Clay Doss graphic design portfolio

f o e l a al t

a

sic m i h he w

g n i v r a t S

T

t s i t ar

content

....... 4 . . . . . n o i t c Introdu ..... 6 . .. n g i s e D 8 .................. .. .. .. .. .. ..

Graph....i..c .. .. .............. ...........9

.. ....

Poverty........ .................. .. .. .. .. ..

0 .. .. .. ........ .................1 .. .. .. .. ..

ARPE......... .. .. .. .... .................. ............11 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

REACH...... p. ..

12 n Worksho o rs a C .................. .. id .. v .. .. ..

Da .. .. .. .. hts............. .............13 .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

Human Rig .. .... .................. .. .. . r. a d n le Ca

14 . . . e l c i t ure Ar

Feate the brain of Clay Doss Get insid ... 22 . . . . . . y h p gra ..................................24 Photo .. ........25 ..................

it ....

Self Portra .................. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ........ ...............26 .. .. .. .. .. ..

Fil................ .. .. .... ..27 y................. la P n .................. io .. s .. s .. a ..

P .. .. .. ..

8 hoto.......... ................2 .. .. .. .. .. ..

Wedding P .. .. .... storation.... ...........29 .. e ..

R .. n .. a .. .. ic .. fr ..

A ...... toration.... s e R t n a h Elep

f

.... 30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........32 ine arts ..................

s

.. rait............ rt o P ...........33 rd .. .. a .. o .. b .. .. rd .. a ..

C ......

4 .................. .. .. .. .. ................3 .. .. e .. if ..

L .. .. ..

Still .. .. .... ights........... .............35 .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

Northern L .. .... .................. in ta p a C Sea

clay

All the works of art and design showcased in Doss. Currently studying Graphic Design at An of his most recent pieces into this mini portfoli find a brief set of notes by the creator accom as a sneak peek into the mental thoughts, cr aspects that go into each and every artwork. C anyone can learn to do through hard work, de our culture understands that doctors, lawyers, long and hard, but believe that in art, all you ha consensus, “You ether have it, or you don’t�, attempting art. Nothing could be farther from th people knew how hard I had to work to gain m

doss

n this booklet are the creative works of Clay ndrews University, Clay has assembled many io. Along with images of Clay’s work, you will mpanying each piece. These notes are meant reative brainstorming process, and technical Clay strongly believes that art is something that edication, and plenty of practice. Somehow, , musicians and ballet dancers have to study ave to have is natural born talent. The general , seems to eliminate many people from ever he truth. The great Michelangelo once said, “If my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all.”

graphi

ic desi

gn

Graphic design sh ape words an d image s our visual enviro s or call to n action th into messages tha ment, combining e masses t inform, and tech . persuade It is nology w a field th , it a h t combin business heart of es art and cultu this inform r e t of ation ag e in whic orm the h we live .

Poverty: This piece was for an assignment to create a propaganda poster based on one of three topics: poverty, racism, or landmines. Finding it difficult to choose one topic, I generated several ideas for each of the three topics and rendered them each into rough digital drafts. Extremely unpleased with my experimental drafts, I hesitantly presented my digital roughs to the class for a critique. Much to my surprise the class loved the majority of my drafts and chose this one as their favorite.

The style of this work was largely inspired by the work of Fire Belly Design, a small design company we had visited earlier that year. Greatly impressed with their work, this poster was my personal attempt to push and experiment with new styles.

ARPE: ARPE stands for Associates for Research in Private Education. This company offered our design class an opportunity to design them a new logo and corporate identity. Having been in the private education system my entire life, I strongly support their work and sincerely wanted them to have the best identity scheme possible.

The tagline “Promoting Effective Education� is something I made up as I felt it describes their work and beliefs simply and successfully, as well as adds visual variety within their logo design.

I also decided to go with an Isaac

Newton type approach to symbolize private education. The logo of the student reading under a tree was from a quick sketch that I drew, I later scanned the sketch into the computer and vectorized it for logo use.

REACH: REACH is another company that sought the help of our design class. Render Effective Aid to Children is an Adventist company that works to help the poor, sick, and orphaned children primarily in many third world countries. REACH relies a great deal on many generous donations from charitable individuals to do their work.

Because of this, REACH wanted to create a coffee table book to give to their donors to show images of the needy children and clearly show how and where the donors’ money is being used. I designed both the front and back covers and the inside layout design to be used for the rather large book. Pictured here is the front cover.

