My primary audience is male and female college students between the ages of 18-22 looking for more sustainable ways to help the environment while finding a new hobby. They want to find an environmentally fun way to give back to the planet while promoting sustainability and recycling. They are concerned about climate change and how our resources continue to become more and more limited. My audience has likely explored other sustainable hobbies and interests in an environmental field in hopes of saving the earth. Moving on, my image showcases the positives of gardening and how we can sustainably transform the earth. It demonstrates that through one person, gardening can have great impacts on the world and illustrate a change in the right direction. I am communicating the overwhelming number of benefits associated with gardening besides the actual produce it reaps in hopes of conveying to my audience why they should begin this hobby.
Within my image, this accurately conveys to the audience the importance of gardening and its numerous benefits individuals can receive. The flowers are a good representation of what you can physically grow in a garden, while the images reflected in the cut-out flowers represent the underlying benefits of this hobby. These flowers spell out the word ‘unwind’ to emphasize that most college students will be quite stressed and need a healthy coping outlet demonstrated through gardening. Some of the benefits I included in the patterns of my flowers target primarily college students. For example, I chose pictures of dollar bills to symbolize how gardening can help you overall save money, a cartoon moon sleeping to indicate a better night’s rest which my target group needs, and smiley faces to represent an improvement in mental health which is a huge concern for my audience as being away from home and the stress of school can lead to depression and anxiety. I also included pictures of hearts to indicate how good for your heart gardening can be which highly appeals to my audience, an image of a book to represent how getting outside and away from constantly studying is a great reprieve, and a picture of a sun to showcase an increase in vitamin D. You can also work on a great tan which heavily interests my target age group. All of the photos I chose represent the benefits associated with gardening, but also tie heavily into an environmentally conscious college student's routine. To further highlight the environmental side of my primary audience, I chose a picture that uses pots made from trash, more specifically, mason jars. This represents a sustainable appeal that embodies my age group’s interests and desires to better the world environmentally through recycling. Overall, I incorporated these elements to convey the benefits associated with gardening as well as targeting my primary audience.
First, I found an image of 6 mason jar pots that demonstrated an easy garden. I then took out the original plants in the photo using the spot healing brush tool. I changed the size of the brush to 56 to cover more ground and reduced the hardness to 0%. Then I opened up the various photos representing my gardening benefits and put them in separate tabs. I created my own patterns by going to the edit tab and clicking define patterns which allowed me to form individual patterns for each of the images. I went to the custom shape tool and looked through their selection of flower cutouts. I picked a different flower shape for each pattern. On the various tabs, I took one of the custom flower shapes and sized it to the image. Then I applied the pattern I wanted into the flower by going to fill and clicking on the desired pattern. I did this for each of the 6 different photos. Next, I took the pattern filled flowers and made several copies of them. I applied them to my original image and resized and reshaped them in order to create the letter I wanted. I did this for each of the 6 flower patterns. Finally, I formed the flowers into the word “unwind” to better convey my message. I cut my image in half as three pots were on the top and three on the bottom. I moved the bottom portion of the image to the top to have my word ‘unwind’ be straight across. The shadowing was different between the two images and so I employed the eyedropper tool to get the correct background color. Next, I used the brush tool to better blend in my two images and create a more universal background. After doing this, I touched up the surrounding affected flowers with the brush tool using the color white to make it appear more realistic. I then opened up patches of grass in another tab and took the lasso tool to cut out a portion of it. I transferred the cutout grass images and placed them on the tops of my mason jars. I also used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out more precise images of various flowers I opened in other tabs. I placed these cutouts with my grasses growing out of the mason jar as well. Finally, I used the eraser tool to erase any unwanted parts of pictures I gathered from the lasso tool to give it a more polished and realistic look. To wrap up, this is what I created in order to better emulate my message.
I learned a lot of things about photoshop through this project. I had never used photoshop before so even learning to do filters, color changes, and other various techniques were all new for me. It allowed me to see pictures in a new light and allowed me to explore various changes to better convey a picture to my liking or to serve a new purpose. I liked the creativity and fun associated with photoshop as well. I also learned a lot about myself, more specifically, how gardening has really benefited my life and its positive effects on my mental health in non-obvious ways. It also taught me that I am quite a slow person with technology and cannot expect anything too unrealistic without putting the work in first. I learned designing something doesn’t have to be this big, bold representation. It can be a cleverly thought-out design that accurately conveys a message without being too much or confusing. I learned that sometimes less is more when trying to establish a general purpose. All in all, I have acquired numerous skills that I can continue to use in my other projects and future endeavors.
I will continue to take the tutorials or examples slowly so that I can better understand the program and give myself the opportunity to actually retain the information and techniques. For the next project, I will create a better original first draft so it will be easier to revise my later drafts creating a clearer outline for my project. I will also manage my time better and not put so much stress on one draft of my projects and allocate a little time every day to work on it. This way I will not get overwhelmed and can avoid thinking about future projects as these big, major concepts. By breaking the work up, I can accomplish the task at hand more efficiently and in a timely manner. I will also try to stick with one concept for my next project as well. I feel like I bounced around a lot throughout this first process making it difficult to actually get a final draft completed. In conclusion, all of the teachings and techniques I have gathered will be quite beneficial for future projects and numerous other elements in my life.