread. Since “traveling” was part of the motif, I included a small picture of a map on the otherwise empty column on the left.

typesettIng

To the left is another page created for this assignment. This page is has a photo gallery for MegaCon 2013 with all-original images and properly spaced captions.

Above is another sample page from the magazine, keeping up with the “map on the left empty column” design idea and a brief article describing my experience at the Strawberry Fields park inside of Central Park in New York City.

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Portfolio Omar Gonzalez

Charts Continuing with vector graphics we had to help tell a story with design. I focused on creative chart types made in Adobe Illustrator and then imported into Adobe InDesign, the same tool used for the Typesetting assignment.

I was a bit more familiar with InDesign this time, so I decided to focus on making bold, colorful, attractive graphics to compliment the text. We had to summarize a very long paper (credited in the page) with a truly captivating headline while still telling a complete, informative story aided by our creative chart designs.

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2011

2010

20092010

49.8%

2011

53.3%

Percentage of students who reported a full time job after earning their degree.

8.7%

91.3%

A sign of increased demand? In 2011 a total of 91.3% of graduates had at least 1 in-person interview, with only 8.7% receiving no interview or just a phone interview.

Students who reported a job offer on graduation: 61.9% in 2009, 68.5% in 2010 and 72.5% in 2011.

Many graduates of journalism and mass communication programs historically have ended their studies with at least one job offer or solid job prospect in hand. Of those leaving journalism and mass communication programs in 2000, 82.4% reported being in that position. In 2007, before the current economic collapse that figure stood at 78.3%. The figure plunged to 61.9% two years later, and has recovered each year since. Of the graduates earning their bachelor’s degrees in journalism and mass communication in 2011, 72.5% reported a job offer or solid prospect on graduation, up from 68.5% a year earlier. On average, the 2011 graduate reported having 1.4 job offers or prospects in hand, up from the 1.2 average of a year ago. The gain is small, but statistically significant, that is, unlikely to be due to chance. But while the gain suggests the recovery started a year ago has continued, it also indicates the recovery has quite some distance to go to bring the labor market to its pre-collapse level.

The percentage of graduates who looked for

work and did not at least have an interview declined to 4.4% from the 5.9% of a year earlier–a decline consistent with the expectation of continued market recovery. But the gain is slight, and most of the even slight improvement is in the percent of graduates who managed to get a telephone interview. The percentage of graduates who were able to participate in an in-person job interview changed very little in 2011 over a year earlier.

By the end of October of 2011, 53.3% of those earning a journalism and mass communication undergraduate degree the prior spring reported they had a full-time job, up slightly, but again significantly, from the 49.8% figure of a year earlier. As with the measure of job offers on graduation, the chart shows a second straight year of recovery.

Journalism Job Market: Going Up?After an abysmal 2009, the job market for students of Journalism and Mass Communications is finally starting to look up. By Lee B. Becker • Tudor Vlad • Konrad Kalpen

Source for all chart data: 2011 Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates by Lee B. Becker • Tudor Vlad • Konrad Kalpen

brandIng

For our Branding assignment I created a logo.

It is made of vector graphics from Adobe Illustrator, used for the first time during this class.

The actual logo is for a company called TecnoCruce, which will be part of my final project for the Digital Journalism and Design program.

The name is a cross between the words “technology” and what some Latin countries colloquially refer to as a street intersection or “cruce”. The style for the “cruce” was made with “L” shapes traced from a picture of a street with the pen tool. The opening in the letter “o” is part of the font, while I added the opening on the letter “C” to create a sense of coherence between the two words.