David Carson Workshop: As part of our design class we were to research the life of another famous designer and give a presentation before the class discussing our findings. I researched David Carson, perhaps the most famous designer on the planet. Or better put, most famous in the sense that the general public might have actually heard of him before. He was once the 8th ranked surfer in the world before turning designer and he revolutionized the design world because of his original style that broke free from all the traditional rules of design. The poster shown here is a mock poster I made in the style of David Carson suggesting that he was giving a presentation at Andrews University.

Human Rights: Another poster, this one was to be based around one of the 30 basic human rights. I brainstormed many many ideas and drew countless rough sketches. However, all my ideas were satirical. Try as I might, I could not develop any serious campaign slogan. So I ultimately decided to use the declaration of freedom of peaceful assembly and association. Wanting to design in an old-fashioned propaganda style I thought of my favorite comic characters Calvin and Hobbes. Their club G.R.O.S.S. and anti-girls stance provided a perfect means for my satirical propaganda poster. Using several references I drew Calvin and Hobbes on paper in my desired pose and scanned the image into the computer.

Calendar: This was a simple assignment to design a full one year calendar onto one page using Adobe InDesign. The image is a stock photo that I greatly enhanced to achieve far more desirable colors and contrast.

a m e h t

g, then in v e li e b is f seeing u have o Y . d in m r fuse you n o we get c ly le h ic t g r u I a o r is o h . In t to th get ready ition’s feature article ner/artist Clay Doss. desig his ed t d d e e n h w c o a n e r brain of re e h t e id s in

t n e v e n ai

FeaturedArtist

FeatureArticle

Clay Doss Name: Clay Doss Website: www.claydoss.com Location: South Dakota Age: 20 Year: Sophomore Major: Graphic Desgin In this article designer Clay Doss elaborates on his work, how he got started, what motivates him, and his future plans.

Art and design is something I had very little exposure to as a child.

There were no artists in my family and nothing in school that emphasized creativity. How I ended up here today is still a mystery to me.

My entire life I have been fascinated with thinking outside the box.

As long as I can remember I have always sought to do unusual things with ordinary objects. This probably developed due to my lack of funding as a child. I saw all the cool toys in the newspaper or in the stores, but with no money I was forced to settle with what I had. I remember always trying to rebuild the amazing expensive LEGO sets with the few pieces that I had. So I made my own version of the many toys I wanted

e s e h “t gs thin just to seem en p p a h � e m to

Sometime in gradeschool my family bought a video camera. I was enthralled with trying to create special effects in my mini films so as to totally confuse my parents. I had no powerful computer or any editing software, so all special effects were done with clever filming techniques in-camera. I remember creating dozens of stop-motion films with my LEGOs by standing up my LEGO minifigures, pressing the camera’s record button on and off really fast, moving the LEGOs ever so slightly, pressing the record button on and off again, and repeating this process several thousand more times. This technique resulted in short films of LEGO characters moving all by themselves in their own feature film.

Also about this time I began playing with Microsoft Paint. I would create paintings from scratch, pixel by pixel. Then one day my father received a whopping one megapixel camera. That little camera changed my life. I began importing digital photos into Paint and slicing and dicing them together. I began cloning myself similar to the image on the right. Even in wimpy Microsoft Paint I could make myself levitate and turn myself into the invisible man.

y m e v o l I “ ily” fam

Later in highschool I discovered the super powerful Adobe Photoshop 6.0. The first time I opened the program I was so overwhelmed with the number of buttons I closed the program and never opened it again for six months. Thank goodness I did come back though and now have a learned a great deal.

I still love thinking outside the box and doing things differently than traditionally done. I did not come from an artistic background and I had never been in a real art class until college. I have learned alot so far, but still have a lot to learn.

I find tremendous joy in art and encourage everyone to pick up a pencil and draw a picture every now and then. Art is not something that is naturally born into specific people. It is something that anyone can learn to do.

“The mor

e rrier�

the me

I am still constantly discovering new things everyday, and for that reason it is impossible to say where I will really end up in the future. I can say though, that it will be in a creative and fun field. I wonder if LEGO is hiring?

p

t o h

a r g

y h p

shed i u g n disti guage. a e reat isual lan dless c o t nge porary v allows en ons. e l l a e ch contem edium cati i l h t p s p r ts m thetic a lex, offe r p a y h m e p fin es co ra a a g a s o h t a Pho e throug graphy voic g photo in Defin

o t

Self Portrait Notes: This fun little shot of myself has brought great praise to my photographic knowledge and camera abilities. But little do people know, it was no great photographic mastery on my part, but my proficiency in Adobe Photoshop that saved this image.

