week1

7-10-07

In Class we went over the basic idea of the class and got familiar with everyone. This is the normal get-to-know-you stuff including introductions and such. We all pretty-much new each other so this was a really informal affair. I had already decided that I wanted to do Harley Davidson so I was prepared and had downloaded their report. I was also in the process of gather pictures. I have some of my own pictures, but am also looking for some more professional pictures. We mostly talked about what was going to be required of us and to start looking for companies that we might be interested in. I had a couple back-up companies that I was looking at as well just in case something stopped me from doing the one that I wanted to do.

7-12-07

In Class we had an in-class accessment on doing graphs in Illustrator. I had never done a graph in Illustrator but the help menu was all I needed and it was pretty easy once the you got past the initial stumbling block of not having done it before. This day I spoke with the professor Mr. Julien and he wasn't sure that he wanted me to re-design the Harley annual report because somebody else had already done it recently. I somehow won the right to do the company that I really wanted to do.

Outside of class I started researching Harley Davidson even though I know plenty about the company. I started by going through their annualr report and looking to see what they did. The had some two-page spreads with the bike against a landscape that were really nice. The also tried to get some of the personality of the riders into it, but It didn't come off great—more on that when I thuroughly breakdown the design—and they had some great shots of their bikes, of course. The orange and black color scheme is going to be one of the challenges that I already am anticipating because of the Halloween connotation, which also associates the product with a time of year, especially if you live somewhere where the leaves change colors. Even without getting too involved with the design I can see some interesting challenges cropping up.