today's plates: calling cards

This week in my Basic Design class, we had to make three calling cards: one for ourselves, one for a friend, and one for an existing business. The only guideline: your card has to represent the personality of the person it's intended for.

We were taught the basics of color theory and, for the first time, were allowed to use color in our plates. Really exciting! Even better was that we were allowed to use Photoshop instead of just Illustrator! Squee! I felt like a bird being freed from its cage.

Anyway, here's what I came up with:

This is my personal calling card. The front flap has a cuddly little dog on it. When you lift it, you get a view of its mouth (which isn't as cuddly), with my name spelled out in dog treats. 

I went with this design because, obviously, I like dogs. My original idea was that the dog's tongue was something you  could pull out to reveal my contact details. The flap idea that I went with was Rap's, although he had warned me in advance about a dog's mouth being kinda scary. But maybe that could be an added layer of symbolism for my personality: a cute and cuddly exterior masking a scary inside. Hehe. 

For the friend's calling card, I picked Jules as my client. He's recently been into changing his look, so I thought it would be funny to put that in a card. 

The design style is supposed to match the client's personality and I can see Jules as a minimalist. He's a simple guy.

I also put his hair into a poster, but I'm not submitting it. This is purely for Facebook purposes.

I had a lot of other ideas too for my other friends, like Rap. He likes animals and insects, so I wanted his card to spell out his name in animal-like letters. Like the "L" could be a caterpillar, or something. I think it would've looked great, but sadly I only had a night to work on my plate.

Lastly, for the business card I thought of making one for my dad who actually did run a business. But then I wanted to do something more daring, and decided to make a calling card for National Geographic. It features the classic yellow rectangle, framing a transparent plastic window with the person's contact details.

Here's what the card would look like if it were real. (The photo of the hand was grabbed off a random stock photo site but the rest of the photos are mine.)

That's all for this week. I think we're doing posters for next week's assignment. Exciting!