Vinyl project: The task was to design a vinyl decal to place on a object of your choosing.
How the IDEA popped into my head
At first I didn't know what I wanted to do or what to put it on. So I sat at my desk and began to think, and think, and think some more. Until I finally thought of the idea to make a small Jazz band design. I still didn't know what to put it on but I had a starting point. I began looking for players and or designs I could use, like the one below.
As I looked through possibly a hundred different designs and parts I began to slowly lose my mind. So I had to settle for some that I could tweak in Illustrator to fit my needs. I sketched a few designs in my notebook and took measurements for things I could place it on. You can see my thought process below.
Creation
Once I had a general idea of what I wanted to do I began placing images into illustrator and trying to meet all the requirements while still being happy with how it looked. I was struggling on how to make three colors interact with each other and still have it look good. As I was struggling Ms. Proctor walked up and I asked "How can I make them interact?" she then simply put a black circle behind it. This is how easy my problem was fixed. Here is what the final thing looked in illustrator.
After I finished my design in illustrator it was time to begin using the laser and the software along with it. I was worried that it would be hard to get it set up as it took the people before us almost an entire class, but they were super nice and helped us. Their help saved me and I was able to cut it all out in about 30 minutes. You can see the software we had to use and the cutter itself loaded with the white vinyl for my saxophone player.
The Last Mile
What I learned.
The individual vinyl project taught me a very important lesson in my learning journey in this class. I learned how to design a project on my own, every other time I used a software like illustrator I had step by step instructions that I had to follow and I never got to make it my own. But with this project i finally had the freedom to do what I pleased. It was an overwhelming flood of things at first so I struggled but when I got an idea and it stuck it was amazing to have all this freedom to make what I will enjoy.