Certificate Design - Portrait

Hello everyone! During my process of writing this blog, I find out that most of my entries are about works that are based on what topic I am interested in. Now I will do something that is truly formal – certificate design.

I am a member of English Club at RMIT and the task that I contribute to the club is designing a certificate. My leader requires that the certificate must have the logos of RMIT and our club, name of the awarded person or organization. Because this is the first time I put my hands on creating a certificate, I have to think carefully about the text, images, and the layout of it. Because the certificate is a formal document, fonts of the text are really important, as well as the content. I have tried many fonts and the final choices are News Gothic MT, Garamond Premier Pro, and Times. There are two layouts that I choose for the certificate. In the first one, logos are placed above the text and this is converse in the second one.

One thing that I consider as important part is the edge line of the certificate. Because I put only text and logos on it, there will be empty place at the edge. At this point, I looked at the logo of RMIT and I saw two main colors: red and black. As a result, I use them to make two lines covering the edge of the certificate and this makes it nicer.

Ok! Here are my works, and I hope you can give me advice on the certificate design.




Oh! I forgot one thing important and that is the portrait. My friend Ngan has made a nice portrait of herself and I think that portrait is really interesting. I tried to make my portrait but it does not look like me. It is really hard at the first time because I have never drawn details of human body before. Every small part such as eye, nose, mouth, hand, toe really drove me crazy. Finally, I have done it but it is not good at all. It looks like a picture of a boy in animation and looks not nice. So here is my portrait:

Sun vs. Moon

Sun and Moon design is our first exercise to train our creativity. Therefore, I have tried my best for it and I also focus on the problem – solving process we discussed in class. My final work includes three sets of sun and moon, which are based on my interest in ancient symbols representing our two great planets. Because the sun and moon need to be visible against the background color, I also post single images of each planet so that you can see them clearly.

Here is my first work:


This first design is not actually too old like ancient symbols. I just mix some traditional patterns with the new ones. For example, you can see the triangles of the sun pointing toward it, not pointing to the outside. Another interesting thing in this work is that the circle shape is used to represent both the sun and moon. Although it is not good at all because it makes us hard to recognize which one is the sun and which one is the moon, I add some details to two circles to make a clear difference between them. The planet that has five points around it is the moon as the moon is usually visible at night with twinkling stars.



Next is my second work:


This work has a strong influence from the ancient cultures. During my childhood, I was interested in studying ancient people and their cultural achievements. A famous ancient civilization that I like is Maya in South America. Whenever I think about this dynasty, the sun always appear in my mind as a square with many layers and the moon looks like a seashell.



Here is the last one:

They look so horrible and bloody. I like to create violent and frightening scenes, characters because horror creates a strong inspiration for me. It is easy to recognize the sun and the moon here. You can see that the sun has some sticks that look like tentacles. However, that is not my intention. I just drew a funny hat of a clown and then it became the sun.



Technical tips:
_ If you want to make shapes that look like seashell, you can click on Line Segment Tool in Illustrator, open more options and use the Spiral Tool. Then use the Eraser Tool to clear some parts of the shape and use Pen Tool to make it look nicer.
_ If you have difficulty in drawing crescent shape, you can try the moon in my last work. Just draw a nice-looking circle, and then use the Eraser Tool to clean some parts of it.

Ok! I hope that you will find this exercise interesting. If you have advices for my work, I really appreciate them.