Monthly Archives: March 2007

Sargent Construction and RPI Music

Written by Stephen Emlund on March 28, 2007 | Website Design
My recent Viscom III Project was to choose two websites on the internet that needed to be redesigned. I chose two sites that I have been closely involved in during high school. Sargent-Construction.com and RPIMusic.com
Sargent’s website was designed in 2003-04 and I had no formal graphic design skills. I decided to see what I could with this site, by giving it a fresh look. In no way is it as extensive as their current site (which has over 300 pages), But I think it reaches the target audience of older business owners and subcontractors.
RPI Music is something Craig Allen (high school computer science teacher) and I designed during Web Design and my Keyboarding class. I didn’t really do any real assignments in keyboarding… as a result the keyboard is a foreign object and I ‘hunt-n-peck’ my way through writing anything… Just kidding.
Anyway… RPI is a guy who Mr. Allen went to college with. He’s a singer and plays guitar.
Enjoy my latest stuff. Let me know what you think. Be truthful, be harsh, after all my art professors will tell it like it is.. and be blunt about it, when they don’t like our stuff. I’m used to it.

PowerPoint Graphics

Written by Stephen Emlund on March 13, 2007 | Graphic Design

This week at BSU, Gene is speaking about Missions, so at about midnight last night I created this for the PowerPoint during the service.

A new website project

Written by Stephen Emlund on March 13, 2007 | Website Design

I have created a website design for PixelIQ.com It’s going to be finished by tonight. This is a website/graphic design company that I will possibly be working for and this website design is part of showing them my skill level.

Intaglio Etching

Written by Stephen Emlund on March 2, 2007 | Traditional Art
I’m in a Printmaking class and we just recently did Intaglio. Since I don’t want to try to explain what Intaglio is I will quote Wikipedia which pretty much sums it up in a few sentences:

Normally, copper or zinc plates are used as a surface, and the incisions are created by etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint or mezzotint. Collographs may also be printed as intaglio plates. To print an intaglio plate the surface is covered in thick ink and then rubbed with tarlatan cloth to remove most of the excess. The final smooth wipe is usually done by hand, sometimes with the aid of newspaper, leaving ink only in the incisions. A damp piece of paper is placed on top and the plate and paper are run through a printing press that, through pressure, transfers the ink from the recesses of the plate to the paper

Here is a piece I did from a photograph I took in New Orleans. It was a house that was basically flooded and got contaminated with oil.

Next I added “plate tone” and colored ink to the process to create the below image.. I think it’s 100% better looking. Plate tone is where you rub residual ink onto the plate and you can blend it with your hand to get the effect you want.
The next project was to use a different image and add “soft ground texture” to the plate. So I put salt and various peices of string on the plate.. the salt is lightly placed all over the plate… so in the image you can see speckled darkened dots. It took about 2 hours to add the texture and it didn’t show up as much as I wanted it to. You can see the text best in the wood stump. Then we did the same processes with color, except I used two colors: brown on top and reddish brown in the figure. This is a depiction of Jesus being beaten. It comes from a series of drawings I did in Drawing III a few semesters ago where I did a series of events of the crucifixion.
Some of the tones aren’t blended like I wanted.. specifically in the body… because when I did the “stage biting” where you create the tones, it only did distinct shades. The really good blending is done with rubbing the ink with my hand.

Jazz Television Website

Written by Stephen Emlund on March 1, 2007 | Website Design

So I finished the website for my Viscomm class in about 15 hours in two days. From Saturday night at 11 PM until Sunday night at 8:30 PM I worked on this website, minus a few hours of sleep and an hour for church. I posted the website at http://www.stephenemlund.com/jazz/

Has anyone ever heard of Texas Red Sullivan? Well, it’s my third-cousin’s dad. My third-uncle I guess?? Well he plays piano and blues/rock/jazz music. He has asked me to build a website for his band. Apparently he is going to have a show on the food network because he can cook some killer barbeque stuff. So he wants a website for that also. I just found a news article about him at http://www.star.niu.edu/articles/?id=11167 … there’s a picture of him. Yeah.. so I’m excited to have another website project.

One of my next projects for Viscomm is to present research on a web designer or design groups… These are what I’m currently looking at to research:

I’m trying to find one that has similar design ideas that I do or has produced work that I hope to someday, or that I see myself wanting to create.

Spring Break:
I’ll be home working at Sargent Construction.. doing their website. I will also be trying to finish up www.gisellegrayson.com and maybe working on stephenemlund.com