I took this photo to use as the basis for a CD case I was to design for a class.

When I presented my final project the teacher, actually a photography teacher, commented on my image.

She said, “Nice picture. Who took the shot of you?”

“Um, I did,” I replied.

“You did? How?!”

“I set my camera on a tripod, set the timer, and ran like mad to get in front of it in time.”

“Well, what studio did you use?

Where’d you take the shot?”

“Uh, my room.”

“Your room?! What did you use to light it? What sort of lighting setup” “Um, just the window.”

“What on earth did you use as the backdrop?”

“My bed sheet.”

Yes, it was no great photographic ability of mine, in fact, the original image was slightly blurry and pale with very little contrast. But from that image I set forth in Photoshop to resurrect the image.

Another fun fact, the head in this image is actually from a completely separate shot. I chose two shots from my brief photo-shoot that I liked the best. I preferred my headshot in one image, but body pose in another.

Being a lazy photographer I used the power of Photoshop one more time to combine the two shots.

Passion Play: This is a picture I took at the annual Passion Play at Andrews University. It was taken during a very powerful and moving scene depicting the crucifixion of Christ. In postproduction I edited the image to try and capture the same sort of moving power that I felt while watching the performance.

Retouched Wedding Photo: This is a cropped section of a retouched wedding photo from my parent’s collection. The original image was actually a faded sepia toned picture. I chose the image specifically as an experiment and learning exercise in adding color to an old colorless image.

Parent’s Wedding

Africa Restoration: These images are from a digital imaging class I took. The goal was to take a ruined old photo and digitally restore the image. You can see the original image I started with at the bottom of the page. Torn into three pieces, I did my best to stitch the separate elements together and digitally paint in any missing gaps.

Bringing back the color was perhaps the most challenging yet fun parts of this particular project. I brightened select portions of the image such as their faces, and did my best to add very dramatic vivid colors through various coloring techniques and extensive dodging and burning.

Elephant Restoration: This image is from the same assignment. You can see the original image below, and my final restoration at the top.

Visu

ual a

rts

Visual osity, art is a way and a keen to translate of arti inner stic ex sense of o feelin onese pressio b s gs, int e r v lf and a n t i . o T n h rough into sa uition, cu form a subjec riar tis n t matt er for awareness t, one can fying forms aesth etic a of the visu learn abou a t nd int ellect l world as a ual re spons e.

Cardboard Portrait: This portrait painted on cardboard is actually the first time I had ever painted. I stumbled across some oil paints in a huge blowout sale. I had never before painted, but planned on taking a painting class the next semester. I could not pass up such a deal so I bought the paints.

Knowing nothing about how to paint and having no painting materials in my possession, I used random things that were lying around. Having no canvas available, I used what I had in abundance in my room—cardboard. So on the back of a FedEx box I painted my first picture of a random man in a random magazine. I later learned all sorts of fascinating things about canvas, gesso, and turpentine, but for a first start I think I did allright.

Still Life: This still life scene is one of the first paintings I did in my Introduction to Painting class. This painting I tried very hard to paint realistically, yet retain a painterly feel. I found there to be a very fine line between being painterly and being just plain sloppy. I still struggle with that line, but this painting proved to be a personal breakthrough as I began to more adequately understand the materials I was using.

Norther Lights: Despite the controversy that arises in the professional art world when calling Bob Ross’ painting art.

I must admit that good ol’ Bob Ross played a significant role in getting me interested in painting. I was astounded how Bob could pump out an amazing landscape scene in less than 30 minutes. After watching a couple of Joy of Painting episodes I gave it a try. Sure enough, in no time I too was producing mini masterpieces in just half an hour. Bob Ross, Clay Doss, I think it was destiny.

Sea Captian: This is just one of many drawings of mine. I find I have a lack of patience when drawing, I just want to create a masterpiece in less than five minutes. Unfortunately, this is virtually impossible, but because of my lack of patience I rarely spend more than half an hour on any one drawing. I have come to discover many new and fascinating techniques lately. One such discovery is simply covering the entire sheet of paper in charcoal before starting. This allows you to draw in the shadows and then erase the highlights leaving you with the pre-charcoaled areas as the midtones. This allows you to use the eraser not to fix mistakes, but as a drawing tool. This is one such image done with this technique.