About the Artist
Who is Matthew Hankin?
Matthew Hankin haphazardly stumbled into the world of Graphic Design during his sohphomre year at Beverly Hills High School. Although, he knew that he would enjoy the class, he didn’t know how much of an affect that Graphic Design would have on him. Matthew fell in love with the world of Graphic Design. He will be attending summer courses in Graphic Design at OTIS College. He also plans to return for two more years of Graphic Design at BHHS. He then wants to attend an art school to perfect his craft. And this is all from a person who haphazardly stumbled into the world of Graphic Design!
INSIDE
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PAGES OF MATTHEW
HANKEE HANKIN’S BEST WORK
HOW COMPLEX CAN GEOMETRIC SHAPES BE? VERY
CHOICES
Picking the Perfect Logo
B&W
Tesselations to the Max
COLOR
Finding Your Way
Contents
6 Picking the Perfect Logo Is there more to picking a great logo than what looks good? How do you put yourself or what you want to express into your logo?
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Finding Your Way
With the GPS, most compass roses are irrelevent. However can a compass rose turn from a navigational tool to a beautiful work of art? How do you make your once navigational tool into a piece of art that utilizes your own qualities?
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Cover Story How complicated can geometric shapes be? How can one take circles or rectangles and expand them to make them more.
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Tesselations to the Max
Is it easy to quickly crank out tesselations that still look perfect?
Color
Finding Your Way
Before Winter break I finished my compass rose project. I really enjoyed this project because I was able to use everything that I have learned so far in this class. My approach was to use the patterns that I used from the tessellations and combine them with some new patterns and colors. When I put colors on the outside I used the colors green and blue. My eyes are either green or blue. Nobody has ever been able to figure it out. I used both colors and then put a pattern in them. I used the same pattern in both the green and blue corners but I used a smaller version of the pattern in the blue. I am told that I have green eyes more than blue so I made green much busier than blue. Then on the inside, I used my favorite pattern swatch: my arrows. I then tried to pile in all the colors on the color wheel. I used way too many colors and I ended up making it to busy. I went back a few steps and re-evaluated. I decided to use red and yellow because they are both very warm colors and they contrasted well with the cool blue and green on the outside. I like the colors red and yellows because they are both very loud colors I like to be loud and I talk a lot. I made the double arrow design and put a gradient between the red and yellow that I used on the gradients in the circle. I love this design because it symbolizes the ups and down of all humans especially myself. All in all I really enjoyed this assignment.
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Choices
Black and White
Picking the Perfect Tesselations to the MAX Logo I really enjoyed the creative aspects of the personal logo project. I started by making four simple designs playing off of my initials. I decided to work on the second one that I had made. I decided to use this one because I felt it was a creative use of my initials in a cool effect found under effectwarp.
“I then decided, along with the warp, I should rasterbate it.”
I tried using a color half-tone by going to effectpixilatecolor halftone. I didn’t liked how this looked because I didn’t like the color in the background. I wanted the dots to imply the letter. I didn’t just want dots over another. I eventually decided to use the dot swatches under the swatch panelswatch libraries menupatternsbasic graphicsbasic graphics_dots. However there was a problem. I didn’t realize it but the “L” had a previous effect
effect that wasn’t taken off so the dots were very pixilated and blocky. I tried everything to fix it. I even made my own rasterbation dots. I thought that it was the shape and positioning of the “L” until I turned it back to a solid color and saw ridges on the “L”. I felt like an idiot but I put my dots in and it looked good. Then to give it some depth, I used to ovals. One of them was supposed to look like it was holding up the letters and the other was its shadow. Instead of a gradient on the top oval, I used the scale tool, gave it a different shade of blue and then blended the colors for a slightly different effect than if I used a gradient. I picked the colors that I picked because I wanted a good contrast. Blue is my favorite color so I used a blue emphasis and red “L” to contrast with the whole thing. Because of the contrasting colors the “L” becomes the focal point. Most people don’t know I have a middle name so I decided to make “L” my focal point.
There are many different ways to make a tessellation. The way that many of them are started is by making a 1X1, black fill, no stroke, square. This square is the base of the tessellation. I then used the pen tool to make two designs. One came from the top and one came from the left side. I then used the divide tool under the pathfinder to “cut out” the designs in the square. I then used the rotate tool to rotate the designs out of the square. After that I used the rotate tool again. This time I put the rotate point on the bottom right corner of the square. I then rotated. Then I selected everything that I had done so far. I went to the menu and under the object column, I went to transform and move. I moved it two inches to horizontally and zero to the left. I then pressed copy and used “apple-D” until it hit the end of the page. Then I used the move tool to move the whole thing down two
method above to make tessellations. Other methods take much longer. Other methods involve moving the squares manually and it takes much longer. This will however look differently.
inches and used “apple-D” tool again. Then I made a 6X6 invisible square and centered it. I selected all and used object, clipping mask, make and the tessellation was finished. The tools that I used were the rectangle tool, the pen tool, the shade/ fill tools, the different arrow tools, rotate tool, transform tool, and divide tool. The rectangle tool creates rectangles. The pen tool makes lines. The shade/fill tools deal with color. The arrow tools allow me to select things. The rotate tool rotates shapes or lines. The divide tool allows me to “cut” shapes out of the square.
The shortcuts are doing the
The difference between a fill and a stroke is completely different. In a shape, the stroke is the outline and a fill is the color in the inside of the shape. In a line, the stroke is the line itself; the stroke is the color that completes the shape. The black and white arrows are also completely different. The black arrow selects the entire shape while the white arrow selects a specific anchor point. When moving shapes, one should use the black arrow so it wont move anchor points. When “performing anchor point surgery” one must use the white arrow to move around anchor points. This will change the shape.
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How Complex Can Geometric Shapes Be? I would like to start of by saying that I really enjoyed this project. I spent several days on my symmetrical circle. I feel like I got it on my first try. I spent a lot of time and effort trying to get each line just right. Because it was a circle, my lines didn’t overlap on the inside of the circle, but it did when I reflected it. I spent most of several days tediously reshaping lines to fit.
“This turned out to be my best work of the year. It was definitely worth the time that I put into it.”
of workspace. When I design, I like to use all of the possible space. I found that when I did this twice, it looked the same. Both of my works involved a triangle on its side when flipped out. The only difference was the design on the inside of the triangle. I think however that they both turned out fine. I feel that I met the criteria well. My symmetrical circle was perfectly symmetrical and it looked somewhat like a bug. My radial circles were executed to perfection. I didn’t really have a plan going into it. I just drew. I think it worked.
I think that it looks very complex and creative.
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The second type of circle, the radial circle, was also very fun to crate. I made two of these because they didn’t take as much time. I didn’t like doing these as much because it allowed very little space for creativity. In the symmetrical circles, I could use half of the circle. In the radial circle I could only use one eight that’s 4/8 compared to 1/8. I loose out on 3/8 of the circle. I still made as intricate of a design as possible but I found it very challenging due to the small amount of workspace. When I design, I like to use all of the
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