Graphic Design, Part 2!

I engaged in two more graphic design projects.  In the first one, I used simple shapes to overlap each other to create my own shapes that may now be used for other projects, such as logos or aesthetic appeal.  This project comes from the Design Basics Index, page 131 ("Shape-Building Practice").  There was no particular shape I was trying to develop, so they all seem a bit random.  I had the most fun with circles, triangles, and stars.  I completed these objects in PowerPoint, as I needed vector-based program to create these images (as per the instructions).  The benefit of this is that I can resize these images however I like and not lose pixel resolution.  Also, I found it easiest to "group" the sub-images together so that I could reposition them on the page without distorting/altering them.

Next, I completed the "Word Portraits" exercise on page 241 of the Design Basics Index.  For this task, I chose a dozen fonts and picked words that I could easily associate with them, along with one word that seemed to be in contradiction to the font.  This was a worthwhile task because it required me to run through my list of available fonts; next time I need a particular font, I know just where to find it.  Interestingly, for some fonts I chose the font first and then decided what words would with it, but for others I thought of a word/emotion first and then attempted to find a matching font.  The latter is clearly the more feasible situation for conducting this exercise in a real-world scenario.  I used the "Snipping Tool" with Windows 7 to upload a screenshot of my MS Word document, so if the words are difficult to read, just click on the embedded image and a full size image will appear.  It would be nice if I could upload the original MS Word document to this blog as a file attachment; anyone know how to go about that?