GhostyTheBlogger

For this creativity exercise, I tried the “Photo Story” activity, where you create a story based only on a series of random photos. I picked a few unrelated pictures online and challenged myself to connect them into one story without planning it too much beforehand. At first it was difficult because the images did not seem connected, but the more I looked at them, the easier it became to build ideas around them. What I learned from this exercise is that creativity can come from making connections between random things and allowing your imagination to fill in the gaps instead of trying to force a perfect idea immediately.

Learning CSS has been interesting because it makes websites feel more creative and personal compared to just using HTML alone. HTML helped me understand the structure of a webpage, but CSS is teaching me how design actually changes the way a site looks and feels. Right now I’m learning things like colors, fonts, spacing, and positioning, and it’s cool seeing how small changes in code can completely change the appearance of a page. It’s also really interesting to learn about the different commands and how stacked the info is and how it can be divided.

For this creativity exercise, I tried one called “Monster doodles” where you turn random scribbles and shapes into monster characters.I started by making random lines on paper and then used my imagination to turn them into different creatures with weird features and designs. What I learned from this exercise is that creativity gets easier when you stop overthinking and just work with what you have. The random shapes helped me come up with ideas I normally wouldn’t think of, and it showed me that mistakes or messy sketches can actually lead to creative results.

Learning html has honestly been interesting because I’m starting to understand how websites are actually built. Even simple things like creating headings, paragraphs, and adding links feel like accomplishments. One thing I’ve learned is that design is not only about making something look cool, but also about organization and making things easy to navigate. Even though I’m still learning the basics, using html makes me want to experiment more with web design and see how creative I can get once I understand it better.

For this creativity exercise, I used the “Quick Draw” activity from an online classroom resource. The exercise works by giving a sentence frame, brainstorming ideas as a group or individually, and then quickly illustrating that idea without overthinking it. I followed this by setting a timer for a few minutes, choosing a random prompt, and forcing myself to draw whatever came to mind, even if it didn’t make sense. The goal wasn’t to make something clean, but to just get ideas and out. What I learned from doing this is that creativity isn’t really about having a perfect idea. Once I stopped worrying about whether the drawing was “good” or not, it actually became easier to think of more ideas and build off them. This exercise also made me realize how much overthinking can block someone especially in design, where you feel pressure to make something meaningful right away. By just starting with something simple and letting it evolve, I ended up with ideas I wouldn’t have come up with if I tried to plan everything out first. Overall, this showed me that creativity is more about doing and experimenting than waiting for inspiration to hit. I’m pretty sure I’ve done this before but it was nice to revisit it in a new light with a new understanding of art.

As of late reading the primers really does give deeper insight to how websites work. We were asked what makes a good webpage. Most of the idea for it was the typical, readiblity, ease of maneuvering etc. But then I started thing about quality of life changes I know some websites do, like show a little road map of where the link will take you if you click it, and what to do if you click the wrong link. I personally think if too much cluter is on screen it makes it harder to focus but a little guide isn’t too bad.

Typography is always weird for me to tackle in the design space. Mainly when I’m attempting to give it a reason to be used. So funnily enough I look at calligraphy to see how I can show the emotion I want to display so I can better display it in my typography. A good example of this is some of my work on the menu project. While I didn’t finish much of the main part I had the idea of keeping the typeface readable and soft, to mimic a place of comfort and ease. I didn’t want any sharpness or pointy edges, jaggedness in the typeface because in other types of art sharper lines normally display trickery or discomfort in some cases. But soon I’ll get the hang of it.

1.https://youtu.be/1572-EzXh5Y?si=KnTO0t55gpNfugRA

1. How to set up your doc presets, depending on the project.
2. Link pictures instead of embedding them to save file space.

2. https://youtu.be/IN3EKAKFXUE?si=57FgmVfMkkt9Qc3S

3. Paragraph shading so you don’t have to change the text against the background with a separate frame

3.https://youtu.be/IqxrzUAi2nU?si=xI9BeOM8CV9Xx_RY

4. Making text fit better into frames with ctrl b for editing

5. Using generative expand to fill in gaps in images instead of warping the image itself.

Something I wanted to learn is how to meld the text better with pictures in Indesign. There is probably a video about it but I want to try and find it myself, it’ll at least help me navigate, I want to incorporate more of my personality into the Indesign process.

Today’s creative exercise is one about colors, taking something you’ve previously made in design and turning it into something else without changing the content, just change the color. It makes you think about what emotions the colors convey and express with different pieces, adding more red or blue to a pallet to change the meaning of the piece or just changing the whole vibe of the picture itself.