I  had  a  lot  of  difficulties  while  producing  my  first  graphic  design  project  of  2011.  I  decided  that  my  restaurant’s  name  would  be  “Villa  Italia”.  Since  the  name  sounds  extremely  high  class,  I  assumed  that  the  customers  would  be  somewhat  wealthy  adults.    After  watching  my  aunt  who  designs  business  cards,  I  learnt  that  simplicity=high  class.  Therefore,  I  told  myself  that  the  finished  product  should  not  look  too  “photoshopped”.  I  started  out  by  looking  at  the  Italian  flag.  I  came  up  with  an  idea  that  I  would  make  a  photo  collage  that  followed  the  color  scheme  of  the  Italian  flag.  I  started  out  by  gathering  photos.  I  had  to  make  sure  that  I  was  searching  for  pictures  that  were  within  the  creative  commons  licensed  content  on  flickr.      

                                                 

The  results  were  limiting,  but  I  was  able  to  find  most  of  the  pictures  that  I  wanted,  which  were  mostly  of  Italian  food.  I  uploaded  the  picture  onto  Photoshop,  and  added  a  new  layer  of  a  solid  color.  I  started  out  with  red.  After  placing  the  new  layer,  I  adjusted  the  opacity,  so  that  the  original  image  could  be  seen  through  the  color.        

   I  did  the  same  with  two  other  images,  then  followed  the  same  procedure  with  a  green  color  fill  (3  photographs),  and  did  it  again  with  a  white-­‐grey  color  fill  (2  photographs).  

   After  finishing  the  coloring  process  I  took  screen  shots  of  every  edited  photo  and  saved  them  on  the  desktop.  I  was  advised  against  screen  shots,  but  I  was  unaware  of  any  alternate  procedures  that  I  could  easily  do  without  running  into  difficulties.  I  then  opened  illustrator,  and  opened  a  business  card  template.      I  adjusted  all  eight  photos  to  the  right  size,  and  arranged  them  like  this:    

 At  this  point,  I  was  pretty  satisfied  with  my  work.  In  my  head,  I  knew  exactly  which  fonts  I  wanted,  however,  I  didn’t  know  what  they  were  called.  So  I  ended  up  going  through  the  annoying  process  of  going  through  each  font  to  find  them.    

         I  then  typed  in  the  name  of  the  restaurant,  (Villa  Italia),  and  typed  in  the  punch  line,  “quality  Italian  cuisine”.    

   I  thought  that  this  arrangement  was  too  direct.  So  I  decided  to  decrease  the  size  of  the  font.  This  was  my  finished  product!