Since last year, Melody has been working on designing and printing signs for the upcoming Giles Park Nature Reserve in Pryor.
Jamie Walters from Mayes County Conservation District had reached out to EAST at Northeast Tech to fulfill their community need for signage in the park after learning about signs that were previously produced by EAST for the Rogers County Nature Reserve at RSU. Melody is focused on learning graphic design and illustration, and thus took on the project.
So far, she has completed a sign for the Monarch Waystation, with digital illustration of the monarch butterfly life cycle, and a sign for Salt Branch Creek, which shows a variety of fish species that can be found in said creek.
Here's how this project fulfills the CART:
Critical Thinking: Any signage, especially signage for a public, educational setting, should be easy to read and preferably aesthetically pleasing. On both signs, multiple fonts were chosen to be appealing to look at while also being legible at their intended distance. With the title font, more artistic liberty can be taken as the text is large enough to read even at a distance, but the main body of text has to be uniform and clear. In addition, elements must be arranged carefully in order to create visual balance and draw in the viewer without becoming bewildering.
Advancement: To create the signs, Melody had to use a variety of graphic design tools within Illustrator and push her vector art skills. Some of the specific processes include creating outlines for the fish to improve visibility using Offset Path, vectorizing and transforming lettering for the Monarch Waystation text to fit within the butterfly, generating the repeating waterlike background using Pattern and the Curvature Pen tool, and removing backgrounds from the fish photos in Photoshop.
Real: As previously stated, these signs will be displayed in the upcoming Giles Park nature reserve in Pryor, Oklahoma. They aim to engage visitors of all ages with their colorful artwork while educating them on the wildlife present in the park.
Teamwork: To ensure the designs meet the standards and requirements for Mayes County, Melody has communicated with Jamie Walters throughout the project on major design changes, stylistic choices, accessibility and incorporation of partner logos. In addition, cutting and laminating the vinyl signs requires physical coordination between students.