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Illustration Portfolio:
Photographic Composites

Portfolio Sections:
Design - Logo/Identity, Advertising, Display, Presentations, Visual Interfaces
Illustration - Line & Color, Information, Photographic, Cartography
Fine Art - Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Crafts
Resume - Client lists and employers

Catagories:
Line & Color, Information, & Cartography
Photographic

Photographic Composites

Images and their creation ... sketches, tone, or photographic... from a few simple lines or colors to complicated 3D models illustration are an integral and sometimes misunderstood part of design. The saying that a picture is worth a thousand words is still true today. A good illustration, like good design is not an after thought, and can be deceptively simple in appearance. Whetherthey are done with traditional materials or digital equipment, the skills are still the same.

Book Cover and Packaging Illustration

The following books are Starwerks Publishing Projects.
Covers with primarily line and color illustrations are here.

Born in Internment, from Grape & Thistle Press, by Anna Fiorina Hess, is a fascinating set of stories about a Scottish-Italian family during World War II.

The client had a concept that needed expansion (image on the left).
New images were created from stock photos.

The flames were moved to the back and replaced with ones generated in PhotoShop.

The logo and layout are on the Design Portfolio page.

The Counterfeit Princess by author Melinda Young is the first of a trilogy, cover spread and ebook.

The final version used a photo taken by the author on a paprika silk velvet ground, that was entirely generated within photoshop. The white cover (above) done with clip art was provided by the author.

Extensive color work was done on the crown. The blade was faded into the back at the spine. Everything shown above was done in Photoshop to get the letterforms right and maintain the drop shadows.

There were several radically different cover images created from stock photos and type over the period of two years, based on different aspects of the story. Some rather complicated. See the Design Portfolio page.

Melinda's latest book, Expectations, is out in digital format. A print version will follow.

The backgraound on the larger stock photo was washed out but the women had her hand to her head... so I replaced her head and her arm, making the dress much darker an removed the road in the distance.

Corporate Catalogue and Brochure Covers

California East Bay Conservation Corps
Illustrations for a 4-panel brochure based on the business card. Isolated group photos overlayed on a skyline.
Also found in the Design Portfolio.

Incorporating mutiple illustrations and stock photos for Bio-Rad Laboratories Diagnostics Division (ISO 9000 ). Also see Imaging.

Advertising and Collateral

Custom Process / Disney's Angels in the Outfield

The panorama for "Angel's in the Outfield", the Disney movie, began life as two 35mm slides taken during filming (with the film crew in the stadium) and a posed studio shot of the actors.
35mm slides scanned at 2400dpi and output to a digital 4x5 transparency.
The final image was used by other agencies for newspaper advertising and the back of the videotape box.

Trade Show Materials - Poster, Booth Wall Banners and related items.

BioRAD Bio-Medical Equipment and Services

Not so long ago state-of-the-art computer operated diagnostic equipment looked like this.
Three photos were combined here.

Devices were often still in the prototype stage when advertising collateral was produced.
I was given this photo of the GeneGun mock up with instructions to "make it sexy." Bio-RAD

Posters, banners and hand outs for trade shows. This one was conceived as a treasure hunt.

Cover (above) and interior (below) of a long, 2-sided, folded, hand out showcasing new products. The companion map leads customers through the space and has them answer questions only found within the exhibition space, guaranteeing that they see all the exhibits.

Related items included a clipboard with matching forms, magnets, pens, etc. "Prizes" were awarded along the way and at the end.

Merchandising Collateral Illustrations

Macy's West Divisional Visual Merchandising, Store Design, Planning & Construction

Examples of Macy's Union Square merchandising displays and chain-wide collateral. * 125+ stores from Texas to Hawaii, and Guam with the addition of Liberty House in 2001. San Francisco Corporate offices were moved to Cincinnati in 2005. History and details here.

Colorized silver jewlery to represent the gold versions and changing the colors of stones.

Isolating stones for use on in-store collateral on two versions of this poster.

When no photo of the searsucker background was taken, the slippers were removed digitally.

Disney provided the base illustrations. Replicas of the final film frames were created to use as posters.

More examples in the Design Portfolio.

Client Visualization

Carver + Schicketantz Architects

Production of numerous photo-realistic presentations for engineering, interior design and architectural clients.
Produced in Photoshop and Freehand.

Proposed swimming pool created from photos of pool site, vendor samples and area sketches.
First, the sketches were overlaid on the site photos.

The excavation photo below was taken after the client approved the project.

The "before photo" was cleaned up, and the rock structure was imagined, without water, in 3 different configurations. All had the "inviable edge" waterfall on the right. The center rock was intended to be a diving platform. Then each version was illustrated... filled with water.

Below is the completed pool.

Proposed redesign of a turned wood, Colonial railing in a Southern California beach house

1) The railing was removed, along with complex cast shadows from windows and skylights.

2) Three mock-ups were done. Anodized aluminum railing shown here.

More details in Imaging.

Presentations

Ace Architects

City of Oakland, California Facade Improvement Grant Program

Interesting project... block long urban panoramas produced from digital photos, scanned architectural sketches, and converted CAD drawings. Both sides of each block were shown with and without proposed improvements. Created photo composites with overlays in PhotoShop, postscript maps and then layouts in InDesign. Presentation boards in the Design Portfolio. Twenty-eight 24 x 36" mounted boards covering 12 blocks of International Blvd., 8 blocks of MacArthur and several other locations.

The images and data on this site are the property of sandra ragan/plum grafik, clients thereof, and others as noted. Please respect their hard work and creativity by following the "Golden Rule,"
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Webmaster: webmaster @ www.plumdigital.com. Thanks.

Portfolio Sections:

Design - Logo/Identity, Advertising, Display, Presentations, Visual Interfaces
Illustration - Line & Color, Information, Photographic, Cartography
Fine Art - Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Crafts
Resume - Client lists and employers

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