thestoryofjory.com

Last week, I introduced my classes to Photoshop.  This isn’t a design class, but many of my students will be expected to advance their Photoshop skills as they get into upper-division advertising and public relations courses.  About a week ago, I overheard a professor going over extremely basic Photoshop stuff with a senior-level PR class.  It’s simply unacceptable to be a senior and not know anything about Photoshop. Some of the students already had some experience, which was a relief to me because we all know I’m an absolute Photoshop hack. Luckily, it doesn’t take a pro to teach people about the different tools, when they might be used, and how to use them.

We’re talking about visual storytelling now, so the students are having to take pictures for their assignments and I want them to have some knowledge of photo-editing.  For the purposes of my class, Electronic Communication, I wanted them to at least be able to crop, rotate, and correct color problems using auto color. I used the sample materials from the Adobe Classroom In A Book series and took them through using all the different tools.  I can tell it was one of their favorite classes so far – they all seemed to have fun, particularly when accidental Photoshop disasters were created.

So, for their blog assignments this week, the students did a before-and-after Photoshop photo.  Here are a few of my favorites:

• Sabrina Swanger
• John Garrison
• Jennifer Gilliland

And, just for fun, here’s a pattern of my sister’s head Photoshop’ed into a drawing of Oklahoma:

I like making my own Photoshop Disasters. I call this one: Jackie Oklahoma!

Hi friends. It’s been a while (like a month).  You’re probably wondering if I’m dead (I’m not). I’ve just been getting exponentially busier than I expected to be!

First, a monthly recap :

• Graduation weekend, on the whole, was a blast.  The party Friday night was a great time, and aside from having to watch all three graduation ceremonies, Saturday was pretty fun, too.  Here’s the obligatory photo:

• Planning for IgniteOKC 2 is barreling forward.  We’re now about two weeks away from the event on June 10 (which, incidentally, is the fourth anniversary of my wedding to Tanner Burson).  I wrote a blog post earlier this week for IgniteOKC website; check it out to get yourself up-to-date!  I should also say that I’m excited to see Mikey’s talk about ridding the world of Comic Sans :)
• We launched a Facebook video contest for Eskimo Joe’s & Eskimo Joe’s Clothes.  It’s pretty exciting because the company has never tried anything like this before (in terms of relying on social media) and could be a great testing ground for future social media marketing endeavors.  I made a short video of Stan introducing the contest (see below) and Angie, Tanner & I have been monitoring impressions and engagement on Facebook.

• I took back my old job of managing Eskimo Joe’s Road Crew, but it’s only for the summer.  I’ve been given a special assignment, which I’ll be happy to tell more about once it’s all resolved.
• I finished three really good books this month: America, 1908 by Jim Rasenberger, Thunderstruck by Eric Larsen, and The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan.  For the past six months or so I’ve been on a serious historical non-fiction kick, and I hope to share some of what I’ve learned here soon.  Check out my Shelfari widget or profile to see what I’ve been reading & what I plan to read next!

So that’s a brief telling of what I’ve been doing for the past month.  Here’s what’s coming up:

• Turning in my last two chapters of my thesis sometime next week.  Finally.
• Doing a new training video for Joe’s Clothes. Woot!
• Hopefully working some magic with the Road Crew, but we’ll see about that.
• Helping Jack Hodgson with the OSU Alumni Association’s Grandparent University Broadcasting class.  Whew!
• IgniteOKC 2 is June 10!  I’ll be doing the videos once again.
• As previously mentioned, my story about my key art will be officially published June 10 as well!
• Mr. Burson & I will try to find time to celebrate 4 years of marriage.
• OSU Sports Media Camp starts in the middle of June.  I’ll be helping Friday with the sports anchoring exercise.  I really enjoy working with the campers.
• I might get brave enough to open my Google Reader for the first time in over a month to catch up on what the rest of the world is doing. Anyone want to start a pool on how many unread items I’ll have?

Truthfully, I doubt I’ll have much time for blogging in the next month, but I’m going to try for updating once a week until things (hopefully) slow down in July.

I’ve added two more punctuation marks in addition to the interrobang (or Cuile symbol) in my punctuation key art series.  The ampersands were tricky and went through many modifications before getting stuck to the canvas.  Those are made from just function keys.  The hash tags (or pound sign, or number symbol, or tic-tac-toe board) were also tried a few different ways before being stuck down with just the number keys.

Next up, I’m going to tackle the dreaded @ symbol.  It’s a complicated shape to deal with in such a small space.  Wish me luck!