Design
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Magazine Layout (InDesign)
About. This project for my visual communications class was to design a 1,000-1,200 word article for a magazine format.
I immediately felt inspired upon finding the photo I used for the front page, since I wanted to go for a really clean, professional look. I used a non-traditional pie chart by I looking up round potted plants form above and overlaying white triangles to match proportions from pie charts I made. I also individually photoshopped all the plants for the most common species sidebar by using the remove background or quick select features and wrote in facts about each plant to fill in the text area with relevant descriptions. I switched off how these were set up to provide more movement in the page, while also using proximity to ensure that each description was associated with the correct photo.
When choosing fonts, I decided that I would subvert the typical sans serif headline and serif body text format of newspapers to give a more creative look to the display fonts and a cleaner look to my body text. The consistency guided the eye through this. I also used the color dropper to pull colors from the photos for the text throughout the design, sticking to a green and white palette that matched how readers associate plants with color.
Access the online flip book version here: https://issuu.com/carlyheltzel/docs/magazine_design
Mustang News Graduation Print Puzzles (InDesign and Illustrator)
About. I advocated for, created the puzzles for and designed this page, which was published in Mustang News' Graduation print edition. I was inspired by the blocks of the crossword, so I made them 3D and gave them the theme colors of the print edition to increase cohesion to the rest of the paper. Since it was a graduation print, I made a grad cap out of the block elements in Illustrator as well. I used this same "block" philosophy with the right-hand page, lowering the tint of the colored boxes to 50% for legibility. I used "Noteworthy," a more whimsical font, throughout the page to tie it together and give the reader a sense of play associated with the puzzle page.
Editorial Illustration (Photoshop)
About. The article I chose for this assignment is from NPR and titled “Brain drain at Census Bureau has employees warning about the country's statistics.” I was immediately inspired by the phrase “brain drain” and the prospect of portraying this captivating phrase visually. So, I started with this as the most central element of the story.
I chose to portray the brain as a finite resource by graying out the top part of the brain and drawing in a water line to show that there is a distinction from the colorful part. In order to portray the “drain,” I cut out a faucet and a water glass photo and placed them to look like the brain matter is being tapped and drained out of the brain shell. I then used the “posterize” adjustment to give a sense of cohesion to the brain clipart and the photographs. I also used the other adjustments to train the hue, saturation and contrast on each photo to turn them more pink before using the color dropper tool to fill in the water glass with the colors from the brain to add unity. For the Trump cut out, the eye line leads the viewer straight to the brain, guiding the visual hierarchy then to the census bureau text. Trump’s cut out on the side also evened out the busyness on the left side to create a more balanced illustration.
Newspaper front page clone (InDesign)
About. This project asked us to redesign a newspaper's front page from scratch, changing only the text and photos. We were graded on precision, and I received a 20 out of 20 for this project.
To design my clone, I started at the top and worked my way down. But before opening InDesign, I took a screenshot and entered it into ChatGPT, asking it to identify the fonts used. I referenced this for the rest of the process in placing headlines, body text and subheads. The Masthead was more difficult since it had a very specific font, especially with the i’s, and I wanted to replicate it. Through a lot of searching I wasn’t able to find it specifically, but I got a very close match and fitted it. I also used the line tool to create the double line at the top for separation. I used ellipses to create the heart symbol and the polygon shape to put a white gash in it. From there, I moved through each story and started with the headline, first using the text given so I could exactly match the leading, kerning and alignment, then adding my own text to personalize the spread. I found this to be the most effective because when I didn’t do this, it would end up looking off in size or specifications. The most valuable part of this exercise was learning how to manipulate these specifications to fit a constrained space.
Celebrity face morph (Photoshop)
About. This assignment was to photoshop two celebrity faces together to make one "Frankenstein" face.
I chose photos of Emma Stone and Florence Pugh; the original photos are shown on the right. I intentionally picked photos that had similar lighting and angles, then used the adjustment feature to match the colors even more closely. After that, I used the masking and blending features in photoshop to achieve the face blend you see on the left.
Custom typography (Illustrator)
About. I began with Chalkboard SE, a sans serif, rounded font. From there I created my outline of text and began manipulating it by getting rid of the rounded ends. I then added the rulers to align the letters before starting with the pen tool. I used this to add the bulges and dips to give the font more character. I then used the smooth tool to even the edges out and used the direct select tool to resize letters to make them even and rotate the "e" to be upright with the modifications. With final touches, my font was complete.
Negative space exercise (Illustrator)
About. This assignment was an exercise in using negative space to create another, equally recognizable shape. I'm most pleased with how the "PENGUIN" design turned out, as it is clearly legible, the cutouts are relevant to the text and it looks clean. I took a .png of a penguin from creative commons to create this design.
The stilettos/spork one is what I would want to improve upon. I challenged myself to create two shapes that weren't text-based, so I used the shape created by the heel, which reminded my of a trident or fork, to create that shape in the end.
Lastly, the Disney sale ad was born out of me typing out numbers and thinking of shapes that look similar to their internal spaces. When I got to 3, Mickey Mouse appeared in my mind. So I create a faux sale ad that could harness the number 30 and the concept of Mickey Mouse/Disney, using Mickey's colors to brighten the rest of the design.
Podcast cover art (Illustrator)
About. For this assignment, we had to design a fictional podcast cover that used Gestalt's principles of design. I chose to do a fictional podcast based on the Humans of New York page that Brandon Stanton runs and produces many mediums of content for. His stuff is super cool so I envisioned it as an audio version of humans of New York (@hony take my idea please!).
I used the Illustrator generative AI to create the New York-based background to give the podcast a sense of place. I used the font and color from his HONY coffee table book to create a brand consistency, then I added in the Gestalt concepts of continuity and similarity to add a stylized look to the "NEW YORK" portion. Also, while it's not exactly symmetrical, I was inspired by this principle and continuity to add the white line across the words. I then sketched the dotted line that traces speech bubbles which uses proximity to associate the individual dots with a greater picture.
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