Lab 9 Reflection

     The way text looks can be very important to a design. You may know of different types of fonts like Times New Roman and Arial but besides these the fonts many other things can alter have text looks. The color of the text, the outline, maybe even the textures of the text. In my 9th lab for my VD course I used Blending Options to change how text looks.

     We started off by typing our name and copying it 5 times, so we had six total copies of our name. I did extra and my first name and last name separately instead of only doing my first name. Next we used the various Layer Styles in the Blending Options to change the appearance of our name. We right clicked on the layer with our name and chose Blending Options to access the various styles. One of the Layer Styles was Bevel and Emboss creates various combinations of highlights and adds shadows to a layer. Bevel and Emboss have two sub styles, being Contour and Texture. Contour helped me change the color gradient and opacity repetitions as well as the sculpting (ridges, bumps, etc.) and shadow of the text. Texture helped me apply  texture, such as bubbles, to the text.  The other Layer Styles I used were Drop Shadow; which adds a shadow behind the text; Inner Shadow; which adds a shadow inside the text to make it look recessed; Outer and Inner Glow; which added a glow either outside the edges or inside the edges of the text; Satin; which applies and interior shading; Color, Gradient, and Pattern Overlay; which applies the layer's content with a color, gradient, or texture; and Stroke; which adds a color, gradient, or pattern outline to the text. We experimented with each of these styles chaining various setting within the styles. For example, the second Jawad from the top uses the Drop Shadow. I changed the angle of the drop shadow so that the shadow of the letters were next to the letters themselves. I also adjusted the color of the shadow to be dark blue and adjusted the shadow's distance to be further from the letters.
     These skills are important to a web designer because a web designer must know how to make the smallest of detail appealing in their work. Text may not be something that is the main subject of  a web designer's work but it must look good never the less. In advertisement a web designer may not make text the main focus but should make it blend in. If this add is for a sculpting business the wed designer may want to consider making the text look like it has a chisel effect. This will help set the theme of stone sculpting. Even for logos, where the main subject may be the text itself, you still want to make it look appealing. If this logo is for a medicine company then you don't necessarily have to apply a texture or streak to the text that sets the theme for medicine. You may want to make the text very simplistic since simple logos are very appealing even if they don't have any symbolism. So you might just want to use Arial font since that font is a very simple font. Blending Options help a web designer make their work overall more appealing and interesting.

References

Adobe Support (2017, Feb 15) Layer effects and styles. Retrived from https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/layer-effects-styles.html