Environmental Design on Capital University's Campus
To create an environmental design that portrays a message to an audience of Capital University's campus
This piece is called “Environmental Design”. My piece shows a potential design for the outside of a building on Capital University’s campus. My idea behind this piece was to create a design that appealed to both current and prospective students as they pass by the building on campus. Capital’s campus is currently quite plain with lots of brick, so the goal was to create something to bring a little more vibrancy and life to the building.
For this project, I worked in Adobe Photoshop for the majority of the assignment. I created two other versions of environmental designs for Blackmore Library, and a Photo-op on campus (located below), before creating my final piece on the Conservatory building. I used multiple logos, and representations of Capital throughout the designs, along with the Capital’s accent colors. My idea for the purple building came from the need for a pop of color and purple being the number one color screaming and representing Capital University.
From the first “final” project I submitted in class until this one, I only made a few minor changes that came from feedback from peer reviews in class. In the first submission, the bushes in front of the building were absent and the landscape just looked very dull and plain. I pulled some images of bushes and flowers from google and cut them out pasted them in, erased parts to make them fit in certain spots, and changed the coloring to match the shadowing in the image on both sides of the building.
Purpose:
Assignment for Art 264, Fall 2022
Techniques & Software Used:
Adobe Photoshop
Concept Development
I decided to make my targeted audience for this piece to be both current students, and prospective students. I focused my designs around the slogan using the word “opportunity”, as having opportunities is a major plus when selecting your college. Knowing you have options and lots of opportunities is comforting for many students. Also, for current students, the remainder of the many major and minor options offered at Capital is a good way to reassure students that if they aren’t happy with their original choice then there are options to change and choose a new one to pursue. For this project, I began by choosing buildings and areas on campus I thought could be revamped and transformed into something a little more interesting. So, I choose to use the Conservatory, Blackmore Library, and then an area on a building that used to be a window. My first piece was the library, my second was the photo frame, and then my final and best piece of them all was the Conservatory wall. For my final piece, I used photoshop for the entire project. I painted the building purple and then cut out the Capital comets logo along with the star and then played around with the effects to allow the brick texture to still shine through. The typography took me the longest to decide what colors, and placement I thought looked best and looked right, but once I did it turned out to look spot on. The addition I added to this piece was flowers and bushes. I painted the bushes to fit in with the shadows on each side of the building and positioned the flowers so they looked realistic. I feel this final piece of work is one of the best pieces I have done so far!
